There are many factors that play a role in providing helpful results when you search for something on Google. These factors help us rank or order results and can include the words of your query, the relevance or usability of web pages in our index, and the expertise of sources.

Location is another important factor to provide relevant Search results. It helps you find the nearest coffee shop when you need a pick-me-up, traffic predictions along your route, and even important emergency information for your area. In this post, well share details about the vital role that location plays in generating great search results.

Finding businesses and services in your community

Its a Friday night. Youre hungry and want some pizza delivered. If Google couldnt consider location in search ranking, our results might display random pizza restaurants that are nowhere near you. With location information, we can better ensure youre getting webpages and business listings about pizza places that are local and relevant to you.

The same is true for many types of businesses and services with physical locations, such as banks, post offices, restaurants or stores. Consider two people who search for zoosone in Omaha, Nebraska and the other in Mobile, Alabama. Location information helps both get the right local information that they need:

Same query, different local contexts

Location can matter even when youre searching for something that doesnt necessarily have a physical location. For example, a search for air quality in San Diego, California versus Tulsa, Oklahoma might lead you to pages with local information relevant to each area.

Similarly, certain information in Search can be more useful if its specific to your city or neighborhood. If you were to search Google for parking information, you might see information about municipal codes and parking enforcement for your local area that would differ from what someone else might see in another city.

Local information in search results can also be helpful in an emergency. If you search for hurricane, our Crisis Response features can show you local shelter information if theres a hurricane close by, rather than just generic information about what a hurricane is.

Of course, just because some searches have local results, its not the case that everyone gets completely different results just because they are in different cities (or even different countries). If a search topic has no local aspect to it, there wont be local results shown. If there is, well show a mix of local results that are relevant to particular places along with non-local results that are generally useful.

How location works at Google

You might be wondering how location works at Google. Google determines location from afew different sources, and then uses this information to deliver more relevant experiences when it will be more helpful for people. Learn more about the different ways we may understand location in the video below as well as how to manage your data in a way that works best for you on our help center page aboutlocation and Search.

Location is a critical part of how Google is able to deliver the most relevant and helpful search results possiblewhether you need emergency information in a snap, or just some late-night pizza delivered. For more under-the-hood information, check out our How Search Works series.