If you work in digital marketing, SEO, or are training AI models with market data, you’ve surely come across this invisible wall: your location bubble.
When you do a search from your office in Madrid or Barcelona, the results you get are completely biased. Google personalizes search results (SERPs) and ads primarily by IP address, along with secondary signals such as browser language, cookies, Google account and history.
This means that if you want to know what your competition is doing in Mexico or the United States, you can’t just open a tab and search. You need a trick up your sleeve.
This is where our great technological ally comes into play. A VPN changes your real IP to one from another country or city, simulating that you are browsing from there. Today we’re going to look at how you can use a VPN to take your market research to the next level.
Why is a VPN your best research tool?
Imagine that you are carrying out the SEO strategy of a client that wants to expand internationally. If you search for their keywords from Spain, you are not seeing reality. A VPN solves this for you in one fell swoop.
This allows you to see exactly what a local user sees without bias from your actual location. For those of us who dedicate ourselves to this, it is a brutal advantage. It is especially useful for analyzing international competition, whether in the US, UK, Germany or Mexico.
It is also a key piece if you manage an e-commerce with dynamic prices. In addition, it greatly makes your life easier to perform an analysis of geolocated ad campaigns.
Best of all? The key advantage is that it is cheap, immediate and does not require advanced SEO subscriptions for quick analysis. You don’t have to spend thousands of euros on complex software if you just need to do a quick and effective check.
The definitive step by step to see the real SERPs (without bias)
Getting this wrong is very easy (and will give you bad data). To get it right and see real Google SERPs in other countries without local cache bias, there is a clear process. Here are the steps recommended by SEO experts:
- Choose a VPN with servers in the target country or city (ideally, it has city-specific servers).
- Connect to the desired server.
- Open an incognito window or use your browser’s private mode.
- Sign out of your Google account, or better yet, use a browser where you don’t have any linked accounts.
- Clear cache and cookies if necessary.
- As an optional step, but highly recommended, change the browser language or use the corresponding local domain, such as google.es, google.com or google.co.uk.
- Finally, perform the search.
If you follow this ritual, the expected results are clear: you will see the top 10 organic results, featured snippets, Google Shopping products and local ads exactly as a user from that country sees them.
You will see everything completely clean, without customization by your history or cache. However, keep in mind a known limitation: Google detects some shared VPN IPs and may display CAPTCHA or less accurate results.
The solution to this is simple: simply change servers or use a premium VPN with dedicated IPs.
Discovering your competition’s ads
Knowing what copy or what tricks your competition uses in other countries is worth gold. Have you ever wondered what Google Ads or Facebook Ads users see in the US versus those they see in Spain? Let’s break it down:
In Google Ads
With a VPN and an incognito search you see exactly the ads that appear in that location. There is an official alternative: the Google Ads Ad Preview and Diagnostic Tool allows you to simulate location, device and keywords without using a VPN.
However, some professionals prefer to use the VPN so they can also see the full organic results on the same screen. This is tremendously useful for discovering the copy, landing pages, ad extensions and offers of your local competitors.
On Facebook and Instagram (Meta Ads)
The Meta Ads Library allows you to search active ads by country, advertiser and category without the need for a VPN. This tool is completely public and free.
But if you want to go a step further and see exactly “what a real user sees” in their feed or search, the technique is to use a VPN combined with a test account created in that country. You can also use a Chrome extension that simulates the location.
The strategic benefit of this is that you identify which competitors are investing in local ads, what their messaging is and what exclusive offers they are launching.
For example, a Spanish e-commerce may discover that its American competitor uses “US only” discounts. that do not appear from Spain.
The E-commerce war: Dynamic price verification
If you work in e-commerce, you know that prices are rarely static. Many sites, such as airlines, hotels, Amazon, Adobe, Spotify, Booking or SaaS software, adjust their prices based on IP, perceived purchasing power of the country and cookies.
A VPN reveals these differences instantly. It allows you to see exclusive offers from other countries, analyze in detail your competition’s pricing strategies and get inspiration for your own regional campaigns.
There are many documented examples in 2025 and 2026 about this:
- On flights, the same journey can cost between 10% and 20% less if you search from India or Argentina.
- Savings of more than $100 have been recorded in hotels and car rentals when booking from countries with lower purchasing power.
- Subscription software like Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva Pro or Spotify Premium is usually cheaper in places like India, Turkey or Argentina.
- Giant platforms like Amazon or Walmart apply geo-restricted discounts or show lower prices in certain markets.
To check this, the steps are the same as always: connect to the server in the target country, open incognito mode, visit the site and compare prices. Then, repeat the process with several countries.
A golden tip: always use incognito mode and delete cookies between tests to avoid detection.
Is this legal?
At this point, you may be wondering if all this “spying” is legal. The answer is that it is 100% legal and ethical. Viewing public information such as SERPs, ads and prices from open sites does not violate any laws in Spain, the US, the European Union or most other countries.
It is definitely not “hacking” or accessing private data. **In fact, companies like Google and Meta know and allow it, and even offer official preview tools.
The only thing you should keep in mind is to respect the terms of service of each platform, especially when it comes to not abusing automated scraping.
Our VPN recommendations (Updated 2026):
When choosing, your priority should be great coverage of countries and cities, speed for quick searches, uncrowded servers, and a strict zero-log policy.
ProtonVPN
Proton VPN is one of the most robust and secure options on the market. Developed by the team behind Proton Mail, it stands out for its radical focus on privacy, its audited no-logs policy and its highly secure infrastructure in Switzerland.
Its network now has more than 4,000 servers in more than 90 countries, offering excellent speed and advanced features such as Secure Core, which routes traffic through specially protected servers.
For professionals who value real privacy and stability in international searches, it is one of the most reliable options.
NordVPN
It remains one of the most popular services, with over 8,000 servers in 160+ countries and obfuscated server options that help avoid certain automatic detections.
It is very fast and has great geographic coverage, which makes it a useful tool for international marketing work.
Surfshark
It stands out for its excellent quality-price ratio. It has more than 3,000 servers in 100 countries and allows unlimited device connections, something very useful if you work with teams or multiple tools at the same time.
Important notice: Avoid free VPNs, as they usually have limited servers, are slow, save logs, and are usually blocked by Google.
For a more robust analysis, you can always rely on superior alternatives for professionals, such as SEO tools (SEMrush, Ahrefs, Nightwatch or Keyword.com for tracking by zip code).
And don’t forget the combination of the Google Ads Preview Tool with the Meta Ads Library. The information is out there, it is public and responsible use is key. Try changing your digital location today and transform your international marketing strategy!
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