> make sure your region/locale is set correctly

Last time I checked (which admitedly has been a few months, but I haven't seen anything in the changelog/announcements that make me belive things got better), that's not a viable option.

I always keep it as "International" (luckily that's an option!), as setting it to "German" significantly degrades the results as for e.g. technical topics it will rank many rubish German results higher than they should be. Google still has a significant edge in getting the distinction right between regional and technical expertise and how they relate to language.