I think this is a natural consequence of the exponentially increasing number of web pages and the similarly increasing capacity of search engines to index those pages. Searching has become a process of funneling down until the searcher obtains information specifically relevant to his query.
I suspect that among the first words to be added to increase the specificity of a search are often those related to geographical location, i.e., city, town, state, etc., which is a factor that should be considered when optimizing page titles and on page keywords.
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