Google changed the way its search engine processes queries on Monday by making the user’s current known location the default for all returned results, giving the search giant a new way to micro-target the ads it displays.
Whether looking for a good restaurant in Zurich or a dentist in Houston, wrote Google software engineers Jenn Taylor and Jim Muller on The Official Google Blog, users can now receive suggestions from Google by simply entering the search terms ‘restaurant’ or ‘dentist’ without having to specify a particular place.
“We’ve just finished the worldwide rollout of local search results on a map, which will now appear even when you don’t type in a location,” Taylor and Muller wrote. “When you search on Google, we will guess where you are and show results near you.”
Guessing the User’s Location
Smartphone users have had access to Google’s location-based search capabilities since September. However, the company’s mobile “search my location” capability, based on the company’s Gears Geolocation API, performs automatic location detection only on Windows Mobile devices that use Internet Explorer and provide support for cell-ID or GPS.
By contrast, Google’s new “guess where you are” search capability works on all computing devices and Web browsers. In most cases, Google determines the location by matching the user’s IP address to a broad geographical range. “We try to make our guesses as good as they can be,” Taylor and Muller wrote.
Still, Google’s technology does not always arrive at accurate location results, and may not deliver any location at all if the user is using a proxy to conceal location data. So Google’s search page now provides users with a way to specify a location to serve as the basis for their search queries.
“You can also specify your likely location using the ‘change location’ link on the top right…