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Ryan's point about localized search being drastically different.  So the real question is whether you offer products or services that require localized identification.  If so, having your initial local area in the domain will definitely not help your effort. As for the example of the New York times, they can get away with showing up when not searching for local specifics because they're one of the biggest sites with some of the highest SEO authority from 3rd party sites on earth.  So of course they can get away with it.  If you want to achieve the same (for non-local search phrases), you'll need to go to extreme lengths to build your site's SEO authority as well. Personally I'd say that if your site depends on local related search, you'd be better off with a domain that doesn't have the local aspect in the name.  Build out content in a locations funnel - starting with the geographic areas you determine to be a mix of the most important and some that are semi-important (and thus easier to rank for over time). That way, you can create individual pages (or ideally sections) that have each geographic location in the URLs.  This is much less challenging to get ranking for over time than the root domain being about just one location, because the root domain placement of a keyword is much stronger than a sub-folder. High quality SEO will be key in the geographic funnel.  Citations from other sites in each of those locations will be really helpful as well.