When search using a country or state Google Maps will return a location that is in the center of the country or region. Example here for Namibia but the same logic holds true for any region or country. Additionally, users may encounter visibility issues when searching for stores broadly by state or region, such as "Virginia," which can result in certain locations not appearing in the search results.
Google centers a map in Namibia by using its own algorithms to determine the geographical center of a searched location, such as a city or country, and by using your device's GPS to center the map on your current location. When you search for "Namibia," Google will center the map on the country's approximate geographic center. If you search for a specific city within Namibia, the map will center on that city.
When you search for "Namibia," Google will center the map on what it calculates to be the geographical center of the country. The same applies if you search for a specific city, like "Windhoek."
If you allow Google Maps to access your device's location, it will use your GPS to center the map on your current position, whether you are in Namibia or elsewhere.
Since many customers search this way and the search by default may not return all locations within that country. By default having to search by suburb may be limiting to your customer experience and not showing locations where a customer is unaware they need to search by suburb or broaden the km search. Providing options for more focused searches, such as specifying a ZIP code or city, can enhance results and address cases where a generic search might exclude relevant locations.
To address this issue we suggest you update the default radius under your app settings. Currently, the search works by looking for locations within a selected radius from the address or location entered. Broader searches, such as for entire states or regions, may miss locations if they fall outside this selected radius; refining the entered location or extending the search area can assist in such cases.
For example, if a customer enters a city or suburb, the system uses that point and searches for store locations within the specified radius (e.g. 50km).
When entering a country name like “Namibia,” the system does not have a specific coordinate to calculate the radius from. As a result, it may return 0 results — even though there are store locations in that country.
To improve the experience, we recommend increasing the Default Radius in your settings to a larger value (e.g. 500km). This allows country-level searches (like “Namibia”) to return all locations within that country’s territory, even without specifying a city. Alternatively, users can set the search radius to "No Limit" to ensure comprehensive results or utilize precise search terms such as localized city names or ZIP codes for targeted results.