It seems that Google is testing out geolocation again. This afternoon, when I search Google UK I get a box on the left hand side (which previously just used to say “Change location” or something like that), now says “Portsmouth, UK”). If I click “Change location” now, it tells me my location was auto detected:
And offers me the chance to set my location to something different.
Clicking on the text that says auto-detected takes you through to the Google support page on the Location feature.
The most important bit, from my point of view is the section on turning off the personalisation i.e.
“we haven’t provided a way to turn off location customization, although we’ve made it easy for you to set your own location or to customize using a general location as broad as the country that matches your local domain”.
So you can’t turn it off.
As an SEO, I always want to turn off as much as possible, although, to be truthful, we’ve known for a while that location personalisation was occurring – there just wasn’t a big flag telling you that before. But it does give me the chance to set it to UK, which I will do, because I don’t really want my national phrases geolocated when I’m checking them out for clients.
As usual, the world of search engine optimisation is constantly evolving, and we have to adapt and learn all the time.
