I often search for different Google property home pages, so if I want to see the home page of Google Australia, I'd Google [google australia] to be given www.google.com.au - FYI, that no longer works, you need to change the setting on the location footer to see what you would see in Australia - but this is how Google worked for ages beforehand.
Anyway, I still do this, because it is force of habit, and I've never seen Google rank the wrong property. If you search today for [google australia] Google will list google.ca, the Google Canada property. Canada is not even close to where Australia is.
It is not related to the local change Google made back in October, because I know, I checked this result dozens of times since.
Danny Sullivan of Google responded on Twitter saying he would look into it:
I'll pass this on. I've noticed the same. It's not an update. It might be related to how we've changed localization: https://t.co/4NfBuKAaL5
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) April 30, 2018
Forum discussion at Twitter.
