Google Search URL Generator

How to use the Google Search URL Generator

Type a query and pick the settings you want. The URL rebuilds as you type, with a table below it listing each parameter and what it does. Use Copy URL or open it in a new tab. To go the other way, switch to Decode a URL and paste any Google search link: every parameter is labelled as a search setting, tracking, session state or no longer working, and you get a clean copy with the clutter removed. Edit in builder loads the decoded settings into the form so you can change one thing and rebuild. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Need a query with operators like site: or intitle: first? Write it in the Search Query Generator and use its Localize link to bring it here.

The Google search parameters this tool sets

Google has never published a reference for the parameters on google.com/search. The closest official source is the Programmable Search Engine JSON API, which documents gl, hl, lr, cr, safe, filter and start with the same values. The rest are long-standing conventions that SEO tools and SERP APIs depend on.

For tbs, qdr:h, d, w, m and y mean the past hour, day, week, month and year. A custom range is cdr:1,cd_min:1/1/2024,cd_max:12/31/2024, with dates written month first. li:1 is Verbatim: exact words, with no synonyms or spelling fixes.

Two parameters are deliberately left out. num, which set the number of results per page, stopped working in September 2025, so paging with start is now the only way through the results. The Google domain is not a country setting either. Since October 2017 Google has picked the country from the searcher's location, not the domain, and in 2025 it started redirecting country domains to google.com. Use gl to choose the country. The domain picker is there for testing and for matching old URLs.

How the uule location parameter works

gl sets the country. uule gets you down to a city, region or postal code. A uule generator turns a location name into this value: w+, then a base64-encoded protocol buffer holding a role, a producer and the location's canonical name. For New York,New York,United States it is:

w+CAIQICIfTmV3IFlvcmssTmV3IFlvcmssVW5pdGVkIFN0YXRlcw

The first bytes are the same for every location, so the value always starts w+CAIQICI. The next character encodes the name's length in bytes: 31 here, which is f in the base64 alphabet. The rest is the name in base64. Many guides print a lookup table for that length character. The table only works for names up to 63 bytes and breaks on longer ones, and it goes wrong if you count characters instead of UTF-8 bytes, as accented names like Zürich show. This generator encodes the full protobuf, so any length works. The value is percent-encoded (+ becomes %2B) so every URL parser reads it the same way. To encode or decode a uule on its own, or start from a preset city, use the UULE generator.

The name must match the Canonical Name column of Google's geo targets list exactly, like Austin,Texas,United States, with commas and no spaces after them. Google ignores names it does not recognise, and you get no error. Set gl to the same country too, which is what SERP API providers recommend.

The decoder also reads the older a+ form, which carries latitude and longitude as plain text inside base64 instead of a place name.

Why localized Google search results still differ

A localized Google search URL controls the parameters, not everything else. Google also estimates location from your IP address and device, and if you are signed in, from your activity and saved places. Results vary between data centers and ongoing experiments, and they change over time. For the most comparable checks, open URLs in a private window, sign out, and treat pws=0 as a request, not a guarantee. When you compare rankings, compare URLs with the same settings, taken close together in time.

How SERP APIs expose the same options

SERP APIs accept these settings as request fields instead of URL parameters, and the names mostly match. SerpApi takes gl, hl, lr, tbs, start and google_domain, plus a location field holding a canonical name. It builds the uule for you and does not accept location and uule in the same request. DataForSEO uses location_code, which is the Google Ads criteria ID from the same geo targets list (2840 for the United States), together with a language_code. Build and check the parameters here, then use the Search API Tester to send the equivalent request to a provider and see what comes back.

Limits

Every parameter here is undocumented on google.com and can change without notice, as num did. Google may ignore a uule it does not recognise, override settings from your account, or show a consent or verification page instead of results. The builder handles one location per URL and a single result type. The decoder explains the parameters it knows. Anything else is marked unknown and kept in the clean URL, so nothing is lost. It decodes a URL you paste but never fetches it, so it can't tell you what the page returned.