When we decided to launch a web project aimed to foreign audiences, it is important to study its market. And one of the basic tasks before defining the pillars of the project is to study how users look for the products that we offer, how is our competence, or what volume of searches have our products in the target country. In this sense, an important practice is to search on Google as if we were in that other country. Recently we have been developing an international
SEO campaign aimed at US public for our client Barcelona Student Housing. BSH offers housing for American students in Barcelona and wanted to put into the top of results on Google USA keywords such as
student flats Spain or accommodation for students in Spain. So we found the opportunity to explain you how to access to Google USA from other countries, that means how to use Google as if we were in the US.
Well, first thing we must do is to change the IP, and get a temporarily IP to navigate from the US. Well, first thing we must do is to change the IP, and get to temporarily navigate from the US. To do this we will install a program on our computer or in our browser (there are very useful extensions for Chrome or Firefox, for example). We prefer to use a program called
Hide My IP, but you can find other programs that provide IP VPN services for the United States, most of them are also free. Well then to navigate from USA we donwload the Hide My IP and we've to sellect a US IP, as you can see in the picture that heads this article. We recommend that before making this step, to close all browsers you have open.
Once we have selected a US IP, we open the browser and go to Google.com and do our search. To verify that we are navigating right from Google USA must check two things: first, that we are not logged into our Google account, because if we're logged Google will filter the results. And secondly, we must look at the footer of the Google results page, where is set the population where we are. If it's a US location, perfect. If it still is not, you can return to the head of the search engine, and click to search tools and define a specific city.
After checking that the configuration is correct, you can already search on Google like you were in the United States. We hope it has been helpful for you. See you soon!
