Two people can type the same words into the same search engine and receive different maps of the web.
Sometimes that is the entire point.
A search for pizza, weather, tax attorney, or hardware store is nearly useless without geographic context. Search systems therefore use location and other contextual signals to decide what “relevant” means for the person asking.
Google’s Search Help documentation says results can vary according to location, language, device type, recent searches, and personalization. Its guide to location in Search says Google always estimates a general search area and can use more precise location when permission is available.
That means there is no single permanent result page for many queries.
Geography changes meaning before it changes ranking
Suppose two users search for football.
One may be in Missouri. Another may be in Manchester. The word itself sits inside different local contexts before ranking even begins.
The same problem appears with ordinary services. Google’s own documentation uses local searches as examples because somebody looking for bicycle repair in Paris should not receive exactly the same result set as somebody looking in Hong Kong.
News can vary too. A regional source may be more relevant near the event it covers. Businesses have service areas. Regulations differ by jurisdiction. Languages and spelling vary across borders.
Localization therefore is not automatically evidence that a search engine is manipulating reality in some sinister personalized bubble. Often it is simply solving an ambiguous query with available context.
It still changes the internet people perceive
The important Dead Internet Theory question is methodological.
If one researcher searches from Chicago and declares, “These are the websites Google shows for this topic,” that claim is incomplete. A researcher in London, Delhi, or São Paulo may see a meaningfully different set.
A proper comparison should control or record location, language settings, device, login state, time, and query wording. Country and region settings can be changed deliberately to compare result sets.
Even then, variation does not prove bias. It establishes that the search experience is conditional.
That matters when people argue that some source has “disappeared from Google.” It may be buried everywhere. It may appear strongly in one region and weakly in another. It may surface only for users whose language settings match the page.
The web underneath can be identical while the visible layer differs from person to person.
Algorithmic Reality is not merely a ranking of pages.
It is a ranking of pages for you, here, now.