Google has evolved to throw up local results when its appropriate, so when you search for e.g. "southampton restaurants" it should bring back a local search result with a map as well as regular web pages.
It works for loads of relatively simple searches e.g. "Derby butchers", "York bakers" etc. (sadly no candlestick makers though).
Google’s geographical response is dependant on your location. If I search the web (rather than pages from the UK) for "portsmouth bagels" it brings back a little map showing the bagel shop just round the corner from us here in Portsmouth on the south coast of England- rather than the Dunkin’ Donuts on Lafayette Rd in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA.
These results should be consistent regardless of your location (assuming you’re not using some kind of onion routing), but we’ve discovered a consistent error when checking hotels.
Here’s what we found:
Searching "portsmouth hotels" from here in the UK gives us this, but "brighton hotels" gives this.
Although there is a Brighton in Massachusetts USA and one in the UK why does Google only report the local search results for Massachusetts?
We’re looking into it, but if you have any ideas please drop us a line…
