Significance of a planet's "surface gravity"

[lifeonmercury]

I was just looking at list of solar system objects and was surprised to see that the surface gravity of Uranus is only 90% that of Earth's. I get it that the "surface" of a gas planet is further from that planet's core than is the case for Earth.
But does surface gravity really have any effect on a planet's overall gravitational force toward other objects? For example, would Uranus still have a considerably greater tug on an asteroid passing 100,000 miles away from it than the Earth would have on an asteroid passing by Earth at the same distance?

 

[Janus]

I was just looking at list of solar system objects and was surprised to see that the surface gravity of Uranus is only 90% that of Earth's. I get it that the "surface" of a gas planet is further from that planet's core than is the case for Earth.
But does surface gravity really have any effect on the planet's overall gravitational force toward other objects? For example, would Uranus still have a considerably greater tug on an asteroid passing 100,000 miles away from it than the Earth would have on such an asteroid passing by Earth at the same distance?

At equal distances, Uranus would have a greater pull on the object. The reason that Uranus has a lesser surface gravity is because it is much less dense than the Earth (about 24% that of the Earth's). This increases the distance the surface has from the center even more than what it would have been if the densities had been equal.