In the first week of April, Google announced changes to search results for local queries, such as restaurants and dentists, etc that would use a location based search such as dentists in Bristol. To make searches easier results are tailored to match the users IP address without having to type the location within the search query. Traditionally, search queries that include a location would turn up results displayed on a map; however, with this new update the need to use locations within your search queries should no longer be necessary, in theory.

This update has been rolled out worldwide (it has not affected Google South Africa, which has yet to display map listings for any location based search) and also includes results for street addresses and stores without the location.