Yesterday on the Google’s Public Policy Blog, Google announced that they were moving their settings for local search to a much more prominent place on the left hand panel of the search results page.
This is not a huge policy change. Which is even stated in their post:
With this new display you’re still getting the same locally relevant results as before, but now it’s much easier for you to see your location setting and make changes to it.
Google has been using location to help search for years, but even when you search “Pizza” not all the results are local. There is a section with big national names and a section with local stuff. This change just brings the location feature to the surface and many believe it says that Google is putting more relevance on local search. I’ll give you that it does make a statement that Google is interested in promoting that they use your location to determine what is important for you when you search.
What the move and their explanation in the blog post tell me is that they believe that their technology is ready for the spotlight and well… There might just be a Foursquare factor here too. Right now location based technology is hot, so Google needs to make sure their search results are part this trend. What better way than to let everyone know that they have been using location long before the location apps were invented. And be honest. How many of you actually knew that they were tracking your location??:
“Location is one important factor we’ve used for many years to customize the information that you find.”
