Google Maps Abroad
The inclusion of Google Maps in natural search engine results is nothing new for queries such as Ohio, Indiana, United States, etc. but I just noticed something new today. Google is now showing maps of foreign countries.
I'm sure everyone is aware of the tension between the West & Iran. Me being a news nut, I went to Google and typed in Iran. Here is what pops up in natural search. What you'll notice is there is an obvious immersion of Universal Search Results on page one, but to stay on point with the post, you'll see a map of Iran at the very top of the SERP. This is the first time I've personally seen foreign maps propagating natural search results like this and I find myself curious if this has been around for some time?
Anyway, after further digging with searches for other countries such as Russia, Iraq, UAE, India, Austria, etc., I noticed something VERY interesting in a search for China in that it's the only country out of about 30 or so searches that didn't have a map in search results and required an additional click on the Maps link to actually get maps of the country. To me it doesn't make any sense why Google would change its map inclusion protocol in search results for just one country out of over the 30 country searches I conducted.
I'm sure there are other orphaned country map examples out there, but why doesn't Google just have a standard for country-specific searches pulling into search results in a similar fashion?