New York and Chicago are both dense US metros, and for a bread-and-butter local query like "dentist" the local pack is proximity-driven and completely different in each. The businesses in the New York 3-pack never appear in the Chicago one.
This is the everyday reality of local SEO: rank is a fact about one city, not the country. Seeing two packs side by side makes that concrete.
New York
gl=us · hl=en
Chicago
gl=us · hl=en
Proximity rules everything for a query like this
"Dentist" is the archetypal local query: Google assumes you want one near you, so the local pack dominates the page and is built almost entirely from proximity, review prominence, and profile relevance. The national layer — booking platforms and health directories — appears in both cities, but it ranks its city pages, and everything around it is local.
Because both searches share gl=us and hl=en, this pair isolates the city variable completely. Every difference you see between the two pages is Google's city-level targeting at work.
Go below metro level to see the real pattern
A metro-level pack for a city as large as New York is almost a fiction — real searchers trigger packs centred on their neighbourhood. Re-run this comparison with locations like Brooklyn versus a Chicago district and watch the pack rebuild at each scale.
Modifier queries expose another layer: "emergency dentist", "pediatric dentist", or an insurance-related phrasing each generate their own pack with different winners. A practice can own one modifier and be invisible for another in the same neighbourhood.
New York vs Chicago: common questions
Why do the two cities share some organic results but zero pack results?
Organic results draw on the shared national index (both are gl=us), so nationwide directories can rank in both. The local pack is built from Google Business Profiles near the specific search location, so its entries are local by definition.
How precisely can I set the search location?
The uule parameter accepts any location in Google's Geotargets dataset — cities, boroughs, and regions. In the tool you can pick a neighbourhood-scale location for either side of the comparison.
Does this reflect what a signed-in local user sees?
It reproduces Google's location targeting exactly, but personal factors — search history, saved places — still vary per user. Open the links in a private window for the cleanest neutral read.
Related comparisons
- New York vs LondonCompare Google results for the same query in New York and London — see how the same search ranks differently across the US and UK.
- Los Angeles vs New YorkCompare high-competition Google results in Los Angeles and New York — two of the most contested local markets in the US.
- Toronto vs VancouverCompare Google local results in Toronto and Vancouver — two Canadian metros where the local pack reshuffles completely.
Want a different query or different cities? Open this in the tool and change anything — or browse more comparisons.