The (not very well liked) Local Carousel is now visible in Japan on Google.com although not yet on Google.co.jp/. Kenichi Suzuki, a popular Japanese blogger interested in local search, reports that while he is not sure when it started showing, it is now showing.

Since being rolled out last June they have only been visible in the US. While US based searchers can see the carousel on searches for local information abroad, those searching from outside the US have not seen them until now.

And despite my unique experience last week of not seeing the Local Caroisel for a short while, that has remained the case. The fact that they are rolling out to another country would imply that they are not going away any time soon. But who knows…

I asked Kenichi why it was not visible on .co.jp and noted: But it’s not rare we see certain features available only in .com, sometimes for a while. Say, Authorship program in co.jp was behind a several month later than .com.?