note: image was altered to fit the width of my blog
“Customized for the metro Philly area”, eh? Interesting, except my actual location this time was outside of Philadelphia, in Reading, Pennsylvania – Berks County, not Philadelphia. I’m not exactly sure how the geo-tracking works in this case (I’ll have to look into that), but when I checked my IP path, I’m not running through Philly. Why not choose Harrisburg then? I’m equally close.
SEO and IP aside, I just started to wonder about whether this was a good idea at all.
I wasn’t logged in. I wasn’t asking for personalized search. What if I didn’t want an art program in the Philadelphia area, but rather an art program like Photoshop? Why would I want a customized “local” search? Or, what if I was open to any location? Granted, these results really didn’t seem that customized to Philly this time around, but how far can Google take this?
I’d prefer some parametric buttons that would let me choose customized results to my location, instead of just having it be “on”.
Bill Sebald - Ex-big agency guy, now focused on helping small and medium sized business. I've been practicing SEO since 1998. I started the SEO practice at a major digital agency owned by eBay and helped develop SEO products for one of the largest ecommerce platforms. I'm a proud member of the Philadelphia SEO scene. I'm passionate about search, writing, UX, CRO, and psychology in marketing.
