Google Search URL Parameters: udm=14, tbs, gl, hl and More

Every operator we've learned goes into the search box.

But there are other things that change the results, and they don't go in the box:

Results from which country? Google's interface in which language? Results from the past 6 hours only? News, forums or images?

Those go into the results page's link. And once you understand the link, you can edit it by hand, save it, and send it to someone so they see the same search with the same settings.

And more importantly: some settings don't exist in Google's interface at all, like "past 6 hours" or "past 3 days". You can only reach them from the link.

The link you copy from Google

Search Google for "manual coffee grinder", and copy the link from the top. You'll find it's very long, something like this:

The most important parameter is q: that's the query you typed. Everything else in this link is Google's own tracking, and the link works without it.

So that whole link can be just this:

How is the link split up?

Let's take a simple link and pull it apart piece by piece:

Every parameter is a name, then =, then the value. And between one parameter and the next, &.

The ? is written only once, before the first parameter. Any parameter after that starts with &.

And the order of the parameters doesn't matter. ?q=coffee&hl=en is exactly the same as ?hl=en&q=coffee.

google.co.uk or google.com?

It doesn't matter. The domain no longer sets the country. Google knows where you are from other things. And if you want to set the country yourself, there's a parameter for that we'll see below: gl.

Why did the quote turn into %22?

Links don't accept every character. Spaces, quotes and symbols are turned into another form called encoding.

Don't memorize this table. The browser does the encoding for you when you type in the search box.

And you'll often see the same link in two forms: readable, q="coffee+grinder", and encoded, q=%22coffee+grinder%22. Both are the same link. That's why, in the rest of the lesson, we'll write links in their readable form.

Why are &, # and + dangerous inside the query?

The & sign in a link means "a new parameter starts here". The # sign means "whatever comes after me never goes to Google at all". And + means a space.

So if you write the link by hand with coffee & tools in it, without encoding:

Google received only q=coffee, and thinks tools is another parameter. The right way is for & to be %26:

Same story with +. If you're searching for C++ and you write q=C++, Google reads it as "C" followed by two spaces. The right way: q=C%2B%2B.

So when you write a link by hand with symbols in it, let the tool or the browser do the encoding.

q: every operator inside one parameter

Everything we've learned in the course, site:, intitle:, quotes and the minus sign, goes into the box. So it all goes into q:

Read it as: the whole query is inside q. And outside q are the settings: here, the country.

So site: isn't a parameter. It's part of the value of q. The parameters are what comes after &.

Time: tbs=qdr

Remember the "Any time" list from the date lesson? Past hour, past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year.

When you pick one, Google adds tbs=qdr: to the link, followed by a letter. That letter is the unit:

Watch the minute: n, not m. Because m is taken by the month.

Add a number after the letter

This is the thing that isn't in the list.

The list has "past hour" and "past 24 hours" only. So what if you want the past 6 hours? The past 3 days? The past 6 months?

Write the number straight after the letter:

Let's try it

Peet's is running a campaign today, and you want to see who wrote about it in the past 6 hours:

And if you want the "best coffee grinder" articles written in the past 6 months, to know which models people are talking about now:

A range between two dates: cdr

The list also has "Custom range": you pick from one date to another. In the link, that's written like this:

Read it as:

• cdr:1 means "there's a set range".
• cd_min:1/1/2025 from January 1, 2025.
• cd_max:12/31/2025 to December 31, 2025.
• And the three are separated by commas, with no spaces.

Watch the order of the date here: month/day/year. That's the order Google writes when the interface is in US English.

And sometimes, in other people's links, you'll find the date the other way round, day first:

That's because the order follows the country and language settings, like the UK's. 31/12/2025 is clearly day first, because there's no month 31. But 3/6/2025? It could be March 6, or June 3.

So the safer way: pick the range from "Tools" in Google itself, and copy the link it gives you. Then edit the numbers knowing the order.

cdr, or after and before?

Both set a range. But after: and before: from the date lesson are operators you type in the box, so they go inside q. And their date is in the order year-month-day.

cdr is a parameter in the link, as if you'd picked the range from "Tools".

If you're writing the query by hand, after and before are easier. If you're editing a saved link, cdr.

