Google to Add Geolocation Information to Search Results

Geolocation is quickly moving from a hyped up concept to reality as various services are beginning to add location features. Twitter has just rolled out support in its API very recently and now Google is implementing a new method of providing location information inside the search results. The search engine announced that it would begin to add a location indicator in some specific circumstances for sites with top level domain names like .com or .net.

“Country-code top-level domains (or ccTLDs) can provide people with a quick and valuable clue about the location of a website—for example, “.fr” for France or “.co.jp” for Japan. However, for certain top level domains like .com, .info and .org, it’s not as easy to figure out the location. That’s why today we’re adding region information supplied by webmasters to the green address line on some Google search results,” Piyush Prahladka, a software engineer at Google, wrote.

The feature will only show up for a few searches, where it would really make a difference. Google exemplifies with a search for “capital city boxing” which yields several results for several underrated boxing clubs in different regions. With the regular search there’s no way to know which is which as they all have a .com domain name. Normally users would either have to refine their search by adding the region … (read more)