Location Issue on my laptop with Windows 11

Hi John Bebbo. I followed your advice and the location determined by my laptop changed from Colorado to United States! I am located in SW England!!! I have spent 2 days of my ageing life (I am 78 y/o) trying the correct this location issue without success.

Hi, I had the same frustating problem after updating to Windows 11. I live in Brisbane, Australia and location appears as Melbourne, Australia. What I finally found to work was going to Internet Options, Connections, Lan Settings, and un-clicking the box; Automatically Detect Settings, save and restart Windows. Google maps and Waze now have my location to within a few metres instead of thousands of kilometres. Hope this works for others. Cheers, John.

Rob, be more specific. i.e. I can log out of Google, delete all cookies,, history, etc. What do you suggest? Am I to use Bing on Windows and Safari on my iPhone - no Google? How does using Google for a search on my windows PC impact time and location in settings? Further clarification is continually made on Windows with the Weather Widget that states my real location is Olathe, KS but I've chosen Sacramento, CA as my default location.

In providing further clarity - While I may use Safari on my iPhone for an impromptu search regarding a shopping matter, as mentioned - it had gotten confused with where I was shopping (Olathe vs Sacramento) but never is the time (zone) also changing on my iPhone as it does w/Windows 11. There are definite differences between iOS and Windows.

Lastly, I see you are quite educated in the detail of vendor (Google, Microsoft, etc) impact when using system features. I'd venture to guess the safeguards you use are because of your education and not something the general public would know about. Software is "supposed" to work simplistically and logically for the masses. When we set up our PC's we define our location. Are you suggesting this a bigger more technical issue where perhaps (example) Google & Microsoft need to communicate better?

Ditto. Seems the Edge update and other posts I/we tried are only temporary fixes. My Time Zone just updated again putting me back to Central time vs. Pacific time where I live. And yes, there is a cross-platform impact w/Google searches as my iPhone now gets confused as to whether I am in Olathe, KS (Central) or Sacramento, CA (Pacific) bases on historical google search activity for the same user. Microsoft - what exactly are we to try now?

Maggiekev,

Your specific description is sounding far more like this particular set of changes that Google and Apple have been making at the same time Microsoft is rolling out tier own changes to their location services and privacy.

Google’s Online Location Tracking Ends In December—Here’s What That Means

As Google deletes all of this online location tracking data, it's bound to create some strange anomalies, especially related to cross-device location tracking that uses your device fingerprints and other data that's been correlated in your timeline in the cloud, leading to your device's location being bounced all over the place as those past relationships are broken.

Problem is that typical users always relate these only to the app or platform they're currently using, and since they understand none of the insidious tracking that's been going on from Google and others for years and decades, they point fingers without any of the knowledge necessary to confirm that's where the problem truly lies.

I can't clearly state the answer to each of your particular anomalies, because I only know to what extent I've spent the last couple decades trying to block most of this tracking myself. Unlike most, I prefer to only set my own location manually and have disabled this useless 'feature' for nearly the entire time, along with blocking every Google cookie or other tracking item possible on every platform, since I'll decide what I wish to search for and precisely where and when. That's why this situation has been less of a concern for me, since I've never really depended on it.

I suspect that the truth here is really somewhere in the middle of all of these various changes we've discovered, which since you're using a Microsoft Windows platform, you're consistently blaming on Microsoft, which based on your own discovery that your iPhone device is changing as well, is quite obviously not completely accurate and in fact most likely just plain wrong.

My own location display has remained quite consistent during this period, with any breakage more clearly affected by the configuration changes I make, probably due to the fact I've never let Google, Microsoft or anyone knowingly retain any of this information, even if they were able to collect it.

Rob

Ditto. Seems the Edge update and other posts I/we tried are only temporary fixes. My Time Zone just updated again putting me back to Central time vs. Pacific time where I live. And yes, there is a cross-platform impact w/Google searches as my iPhone now gets confused as to whether I am in Olathe, KS (Central) or Sacramento, CA (Pacific) bases on historical google search activity for the same user. Microsoft - what exactly are we to try now?