Guide
How to see Google results from another location (uule, gl and hl explained)
By Daniel Pajuelo, SEO consultant and maintainer of this tool. Examples tested on October 6, 2026.
Google doesn't have one results page per keyword. It builds a page for a place: the same search for "plumber" lists different companies in Chicago and in Houston, and "running shoes" shows prices in pounds in the UK and in dollars in the US. If you do SEO for a market you aren't in, the page you see at your desk is the wrong one. You can travel, rent a VPN, or tell Google where the search comes from. This tool does the last one, and the rest of this guide shows exactly how.
What the tool sends to Google
Search "running shoes" with the country set to United Kingdom, the city set to London and the language set to English, and the tool opens this link:
https://www.google.com/search?q=running+shoes&hl=en&gl=gb&uule=a+cm9sZToxCnByb2R1Y2VyOjEyCnByb3ZlbmFuY2U6Ngp0aW1lc3RhbXA6MTc5MTMwOTExMTQwMDAwMApsYXRsbmd7CmxhdGl0dWRlX2U3OjUxNTA3NDQ1Ngpsb25naXR1ZGVfZTc6LTEyNzc2NTMKfQpyYWRpdXM6OTMwMDA%3D&num=10&safe=off&pws=0&ll=51.5074456%2C-0.1277653Open this example on Google. It's a normal google.com search with eight parameters:
| Parameter | Value | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| q | running shoes | The keyword, exactly as you typed it. |
| hl | en | Google's interface language. It also nudges which language the results come in. |
| gl | gb | The country. On its own it gave us UK shops priced in pounds, but not a place inside the UK. |
| uule | a cm9sZToxCnByb2R1Y2VyOjEyCnByb3ZlbmFuY2U6Ngp0aW1lc3RhbXA6MTc5MTMwOTExMTQwMDAwMApsYXRsbmd7CmxhdGl0dWRlX2U3OjUxNTA3NDQ1Ngpsb25naXR1ZGVfZTc6LTEyNzc2NTMKfQpyYWRpdXM6OTMwMDA= | The place, here central London, written as coordinates. This is the format that can pin a page to a place (more below). |
| num | 10 | One standard page of results. |
| safe | off | SafeSearch off, so nothing is filtered out of what a normal user sees. |
| pws | 0 | Asks Google not to personalize the page with your own search history. |
| ll | 51.5074456,-0.1277653 | The same coordinates in plain text. The tool adds it to every search with a city. |
The country part is the easy one. Earlier on October 6, 2026, a "running shoes" link with gl=gb and no working uule already returned adidas.co.uk, Runners Need, Decathlon UK and Sports Direct, with shopping results priced in pounds, from a connection in Spain.
gl, hl and uule: which one does what
gl and hl are documented. In Google's Custom Search API reference, gl is a two-letter country code that boosts results from that country, and hl sets the interface language. In practice gl is more than a boost: we searched "weather" with gl=tr and no uule, and the page came back localized to Turkey. What it doesn't give you is a place. We searched "plumber" with gl=us and no uule from a connection in Spain: Google answered with American results, but the map pack mixed plumbers from Arizona, Utah and Oklahoma. That page doesn't match what anyone in a real US city sees.
uule is the parameter that pins the search to a place. Google doesn't document it publicly. It comes in two formats, and in our tests only one of them did anything.
The uule built from a place name: Google ignored it
One format carries a place name. For the United Kingdom it is w+CAIQICIOVW5pdGVkIEtpbmdkb20=. Drop the w+ prefix, decode the rest from base64, and you get six bytes of header followed by the name in plain text:
08 02 10 20 22 0e | United KingdomIt's a tiny protobuf message. 08 02 and 10 20 are two numeric fields with fixed values (2 and 32), 22 opens the text field and 0e is its length in bytes: "United Kingdom" is 14 bytes, 0e in hexadecimal.
To see what it does on its own, we searched "weather" without gl, with this kind of uule for United Kingdom, Eswatini, Swaziland, "London,England,United Kingdom" and a country that doesn't exist. All five gave the same page: the weather for the town our IP address is in, near Valencia, Spain. The names were spelled as in Google Ads' own list of locations, so spelling wasn't the problem. Google simply ignored them. With a place-name uule, only gl localizes a search by country.
