As we know search engine result pages are different from one location to another even for queries using exactly the same terms. ‘Alquiler de coche Sevilla’ (rental car in Seville) would return substantially different results for someone based in Birmingham (UK) than from someone in Montpellier (France). The paid areas of the SERPs will be different and the organic results are likely to be different too, even if both users happen to be using http://www.google.es/
It gets more complex if you happen to be managing multi-site search marketing campaigns across a region or continent and wondered how local users on the target countries actually visualise your paid or organic listings on the Google SERPS?
Even if you are simply running one or two search marketing campaigns, but find yourself in an alien location to the target location (country, region or city), you would find a tool like Google Global (target page removed by Firefox). There of course other more advanced tools that return ranking data in different locations but Google Global is very useful for quick visualisation of the SERPS, if you are using Firefox.
Google Global will allow you to set up us specific custom profiles for each of your target locations ( see below ) , so if say you are running two campaigns in parallel both in Brussels and Bruges, you will be able to define the local codes for those two cities/towns and even specify an IP address for the exact location where you would want to check the SERPs from.
Imagine you are in Milan, Italy, and one of your colleagues is in Dusseldorf, Germany. You can the configure the tool not only to see results from a Dusseldorf location perspective but also enter your colleagues’ IP address to view the SERPs in exactly the same manner as your colleague would see it.
The extension creators, Redfly, have made it easy for search marketers to use the tool by allowing access to data such as Google City Codes and standard Region Codes. In addition you can have the extension configure for many different locations across the global or a single region.
With one click over the ‘Google global’ button on the Firefox browser you can quickly check the SERPs on any location around the globe.
The good news for those making the transition from Firefox onto another browser is that, the extension is also available for Google’s browser Chrome.
If you know other free tools that do the same job or better, please feel free to comment.