Google’s algorithms take your current location into account when choosing which results to display for searches where your location is relevant. Until now, though, it was rather hard to know where exactly Google thought you were and sometimes Google just doesn’t get it right. Starting today, Google will make it easier to see where it thinks you are and to change your location settings manually.
A new setting will now appear in the sidebar when you perform local searches that shows where Google thinks you are and allows you to manually enter a new location. Google is currently rolling this feature out across 40 languages and should be available to all users soon. While this feature is useful when Google can’t automatically place you in the right location, it should also be helpful if you are regularly searching for hotels, restaurants and sights while you are preparing for a trip, for example.
Until now, this setting was hidden behind a number of rather cryptic steps (“View customizations,” “Change location”). Now, as Google’s Mack Lu notes, Google has become so much better at displaying locally relevant information that “it felt like the right time to make this setting easier to find.”
This, of course, is only a minor change, but Google clearly thinks that local search will be a major growth area and the fact that Marissa Mayer just moved from Google’s search products division (where she was the VP and often the company’s public face of Google) to managing the company’s location-centric products is another example for this.
Image credit: Flickr user Nancy-.
