Google's Geo Search Setting Gone Cuckoo!

[Moz.HelpTeam]

Hey Everybody!

I thought I'd post about this because pretty much all of our members who do Local SEO are bound to run into this. Last week, when I was in the middle of training someone, I ran into something bizarre. Using Google's search settings to set my location to a remote locale, the local packs were returning me results for the correct city, but the organic results accompanying the pack were showing me results that appeared to be based on my own IP address instead ... in other words, Google was overriding my designated geolocation in favor of where it knows I'm actually located.

I was relieved to see Mike Blumenthal post on this (helped me realize I wasn't going crazy - haha) and I recommend that everyone who does Local for a living take a look:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/05/24/google-location-results-still-screwy/

I also recommend checking out this G+ convo going on between John Mueller and others:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TerrySimmonds/posts/1BZ6guvy9mE

John's initial thought was that nothing has changed ... but something has definitely changed.

Do some of your own searches and see what you come up with.

Main takeaway here is that if you are trying to approximate clients' rankings in cities not your own, the results you are seeing may be very weird right now. Not sure if this is a temporary glitch or the forerunner to some change coming our way. This is a story to stay on top of, for sure.

What do you you all see?

[MiriamEllis]

P.S. The above post was created by me - signed into a different account

[MattAntonino]

We are seeing the same thing here in AU. We have many client campaigns targeting where the client is so when the client Googles their phrases it approximates what they're seeing and we get the same as you - Maps are affected by the tools dropdown but organic is affected by the IP based geo-targeting on the bottom of the SERP.

We manually changed that location and then get other locations as well, so it's definitely tied into the two different location settings. We've normally had the location drop down affect all results but, same as you, we've seen the problem.

Makes me wonder if it's tied into some sort of mobile search update or if it's a glitch/bug. I worry they are doing it "on purpose" which is worse.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Matt -

Really appreciate you letting me know you are seeing this same behavior in AU. I'm truly hoping it's a glitch, but I wondered the same thing as you - is this intentional and a precursor to some larger change? Oh my!

[MiriamEllis]

Followup from Miriam - the issue is now resolved. Yay!