Whether or not you get results all depends on the set search radius.
If you for example start a search for California, then the search starts in the middle of that state in a for example 100 miles radius. Which might make it unlikely for results to show up.
This is why searching for a state / country is a bad idea, since it covers a larger area the chances of locations falling within the search radius are not that great. Unless you set a default search radius of 500+ miles or so.
Also make sure that on the settings page you a set the map region to the US. This should not be an issue if you search for California, but CA might exist in other countries as well, and this will confuse the Google Maps API. Since it sometimes picks the one in the wrong country, but if you set the map region to the US, then that won’t happen anymore.
