It USED to be that when you set your location via Search Tools in Google, it would control where Google thought you were searching from, affecting the organic/local universal results and the maps results (yeah, the AdWords results were ALWAYS messed up on this, and still are).
As of today, it seems that setting your location ONLY controls the Maps results in the 7-pack…look at the screenshot below and you’ll see the local universal results controlled by where I’m geolocated to be from my IP address (Portland).