Sort by newest: sbd:1

Google sorts results by relevance. But in news, you can sort them by date, newest first:

udm=12 means news results, and we'll explain it in a moment. Sorting by date works most clearly in news.

Verbatim search: li:1

Google sometimes looks for synonyms of a word, or corrects a word it thinks is wrong. Verbatim search stops that:

Here "manual" is spelled "manuel", the way lots of people type it. Verbatim search brings up the pages that are actually written that way. That's a useful idea if you want to know how people really spell a word.

Several filters in tbs

tbs is one parameter, so don't repeat it. If you want the past 6 months and verbatim search, separate them with a comma:

Type of results: udm

Under the search box there's: All, Images, Videos, News, and more. Each one has a number in the link:

An SEO example: what are people asking?

You want to write a page about the manual grinder. The best source of questions is the discussions people wrote themselves:

And if you want to see your competitors without the AI summary, images or videos, udm=14:

And if you want every search like that, not just one, you can make udm=14 your browser's default search: how to turn off AI on Google.

Image, video and shopping filters

tbs isn't only for time. When you're in image, video or shopping results, there are other filters that go in it:

For example, manual grinder images with a transparent background that you're allowed to use:

And long review videos about one particular model:

Watch out: the reuse permission Google shows depends on what the image's owner wrote. Open the page and check the license yourself before you use the image.

And the old way: tbm

Before udm there was tbm: tbm=isch images, tbm=vid videos, tbm=nws news. You'll find it in lots of old links, and it usually still works.

Language and country: hl, lr, gl and cr

These are four parameters, and people mix them up a lot:

hl doesn't make the results English

The interface will be in English. But the query is in Spanish, so the results will most likely stay Spanish. hl changes the buttons, not the pages.

If you want pages in one language only, that's the job of lr:

Now you're searching for a model name in pages written in Spanish. That's a neat way to find out which Spanish sites have written about that model, if you're working on a Spanish market.

And if you want two languages, separate them with |: lr=lang_en|lang_es.

gl or cr?

gl=gb tells Google: "rank the results as if I were in the UK". You'll find more UK stores, and De'Longhi UK instead of De'Longhi US. But sites from other countries can still show up.

cr=countryGB is stricter: pages from the UK only. Google works that out from the site's domain and location. And if you want more than one country: cr=countryGB|countryIE.

gl doesn't put you exactly in the US

gl=us asks for results suited to the US. But Google also knows where you really are, and personalizes the results by other things too. So the link brings you closer to what someone in the US sees, but it doesn't match it exactly.

And there's a parameter called uule that sets the city itself, like Chicago or Manchester. Its value is encoded, and rank-tracking tools use it. You won't write it by hand.

Results pages: start and num

Each page has 10 results. And the second page isn't a parameter called page. It's called start, and its value is the number of the first result minus one:

The rule: the page number minus one, times 10. The fifth page: start=40.

num: a parameter that stopped working

For years, num=100 showed 100 results on one page. Rank-tracking tools relied on it.

In September 2025 Google stopped honoring it. Now a page has 10 results, and to reach the rest you use start.

And if you noticed in the same period that impressions in Search Console suddenly dropped, that was one of the reasons people talked about at the time: tools that used to fetch 100 results stopped counting as impressions.

Parameters that change the results themselves

filter=0: the results Google hid

When you search with site: on a big site, you'll sometimes find a line like this at the bottom of the page:

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ones already displayed."

If you click "repeat the search with the omitted results included", Google adds filter=0:

That's really useful when you're checking indexing: it shows you pages Google was hiding because they were similar to each other. And if a lot of your site's pages are hidden, that could mean they're more alike than they should be.

nfpr=1: no autocorrect

When you type a word Google thinks is wrong, it says "Showing results for…" and searches for the corrected word. If you click "Search instead for…", Google adds nfpr=1:

Useful with brand and model names, which Google tries to correct into another word.

pws=0 and safe

pws=0 asks for results less personalized to your account. Its effect has become small, and it doesn't cancel your location or your language.

And safe=active turns SafeSearch on, and safe=off turns it off.

The Advanced Search page: as_

Google has a page called "Advanced Search" with boxes: all these words, this exact word or phrase, any of these words, none of these words, site or domain.

