Google News Location Operator Is Not Working

There are numerous reports of a feature in Google News search that is not working. Specifically the location operator is currently not functioning. So if you type [keyword location:countryname] that is not restricting the results to that country anymore.

The complaints started coming in a few days ago in the Google News Help forums. The user wrote:

Hi! I do a lot of country-specific searching using the "location:" operator, and it seems to have suddenlt stopped working.

Example - this search should just return Spanish-language article from Mexico.

But all of the articles (have scrolled through a couple of pages now) are from US and UK today - all of the rest of my usual searches are coming up like this too...has the location operator been retired or something!?

No one from Google has directly responded within the thread but Danny Sullivan from Google said he is looking into it on Twitter.

Yes, I've been checking on it. I'll share if I hear more.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 15, 2019

Forum discussion at Google News Help.