Google Search URL Parameters: Complete Reference Guide

every Google search generates a URL with specific parameters that control what results you see. understanding these parameters is essential for SEO research, SERP scraping, building search tools, and debugging how Google interprets queries.

this reference covers every useful Google search URL parameter, organized by function, with practical examples for each.

How Google Search URLs Work

a Google search URL follows this structure:

https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping&num=10&hl=en&gl=us

the base URL is https://www.google.com/search and everything after the ? is a parameter. parameters are separated by &. the q parameter is required and contains the search query.

Core Search Parameters

q (Query)

the search query. this is the only required parameter.

https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+server+setup

special operators work within the query:

Operator	Example	Description
`"exact phrase"`	`q="web+scraping+tools"`	exact phrase match
`site:`	`q=site:reddit.com+proxies`	restrict to specific domain
`-`	`q=proxy+-free`	exclude a word
`OR`	`q=proxy+OR+vpn`	match either term
`filetype:`	`q=proxy+filetype:pdf`	specific file types
`intitle:`	`q=intitle:proxy+guide`	word must be in title
`inurl:`	`q=inurl:proxy`	word must be in URL
`intext:`	`q=intext:residential+proxy`	word must be in body text
`related:`	`q=related:brightdata.com`	find similar sites
`cache:`	`q=cache:example.com`	view Google’s cached version

num (Number of Results)

controls how many results appear per page. default is 10. maximum is 100.

https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping&num=100

useful values: 10, 20, 50, 100. using num=100 reduces the number of pagination requests you need to make when scraping SERPs.

start (Pagination Offset)

the starting position for results. used for pagination.

# page 1 (results 1-10)
https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping&start=0

# page 2 (results 11-20)
https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping&start=10

# page 3 (results 21-30)
https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping&start=20

combine with num for efficient pagination:

# get results 1-100
https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping&num=100&start=0

# get results 101-200
https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping&num=100&start=100

Language and Location Parameters

hl (Host Language)

sets the interface language. this affects the language of Google’s UI elements but not necessarily the search results.

https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&hl=en    # English interface
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&hl=ja    # Japanese interface
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&hl=de    # German interface
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&hl=zh-CN # Simplified Chinese

common language codes:

Code	Language
en	English
es	Spanish
fr	French
de	German
ja	Japanese
ko	Korean
zh-CN	Simplified Chinese
zh-TW	Traditional Chinese
pt-BR	Brazilian Portuguese
ru	Russian
ar	Arabic
hi	Hindi

gl (Geolocation)

sets the country for localizing results. this is the most important parameter for geo-targeted SERP analysis.

https://www.google.com/search?q=best+proxy&gl=us  # US results
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+proxy&gl=gb  # UK results
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+proxy&gl=sg  # Singapore results
https://www.google.com/search?q=best+proxy&gl=de  # Germany results

uses ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes. this parameter is critical for SEO professionals who need to see how rankings differ by country.

cr (Country Restrict)

restricts results to pages from a specific country. different from gl because it filters the actual results, not just the localization.

# only show results from UK sites
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+service&cr=countryUK

# only show results from Japan
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+service&cr=countryJP

the format is country followed by the two-letter country code in uppercase.

lr (Language Restrict)

restricts results to pages in a specific language.

# only English results
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&lr=lang_en

# only Japanese results
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&lr=lang_ja

# English or French results
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&lr=lang_en|lang_fr

Time and Date Parameters

tbs (Time-Based Search)

filters results by time period. this parameter uses a complex encoding.

# past hour
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+news&tbs=qdr:h

# past 24 hours
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+news&tbs=qdr:d

# past week
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+news&tbs=qdr:w

# past month
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+news&tbs=qdr:m

# past year
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+news&tbs=qdr:y

# past N minutes
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+news&tbs=qdr:n15  # past 15 minutes

# past N hours
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+news&tbs=qdr:h6   # past 6 hours

# past N days
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+news&tbs=qdr:d3   # past 3 days

Custom Date Range

for a specific date range, use the cd_min and cd_max format within tbs:

# results from January 2025 to March 2025
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+market&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:01/01/2025,cd_max:03/31/2025

Content Type Parameters

tbm (Type of Search)

switches between different Google search types.

# web search (default)
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&tbm=

# image search
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+diagram&tbm=isch

# video search
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+tutorial&tbm=vid

# news search
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+regulation&tbm=nws

# shopping search
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+server&tbm=shop

# books search
https://www.google.com/search?q=web+scraping&tbm=bks

Display and Formatting Parameters

safe (SafeSearch)

controls SafeSearch filtering.

# SafeSearch off
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&safe=off

# SafeSearch on
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&safe=active

filter (Duplicate Filter)

controls whether Google filters similar/duplicate results.

# show all results including duplicates
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&filter=0

# filter duplicates (default)
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&filter=1

setting filter=0 is useful for SERP scraping when you want to see every result Google has indexed.

nfpr (No Auto-Correction)

prevents Google from auto-correcting your query.

# prevent spelling correction
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxi+servr&nfpr=1

useful when searching for specific misspellings or technical terms that Google might try to correct.

Advanced and Less-Known Parameters

as_sitesearch (Site Search)

restricts results to a specific site. equivalent to the site: operator but as a parameter.

https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy+guide&as_sitesearch=reddit.com

as_qdr (Date Range)

alternative date range parameter.

https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&as_qdr=m6  # past 6 months

as_epq (Exact Phrase)

equivalent to wrapping the query in quotes.

https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&as_epq=residential+proxy

as_oq (OR Terms)

adds OR terms to the query.

# search for proxy OR vpn OR tunnel
https://www.google.com/search?q=setup+guide&as_oq=proxy+vpn+tunnel

as_eq (Exclude Terms)

excludes specific terms.

