[bigiain]

Well, more "dot com domain only" than "US-only".

The dns magic underneath encrypted.google.com, www.google.com and www.google.com.au shows that doesn't matter - all three are "in Australia" (at the very least, within 21ms) from where I am (Sydney):

  [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute www.google.com.au
  traceroute: Warning: www.google.com.au has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.87
  traceroute to www-cctld.l.google.com (74.125.237.87), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
  1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  3.558 ms  1.766 ms  1.582 ms
  …
  8  syd01s06-in-f23.1e100.net (74.125.237.87)  20.318 ms  20.009 ms  20.457 ms
  
  [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute www.google.com
  traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.81
  traceroute to www.l.google.com (74.125.237.81), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
  1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  1.962 ms  3.753 ms  1.618 ms
  …
  9  syd01s06-in-f17.1e100.net (74.125.237.81)  19.927 ms  20.220 ms  20.404 ms
  
  [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute encrypted.google.com
  traceroute: Warning: encrypted.google.com has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.100
  traceroute to www3.l.google.com (74.125.237.100), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
  1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  17.068 ms  8.808 ms  1.609 ms
  …
  8  syd01s12-in-f4.1e100.net (74.125.237.100)  21.235 ms  20.064 ms  19.237 ms

[recoil]

If I search for something where I might expect a regionally-customised result, like "newspaper", I get "The Sun", "The New York Times" and "The Guardian" from encrypted.google.com, but I get the SMH, "The Australian", etc. etc. from a regular google.com.au search.

[nightpool]

I think that's a general feature of encrypted, no location customizations. (I'd have to double-check to make sure though)

[saturn]

Wow, interesting, thanks for the research. I'm in Sydney too and I was surprised at how fast it was, but didn't think to look into it. Cool.