Can someone explain what I may have changed that's impacting my search location results on my Pixel 8?

[Moondoggy]

Yesterday, after experiencing a great deal of frustration I made the a few setting changes on my Pixel 8. Apparently, whatever I did fixed my issue but I made so many changes I can't determine what I may have changed and would like to know what I did if possible. Here's what was going on.......

Brave is my browser on my Pixel 8 and google is my default search engine. Yesterday, I was searching for a specific product/part and the Google search displayed a long list of sellers and one of them was Home Depot. I selected Home Deport from the list and my goal was to see if the store had the product in stock which appeared to be true on my initial examination. However, upon closer examination. I found out that the the store that was identified as being nearby was not my Home Depot that was 2 1/2 miles away but a Home Depot that was in Louisiana close to 175 miles away from Pensacola, FL. Note that this was not the only time nor the only store where a remote location was identified instead of a store near me. I was going in and out of pages and settings within applications and now today while performing a similar search, the results from within Brave on my Pixel 8 it appears to either be using my more precise location automatically or prompting me whether to use my location in the results while searching. I'm happy that things are working better but I hate it that I made so many changes that I can't remember what I could have possibly done as I have a tablet that could use the same adjustments. Can anyone that encountered this type of problem share with me what I might have changed to getting this issue resolved?

 

[Maljunulo]

Are you using a VPN?

 

[Moondoggy]

Nope. When I was doing a browser search I was doing so on my Verizon wireless plan.

 

[Maljunulo]

Well, that eliminates that.

 

[joeldf]

Does the browser have permission to use location services?

If not, websites that look for location while on carrier data will use the IP address, and that goes back to the carrier network operations center location that assigns the IP addresses to all their devices in a given region of the country.

For example, I'm on AT&T, but if I deny a site to use my location near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the site will assume I'm in New Orleans, Louisiana or Dallas, Texas. Because the IP addresses are assigned from AT&T's operation centers at either of those locations.

 

[Moondoggy]

I checked Location Permissions within settings for Brave and currently, it's set to " Allow only while using the app" and the switch for "use precise location is turned on.. Remember things seem to be working correctly now but I'm pretty sure that this was what I previously noted before I started making changes to get it to work correctly. I'm wondering if the location permissions for Google were off as it appears that Google is set to allow location permissions all the time and I can't remember it being set before. That being said, the option to use location on Brave didn't give me an option to enable it all of the time. It may not make any difference but I'm curious if there's a way to set it to use it all of the time.