I've noticed an odd trend among the newer profiles being posted in my area.  Previously right under their tag line you'd see their location given as city, state, country.  But now a growing percentage of new profiles don't specify their city.  They just say state, state, country.  I find this frustrating cuz I live in a huge state and don't want to waste time on SBs far away.  I limit my search paramaters to my town plus 100 miles, but it's still weird when they don't specify their own city location.  Is this a trend?  Are they trying to attract a wider response?  Are they scammers?  

So far I have only interacted with one that was like that (so take my response with a little grain of salt). This particular ones hometown was in a much smaller city and she also went to school in a larger city in the same state. She didn't want to post to her town because she anted some discretion. We are scheduled to meet in a few weeks as I'm flying down ironically to the town where she goes to school. My impression so far is its more about discretion and she is more flexible in coming to me.

In my search area (triangle of three largest cities within a 3 hr drive) there are a number of smaller towns (under 20k and some under 2k) between the bigger cities and would say approximately 3%-5% of pots list state/state with no city. Over a few years have interacted with a few of these pots and they knew that there were no legit SD’s in their area and they wanted to attract a larger number of potential SD’s and not limit to one area.

 
From other pots I’ve interacted with or met, found that 20%+ live outside the county of the three bigger cities and list the closest big city not their specific city/county. From these interactions this was mostly to not limit the pool of potential SD’s.  

 
Have interacted with six or seven pots who are from big city A, but list big city B to avoid anyone in her area for discretion.

I've seen them in a small number of profiles since I began using the site around 2009.  There are a few possible reasons why:
.
1. The POT is in an outlying area near a city, and recognizes the local SD pool is light. So they either lie and claim to be in the bigger metro area, or they don't specify a city.  
2. POT SB's are not required to pay and as such are not required to disclose an address. But they can designate their location as any "properly named" city they want. If they are paying, that means essentially they can use any ZIP-named area (ex: Encino versus LA). If they are not paid the location must be more generic (LA vs. Encino).  
3. Scammers will try to generalize location to cast as wide a net as possible.  
.
But here's how to deal with it. The login IP address/location is tracked by the site. When you do a search within a certain range you can do this:  
1. Set the search range wider than normal, say 250 miles if you usually use 50 or 100
2. Paste the profile name into the word search box and change the sort criteria to "nearest".
.
If she is logging on within your expanded radius she will appear and the results will tell you how far she is from you (approx.).  I do this with every profile that says Los Angeles (or California, CA) if I am interested, doing a 25 mile radius search (I normally use 10 miles). If she's somewhere in the central city, Pasadena, or West LA, she will show up as 19 to 25 miles away - and I generally pass. If she's in the Valley (18-ish miles north of the city) she will show up as 18 miles or less.   If she doesn't show up at all, she's either too far away (scammer, or just in a very remote location) or she has hidden her profile from search results.  
.
Not a perfect solution, but one more piece of info to add to your vetting process.  
.
BTW: If you want to fine tune the radius of your searches beyond those settings offered by the site, you can edit the "radius=xx" field in your browser bar after a search result is displayed. Change the "xx" to any value - don't use quotes (") or add/remove any other characters or spaces - and hit enter.  I do this when I'm not getting enough hits at 10 miles, and I expand my search to 15  (so "radius=10" becomes "radius-15").  
.
Life is good.
.
The Cat

Great tip on changing the radius field in the browser bar. Thanks. Tried it and it works.  Makes me wonder though.  If their search engine is capable of searching any distance desired, why do they only give the user a few distance choices?  It could easily be a sliding bar, just like the age selection bar, so you could select any radius you want!  In my case I've always wished I could search for 75 mile radius, not 50, not 100.  Now I can.

You are a super genius!  This is an awesome addition to the SD toolkit.  I live in the DC Metro and have noticed an influx of SB's that list Maryland, Maryland as their location.  Previously, if interested, I would start the conversation before realizing they are on the other side of Baltimore (geographically less desirable).  Now I can selectively target based on miles to my preferred meeting zone.  Thx!