Quick Question: How to seach google.co.uk without using your location?

jcsuperstar

jcsuperstar

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Quick question, which I'm sure there's an obvious answer. I want to do some google searches on Google.co.uk to see some true nationwide rankings of some sites. However google.co.uk is using my location, so I'm not seeing national rankings. I know about /ncr for google.com but that doesn't work for co.uk

How do I do it easily?

Many thanks in advance :)
 
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Bump, guess it's not that simple after all lol
 
Im from uk and just type proxy browsers in google to get on .com. or you could just buy a uk proxy
 
Another way to go about this: https://www.google.co.uk/ncr, NCR=no country redirection. So you force Google to use their UK site and you won't get redirected even if you use a non-UK ip.

There are different browser addons too to tackle this.

Or for instance in Chrome, you can add the co.uk as a new search engine:
Settings/Search/Manage search engines...
Scroll down all the way to the end, add a new search engine, let's say call it Google UK, for keyword put google.co.uk and the important part, the url: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%s&pws=0&gl=gb&gws_rd=cr
If you save it, you'll now have Google UK as a new search engine, make it default once, after that you can switch to it whenever you want using the dropdown in the Settings under Search.
 
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HoNeYBiRD said:
Another way to go about this: https://www.google.co.uk/ncr, NCR=no country redirection. So you force Google to use their UK site and you won't get redirected even if you use a non-UK ip.

There are different browser addons too to tackle this.

Or for instance in Chrome, you can add the co.uk as a new search engine:
Settings/Search/Manage search engines...
Scroll down all the way to the end, add a new search engine, let's say call it Google UK, for keyword put google.co.uk and the important part, the url: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%s&pws=0&gl=gb&gws_rd=cr
If you save it, you'll now have Google UK as a new search engine, make it default once, after that you can switch to it whenever you want using the dropdown in the Settings under Search.
Click to expand...

Didn't even know about that ncr trick, makes things so much easier now
 
Weird, I tried it on a desktop with IE, Firefox, chrome and opera, and it still using my bloody location :confused:
 
jcsuperstar said:
Weird, I tried it on a desktop with IE, Firefox, chrome and opera, and it still using my bloody location :confused:
Click to expand...
I have no clue then. It works for me on co.uk and on .com too, however it doesn't work on .hu for instance, maybe it never worked on .hu.

You can still try what others suggested (UK proxy/VPN, the FF browser addon, which disables the personalized search) or the other method what i posted above: adding Google UK as a new search engine to Chrome and switching to it, when you want to search on google.co.uk. At least one of these must work, all of them should though. :)
 
@HoNeYBiRD I don't think OP is having an issue with getting to google.co.uk. Most people have seemed to misunderstand the original question.

I'm based in the UK. If I do a search for 'plumber' in google.co.uk, it shows me results for plumbers in my area. Say I am in Manchester, it is showing me results for plumbers in Manchester - basically the same results as if I had typed 'plumbers manchester' into the search.

As I understood it, OP wants to know if it is possible for google.co.uk to ONLY show national results. E.g I search for plumbers, it shows me the sites which rank nationally for that phrase.

OP, I have not found a way to successfully do this. A few years back when you could set your location to regional under the 'tools' menu, you could set the location to UK and it would show national results. This option is no longer there, because Google wants to only show you localised results - because for most people it makes sense to show them the plumbers (etc) working in their area. I am also interested if anyone can suggest something that solves this.
 
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kickthat, that's exactly right!
 
kickthat said:
@HoNeYBiRD I don't think OP is having an issue with getting to google.co.uk. Most people have seemed to misunderstand the original question.

I'm based in the UK. If I do a search for 'plumber' in google.co.uk, it shows me results for plumbers in my area. Say I am in Manchester, it is showing me results for plumbers in Manchester - basically the same results as if I had typed 'plumbers manchester' into the search.

As I understood it, OP wants to know if it is possible for google.co.uk to ONLY show national results. E.g I search for plumbers, it shows me the sites which rank nationally for that phrase.

OP, I have not found a way to successfully do this. A few years back when you could set your location to regional under the 'tools' menu, you could set the location to UK and it would show national results. This option is no longer there, because Google wants to only show you localised results - because for most people it makes sense to show them the plumbers (etc) working in their area. I am alsi Interested if anyone can suggest something that solves this.
Click to expand...
I see. But what kind of ip would you need to be able to see the national rankings and not local ones? It doesn't make sense to me, because whatever is your location, you'll see the local results. Is there such thing at all that national rankings? Excuse my ignorance, my SEO knowledge is very limited to say the least. lol

Whatever you do, you need to use an IP and the ip will have a location. If you want to appear in another location, you can use a proxy, nothing new here :). Wild guess, but to come close to what you and OP want, maybe you need to use an IP from a foreign country and use the ncr trick with that ip. That way i don"t see any reason why Google would still show you your local results.
 
HoNeYBiRD said:
I see. But what kind of ip would you need to be able to see the national rankings and not local ones? It doesn't make sense to me, because whatever is your location, you'll see the local results. Is there such thing at all that national rankings? Excuse my ignorance, my SEO knowledge is very limited to say the least. lol

Whatever you do, you need to use an IP and the ip will have a location. If you want to appear in another location, you can use a proxy, nothing new here :). Wild guess, but to come close to what you and OP want, maybe you need to use an IP from a foreign country and use the ncr trick with that ip. That way i don"t see any reason why Google would still show you your local results.
Click to expand...
That's an awesome idea and works perfectly. Just checked it for Google germany (.de). Using my local ip, I got the normal local business results and such stuff. Switched on a US-based proxy, went on to google.de and got results for the full country, perfect :)
 
@HoNeYBiRD Your solution worked for me also - nice one!

HoNeYBiRD said:
I see. But what kind of ip would you need to be able to see the national rankings and not local ones? It doesn't make sense to me, because whatever is your location, you'll see the local results. Is there such thing at all that national rankings? Excuse my ignorance, my SEO knowledge is very limited to say the least. lol
Click to expand...

It did use to be possible. A few years back you could set your location via the 'tools' selection in Google to 'UK', which would show you national results. When I worked at an agency we used this to show SEO clients who provided a national service their 'true' ranking, because they were often based in a different location to us. A couple of years back Google changed to show localised results only for a large number of searches and this was no longer possible.

Nice solution!
 
It isn;t easy to do. Some of posters didn't read the part where he mentions that he using ncr which doesn't work for co.uk
 
bismarck88 said:
It isn;t easy to do. Some of posters didn't read the part where he mentions that he using ncr which doesn't work for co.uk
Click to expand...
The ncr trick works for google.co.uk too just as well as it works for google.com, it's not the issue. The thing is that OP wanted a location free search, not just country free. And for that the ncr trick won't work in itself on neither subdomain, but it still serves its own purpose.

I just misinterpreted the question at first and looking at OP's location, i thought he's trying to search from a Spanish ip and he can't get on google.co.uk.

But i think i already posted one solution above, at least someone tried it and reported it to be working:
OP wanted to get location-free, national results on google.co.uk. What he can do is use a foreign, non-UK ip address and use google.co.uk/ncr to search, so Google won't be able to match the location of the foreign ip with any location within his target country, the UK and Google will be forced to show location free, national results.

I'm not into SEO, maybe there are more sophisticated methods, it's just my DIY solution.
 
Use a Good VPN, I prefer HotSpot Shield. It supports many locations and .co.uk also ;)
 
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