Region tags for generic domains in Google search results
Google introduced a new way of making search result pages more relevant by adding region tags to results that belong to websites on generic top level domains, like .com, .net, .org, .info, .mobi, .asia, .biz, .tel.
Region tags won’t be shown for websites on country-code top-level domains (the location is implied in the URL). This new feature kicks in when websites and the Google domain where the search is entered are from different regions: Google wouldn’t add “Italy” to .com results on a Google.it SERP.
Currently only 1% of SERPs will show region tags and personally I’m still waiting to see one, maybe because setting Geographic Targeting on Webmaster Tools isn’t a widespread practice yet. Here is an example from Google Webmaster Central Blog.
The first result shows a “Capital City Boxing” club in Alabama, but the fourth one is from Canada.
After the introduction of site hierarchies instead of URLs in search results to help the user identify the content of the page, Google makes search results more relevant for the user by adding region tags when the URL isn’t informative enough.
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