When you fill it in, the link comes out with parameters that start with as_:

Read it, and compare it with the operators we learned:

The same thing, two ways. The operators are faster, because you type them straight into the box. But if you see a link with as_ in it, now you know what it does.

Tracking parameters: delete them

These are the parameters Google adds for itself. The link works without them, so delete them before you save the link or send it:

The simple rule: keep what you understand and want, and delete the rest. After you delete, open the link and check it's still the same search.

A common mistake: a repeated or empty parameter

Look at this link:

q is repeated with two values, and hl is there with no value. Which q will Google take? You can't tell. And the empty hl does nothing.

The fix: one parameter for each thing. Decide what you want to search for, and delete the rest:

And watch out as you delete: don't leave a lone & at the end, and don't delete the ? as long as a parameter comes after it.

How to discover a parameter yourself

Google's parameters aren't documented, and they change. So the best way to learn a parameter is to have Google write it for you:

1. 1Search, and copy the link. That's your baseline.
2. 2Change one thing only in the interface: a period, a type of results, or a language.
3. 3Copy the new link, and compare it with the baseline. The new parameter is the one that changed.
4. 4Try editing its value by hand, and see whether the results change.

One thing at a time. If you change the period and the language together, you won't know which one did what.

And if a parameter is in the link but the results didn't change, Google ignored it. A parameter being in the link doesn't mean it worked.

The practical test

The search operator generator

Everything we learned in the course, the operators and the link, is in one tool on the site:

The search operator generator →

• You pick a ready-made task, like brand mentions on social media, checking your site's indexing, or PDF reports, and only type the brand name or the site.
• Or you write the query yourself, and click any operator in the list to add it where your cursor is.
• You pick the period, even "past 6 hours" or from one date to another, the type of results, and the country and language. And the tool builds the link with every parameter we learned.
• It explains every part of the query and every parameter in the link, and you can paste a link from Google and carry on from there.

The tool isn't a replacement for understanding the operators. It saves you the typing. But you're the one who sets the question, and you're the one who reads the results.

The course's final project

Now go back to the task we started the course with: a page about the manual coffee grinder for a store that sells coffee gear.

Open the search operator generator, and do these searches one by one. At each step, write down: the query or link you used, and the 3 most important things you found.

1. 1Wordings: do people write "manual" or "hand"? "Grinder" or "mill"? From the first lesson, plus verbatim search from this one.
2. 2The big stores: what pages have Amazon, eBay and Target built for this product? Categories? Landing pages? From lessons 2 and 4.
3. 3Content angles: who wrote a comparison? Who wrote a buying guide? What angle is missing? From lesson 3.
4. 4Questions: 5 questions people ask about the manual grinder. From lesson 7, and from forum results with udm=18.
5. 5One trusted number: about the coffee market in your country, with its source, its year and its unit. From lesson 5.
6. 6What's new: what has been written about manual grinders in the past 6 months? With tbs=qdr:m6 from this lesson.

If you finish the six steps, you have a plan for the page built on what's actually on Google, not on guesswork. And that's the point of the whole course.

A thinking test

A colleague sent you a search link and said: "look at these results". You opened it and found different results from the ones they see.

Why?

The link carries the query and the settings. But Google personalizes the results by your location, your account and the time. So it's better to agree on gl and hl in the link, and remember that the results will never be 100% identical.

And another question: you put tbs=qdr:h1 on a little-known phrase, and got zero results. Does that mean nobody wrote about it?

No. It means nobody wrote about it and Google managed to index it within that hour. Widen the period to qdr:d or qdr:w before you judge.

Every Google link parameter in one table

Come back to this table whenever you see a link you don't understand:

You've finished the course

Now you can turn any question in your work into a precise search:

• "...", -word and OR for the words on the page.
• site: for the site, intitle: and allintitle: for the title, inurl: for the link, and intext: for the text.
• filetype: for files, and after: and before: for dates.
• And the link: tbs for time, udm for the type of results, and gl, hl and lr for country and language.

And most important of all: you now start from the question, not from the operator.

And to keep every operator in one place, with an example of each: the Google search operators cheat sheet.