# search for proxy but exclude "free"
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&as_eq=free

pws (Personalized Results)

disables personalized search results.

# no personalization
https://www.google.com/search?q=proxy&pws=0

important for SEO research where you want objective rankings, not results influenced by your search history.

Building SERP Scraping URLs with Python

here’s how to construct Google search URLs programmatically for SERP monitoring and SEO research.

from urllib.parse import urlencode, quote_plus

def build_google_url(
    query,
    num=10,
    start=0,
    lang="en",
    country="us",
    time_range=None,
    search_type=None,
    safe="off",
    no_personalization=True,
    no_filter=False,
    exact_phrase=None,
    exclude_terms=None,
    site=None,
):
    """build a Google search URL with specified parameters"""
    params = {
        "q": query,
        "num": num,
        "start": start,
        "hl": lang,
        "gl": country,
        "safe": safe,
    }

    if no_personalization:
        params["pws"] = 0

    if no_filter:
        params["filter"] = 0

    if time_range:
        time_codes = {
            "hour": "qdr:h",
            "day": "qdr:d",
            "week": "qdr:w",
            "month": "qdr:m",
            "year": "qdr:y",
        }
        if time_range in time_codes:
            params["tbs"] = time_codes[time_range]

    if search_type:
        type_codes = {
            "images": "isch",
            "videos": "vid",
            "news": "nws",
            "shopping": "shop",
            "books": "bks",
        }
        if search_type in type_codes:
            params["tbm"] = type_codes[search_type]

    if exact_phrase:
        params["as_epq"] = exact_phrase

    if exclude_terms:
        params["as_eq"] = exclude_terms

    if site:
        params["as_sitesearch"] = site

    return f"https://www.google.com/search?{urlencode(params)}"


# examples
print(build_google_url("web scraping tools", num=100, country="us"))
print(build_google_url("proxy service", time_range="month", country="gb"))
print(build_google_url("best proxy", search_type="news", country="de"))
print(build_google_url("proxy guide", site="reddit.com", num=50))

Scraping Google SERPs with Proper URL Parameters

when scraping Google search results, the right URL parameters make a significant difference in data quality.

from curl_cffi import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import time
import random

class GoogleSerpScraper:
    def __init__(self, proxy=None):
        self.session = requests.Session(impersonate="chrome124")
        self.proxy = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy} if proxy else None

    def search(self, query, pages=1, country="us", lang="en"):
        """scrape Google search results"""
        all_results = []

        for page in range(pages):
            url = build_google_url(
                query=query,
                num=10,
                start=page * 10,
                country=country,
                lang=lang,
                no_personalization=True,
            )

            response = self.session.get(
                url,
                headers={
                    "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/124.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
                    "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8",
                    "Accept-Language": f"{lang};q=0.9,en;q=0.8",
                },
                proxies=self.proxy,
            )

            if response.status_code == 200:
                results = self.parse_results(response.text)
                all_results.extend(results)
            else:
                print(f"page {page + 1}: status {response.status_code}")

            # delay between pages
            time.sleep(random.uniform(5, 12))

        return all_results

    def parse_results(self, html):
        """parse organic results from Google SERP HTML"""
        soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser")
        results = []

        for div in soup.select("div.g"):
            title_el = div.select_one("h3")
            link_el = div.select_one("a")
            snippet_el = div.select_one("div.VwiC3b")

            if title_el and link_el:
                results.append({
                    "title": title_el.get_text(),
                    "url": link_el.get("href", ""),
                    "snippet": snippet_el.get_text() if snippet_el else "",
                })

        return results

# usage with residential proxy
scraper = GoogleSerpScraper(proxy="http://user:pass@residential.proxy.com:port")
results = scraper.search("best proxy providers 2026", pages=3, country="us")

for i, r in enumerate(results, 1):
    print(f"{i}. {r['title']}")
    print(f"   {r['url']}")

when scraping Google, always use residential proxies. Google blocks datacenter IPs aggressively. compare pricing across providers with the Proxy Cost Calculator on dataresearchtools.com.

Parameter Combinations for Common Use Cases

SEO Competitor Analysis

# see what ranks in US for your target keyword, no personalization
?q=residential+proxy+provider&gl=us&hl=en&num=100&pws=0&filter=0

Content Research

# find recent articles about a topic
?q=web+scraping+best+practices&tbs=qdr:m3&num=50&gl=us

Backlink Prospecting

# find sites linking to competitors
?q="competitor.com"+-site:competitor.com&num=100&filter=0

News Monitoring

# latest news about proxies
?q=proxy+regulation&tbm=nws&tbs=qdr:d&gl=us&hl=en

Finding Guest Post Opportunities

# find blogs accepting guest posts in your niche
?q=proxy+"write+for+us"+OR+"guest+post"&num=100

Technical Resource Discovery

# find PDFs and technical docs
?q=proxy+architecture+filetype:pdf&num=50

Parameters That No Longer Work

Google has deprecated several parameters over the years:

ie and oe (input/output encoding) – Google now uses UTF-8 everywhere
btnI (I’m Feeling Lucky) – still technically works but less useful for scraping
as_rights (Creative Commons filter) – removed from web search
cd (result number) – internal parameter, not user-controllable

Summary

Google search URL parameters give you precise control over search results for SEO research, SERP monitoring, and data collection. the most important parameters to remember are:

q for the query, num for result count, start for pagination
gl for country targeting, hl for language
tbs=qdr: for time filtering
tbm for search type (images, news, videos)
pws=0 to disable personalization
filter=0 to show all results including duplicates

combine these parameters strategically to get exactly the data you need from Google’s SERPs, whether you’re monitoring rankings, researching competitors, or building search-powered tools.