The uule built from coordinates: the one that works
The same "weather" test with a coordinate uule for Mbabane, the capital of Eswatini, showed the weather for Mbabane. That is the format of the London example above. Without gl it isn't reliable: the London and Prague coordinates still showed the weather near Valencia. With a matching gl it worked in every case we tried: gl=cz with Prague showed Prague, gl=au with Canberra showed Canberra and gl=sz with Mbabane showed Mbabane. That's why the tool always sends gl along with the uule. Still, check the page you get; the FAQ below explains what to look at. The format matters most for "plumber", "dentist" or anything with a map pack, because Google ranks local businesses by distance from the searcher. When you add a city, the tool looks it up in OpenStreetMap, gets its coordinates and writes them into the uule. For Chicago:
https://www.google.com/search?q=plumber&hl=en&gl=us&uule=a+cm9sZToxCnByb2R1Y2VyOjEyCnByb3ZlbmFuY2U6Ngp0aW1lc3RhbXA6MTc5MTMwMjM4MzQ4NTAwMApsYXRsbmd7CmxhdGl0dWRlX2U3OjQxODc1NTYxNgpsb25naXR1ZGVfZTc6LTg3NjI0NDIxMgp9CnJhZGl1czo5MzAwMA%3D%3D&num=10&safe=off&pws=0&ll=41.8755616%2C-87.6244212This uule starts with "a " and decodes to readable text:
role:1
producer:12
provenance:6
timestamp:1791302383485000
latlng{
latitude_e7:418755616
longitude_e7:-876244212
}
radius:93000Latitude and longitude are stored multiplied by ten million, without decimals. The timestamp is the current time in microseconds, so the tool produces a slightly different link every time you search the same city. The tool also adds an ll parameter with the same coordinates. With this link, the query "plumber", with no city in it, returned Chicago plumbers, a map pack around downtown Chicago and the question "Who is the best plumber in Chicago?".
Country or city: which one to pick
- Country only for national queries: products, brands, information. You get a country-level page, close to what a signed-out user in that country sees for non-local results. The country comes from gl, and the tool adds a coordinate uule for the capital, so any local results lean toward the capital.
- City for anything a business near the searcher can answer: services, restaurants, shops, "near me" queries. Two cities in the same country can show completely different map packs.
- Language separately, when the market is bilingual: English results in Spain, Spanish results in the United States, French results in Canada.
What a location changer can't change
- Device. Mobile or desktop depends on the browser that opens the link, not on a parameter.
- Your account. If you are signed in to Google, your history can still shape the page. Use a private window for the cleanest view.
- Websites you click through to. They still see your real IP address and country.
- Ranking positions over time. The tool opens one live page and keeps nothing. You read positions off Google yourself; for daily history you need a rank tracker.
- Google's rate limits. The searches come from your connection, so many searches in a row can trigger a CAPTCHA from Google.
Questions people ask
Is using a location changer legal?
Checking how Google looks in another market is routine SEO and market research. This tool doesn't hide your IP address, fake your device's GPS or run searches automatically: it builds a google.com link with a location in it, and you open it yourself, one search at a time, under Google's normal terms of service. What is legal depends on where you are and what you do with the results, so this is general information, not legal advice.
How do I change my current location on Google?
Google estimates your location from your device's location, the home and work addresses saved in your Google account, places you searched before and your IP address. You can't type an arbitrary city into Google's settings. What you can do is add the place to the query ("plumber in Chicago"), change the addresses in your account, or turn device location off. To see the results page someone in another place gets, without touching any of those settings, open a link with gl and a coordinate uule in it. That's the link the tool on this page builds.
Why does Google say "Can't determine location" at the bottom of the page?
That footer line describes your device location, not the location the results were built for. When we opened a United Kingdom search (gl=gb) on October 6, 2026, the footer said "Can't determine location" while the page showed UK shops, prices in pounds and adidas.co.uk. Judge the location by the results themselves: currency, local domains, addresses in the map pack.
Can I see mobile results with a location changer?
Not with URL parameters alone. Google decides between the mobile and desktop page from the browser that opens it, so open the link on your phone, or switch your desktop browser to a mobile device in its developer tools, if you need the mobile page. The location part works the same in both.
Is a location changer the same as a VPN?
No. A VPN moves your whole connection to another country, so every site you visit sees that country. A location changer only tells Google where the search should come from. Google's page is localized, but if you click through to a website that adapts to your IP address, that website still sees where you really are.
Step-by-step instructions for the form are in How to use; the FAQ covers accuracy, privacy and pricing.