UULE Generator: Google Results by City, Postal Code or Coordinates

By Linus Li · Updated 2026-10-06 · Free, runs in your browser

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Search for a city, neighborhood or postal code, or enter coordinates, to get a uule parameter and a Google search URL for that location. Location data comes from Google’s official geotargets table, and everything runs in your browser.

Key points

uule is a Google search URL parameter that sets the search location. It lets you check rankings in another market without a VPN.
A location name must match the Google Ads geotargets table exactly. The tool has the table built in (2026-08-12 edition, about 270,000 locations), checks every name and suggests the correct spelling when one is wrong.
Local business rankings change with the searcher’s position. Grid mode lays out points around a coordinate so you can check one query at several nearby positions.
Google does not document UULE. After you open a URL, check the location shown at the bottom of the results page.

What UULE is

UULE is a parameter in Google search URLs that tells Google to treat the search as if it came from a given location. For example, to see what users in New York get for “pizza” while you are in another country, add uule=w+CAIQICIf... to the URL.

The gl parameter handles differences between countries; differences between cities need uule. Google’s Business Profile help says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help). So the same query shows different businesses in the map pack in Los Angeles and in New York, and can differ between neighborhoods of one city.

UULE comes in two formats:

Format	Prefix	Location given as	Best for
v1	`w+`	A canonical location name	City, state or postal code checks that others can reproduce
v2	`a+`	Latitude and longitude	Street-level precision, local businesses and grids

How to use it

The tool has five modes:

Location name: pick a country, search for a city, neighborhood or postal code and choose one from the list. The tool generates a w+ parameter and shows the location’s Criteria ID and hierarchy. By default it also sets gl and hl from the location.
Coordinates: enter latitude and longitude, or paste a Google Maps link and the tool reads the coordinates from it. You can also click “Use my location”.
Grid: around the coordinates, the tool lays out 3×3 to 9×9 points at the spacing you choose, each with its own search URL. Open them one by one and note where the target business ranks at each point to see how far its visibility reaches.
Bulk: enter one location per line, as a canonical name or as “lat, lng”, plus a few queries. The tool builds every combination; copy them as TSV for a spreadsheet or download a CSV.
Decode: paste a Google search URL or a UULE parameter to see the location it sets and what every other parameter in the URL does.

Use a private window when you open the URLs so your signed-in account and search history do not affect the results.

Why canonical names need checking

A canonical name is the single spelling the Google Ads geotargets table gives each location, with levels separated by commas and no spaces after them. The number of levels varies, and many cities are not written the way you would guess:

Common guess	In the table
`Paris,France`	`Paris,Paris,Ile-de-France,France`
`London,United Kingdom`	`London,England,United Kingdom`
`Shenzhen,Guangdong,China`	`Shenzhen,Guangdong Province,China`
`New York, New York, United States`	`New York,New York,United States`

With a wrong name the URL still opens and the page does not report a bad parameter, but the results may be for a different location. Checking by hand means downloading a large CSV and searching it, so the tool has the table built in, split into small files per country and downloaded only when you pick that country. When a name is not in the table, the tool lists the correct spellings for the same place so you can pick one.

Some locations in the table are marked “Removal Planned”, and the tool suggests using another name for them.

gl, hl, uule and result types

Parameter	What it sets	Example
`gl`	The country whose results are ranked	`gl=us`
`hl`	The language of the Google interface	`hl=en`
`uule`	The specific location the search comes from	`uule=w+CAIQICIf...`
`pws=0`	Asks for results without personalization	`pws=0`

gl and uule should point to the same country. If uule is New York and gl is gb, the results can mix rankings from two countries, and the tool will flag it.

Since April 2025 Google has been redirecting its country domains (such as google.co.uk and google.de) to google.com, because since 2017 the domain a user visits has not affected local results (Google’s announcement). On 6 October 2026 I tested the 186 country domains in Google’s official domain list: 184 home pages returned a 301 redirect to google.com, and only google.com.hk and google.cn did not. So gl is what sets the country, and the tool uses google.com by default.

“Result type” opens the Local Finder (tbm=lcl), the links-only “Web” filter (udm=14), AI Mode (udm=50) or News (tbm=nws) directly. These parameters were observed in Google’s own URLs. Google has not documented them, and they may change.

For practitioners: encoding and data source

After w+ comes a Base64-encoded protobuf message with the trailing = removed. It has three fields: field 1 = 2, field 2 = 32, field 4 = the canonical name (UTF-8 bytes).
For names under 64 bytes this equals the common recipe w+CAIQICI + a length character + base64(name), where the length character is the Nth character of A–Z a–z 0–9 - _. For example, United States is 13 bytes, the length character is N, and the result is w+CAIQICINVW5pdGVkIFN0YXRlcw. The recipe only works up to 63 bytes; this tool encodes the length as a protobuf varint, so longer names work too.
After a+ comes Base64-encoded text with role:1, producer:12, provenance:0, a timestamp in microseconds, latlng{latitude_e7 longitude_e7} and radius:-1, with coordinates multiplied by 10⁷. The output matches SerpApi’s open-source uule_converter.
In the search URL the w+ / a+ prefix is kept as is, and any + or / in the Base64 part is percent-encoded.
Grid points use a spherical approximation: about 110.574 km per degree of latitude and 111.32 × cos(latitude) km per degree of longitude. Over a few kilometers the error is negligible.
Location data: the Google Ads API geotargets table, 2026-08-12 edition, 273,666 rows, of which 2,938 are marked for removal. The Criteria ID is also the ID used by the Google Ads API and DataForSEO’s location_code.
Both formats were worked out by the industry from real URLs. Google has not documented them, and they can change at any time.

FAQ

Does UULE still work?

Google has not documented UULE or promised that it will keep working, so the tool cannot guarantee results. To check, open the generated URL and look at the location at the bottom of the results page. If it shows the city you chose, the parameter worked.

Should I use a name or coordinates?

Use a name (w+) for city-level rankings: the spelling is unique, so anyone with the URL can reproduce the result. Use coordinates (a+) or a grid for local businesses and neighborhood-level checks.

Why do my results differ from what local users see?

UULE only changes the location Google uses for ranking. Your signed-in account, search history, device type and IP address can still affect the results. A private window and pws=0 reduce these effects but do not remove them. Rank tracking tools have the same limitation.

Can I see mobile results?

UULE does not change the device type. Switch to mobile emulation in Chrome DevTools, then open the generated URL to see mobile results.

Can I still check rankings on country domains such as google.co.uk?

Saved search URLs on country domains still open, but Google has said the domain does not affect results, and a country domain’s home page now redirects to google.com. To see results for a country, add gl and hl to a google.com search URL; to narrow it to a city, add uule.

Does the tool upload what I enter?

No. When you search for a location, your browser downloads the location file for the chosen country from this site and searches it locally. Encoding, decoding and URL building also happen in your browser. Your input is saved locally in your browser so it is still there next time.