I’m late in blogging this today but Google officially acknowledged, after about a week of discussions on blogs, that it was showing local listings for queries without geographic modifiers:
But we’ve noticed that much of the time users make simpler searches, like [restaurants] or [dentist].
We like to make search as easy as we can, so we’ve just finished the worldwide rollout of local search results on a map, which will now appear even when you don’t type in a location. When you search on Google, we will guess where you are and show results near you.
As much of the commentary and discussion on this blog indicated, some version of this has been tested in the past but the scale and commitment to this rollout is new and unprecedented. And as previously indicated it makes ranking in that 10 pack even more important than it was before — because it will show up even more frequently.
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Matt McGee has more and a short Google Q&A.
Screenwerk 
April 7, 2009 at 11:46 am
Google has discovered locations by far more clever methods than “guessing”. It wasnts as much demographic info on every user possible to improve its monetization…..and has presented personalized google variations for years.
oh well…..such is a version of big brother and the march of technology. Hopefully this is a helpful step forward.
April 7, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Yes the mention of IP targeting almost seems like a quaint reference to something from the past.
April 8, 2009 at 7:42 am
Goog just cut off the air supply of every local search site that doesnt have some form of (compelling) user generated content to make people want to stay there. You know who they are and who they aren’t.
If all you need is a number and directions, you are never going to make it past google.com anymore.
Buh Bye to about 30 different little companies that were already teetering.
March 3, 2010 at 3:43 pm
[…] and “implicit” local queries. This recognition led Google to start showing maps and local results for queries without a geomodifier, recognizing that there are lots of queries that are ultimately local where the modifier is […]