Search engines personalise results by location before they do anything else. A query from Berlin and the same query from Dallas return different pages, different ads and different local packs. If you track rankings from one office, you are tracking one market.
Location beats parameters
Query parameters that hint at a region are a weak signal and are often ignored. The IP is the strong signal. Route each market’s checks through residential IPs in that country and the results match what a visitor there sees, including currency, language variants and local inventory.
A small, honest setup
- Assign a handful of residential IPs per target country in your plan.
- Run each keyword set through the IPs for its market, a few queries per IP per hour.
- Store the full results page, not just the position, so you can see ads and features later.
What to watch
Positions move daily; features move weekly. Track whether your page sits above or below a shopping carousel or a local pack, because that moves clicks more than a one-place change in rank. Compare markets side by side to spot where a competitor is localising better than you are.
Keep the volume modest. Search engines are quick to challenge automated queries, and residential IPs stay healthy longer when each one looks like one person checking a few things.