Personalized != contextualized. You could have a search engine that uses geolocation without building any sort of cross-request profile on the individual making the search.
Right now search engines don’t provide an interface for good location aware searches that you can manually specify - you have to let them build a shadow profile on you via all sorts of privacy violating fingerprints or just give up location aware searches altogether. There’s no reason it has to be that way though.
Do you actually find that attaching your location to the end of the query doesn't work? I don't do it naturally, but when I do do it I'm rarely disappointed.