Google has announced that it has updated the way it labels country services on the mobile web, the Google app for iOS, desktop search, and on Maps. Rather than the country service being identifiable by the domain name, you’ll be served results that correspond to your location.
In a blog post, Evelyn Kao, a Product Manager at Google, said:
“If you live in Australia, you’ll automatically receive the country service for Australia, but when you travel to New Zealand, your results will switch automatically to the country service for New Zealand. Upon return to Australia, you will seamlessly revert back to Australian country service.”
Despite being automatically switched to other versions of Google, you do still have the ability to manually switch back to the country service you want to receive by heading into the settings menu, but using the old country URLs to access the service you want will no longer work. To see which country service you’re currently receiving just look at the bottom of the search results page.
Google says it’s confident the change will bring you an improved search experience and give you the most useful information based on your search query and other contexts, including location.
