- Montgomery County, Maryland [this is ascending order]
- Maryland, Montgomery County [this is descending order]
Ascending order makes sense for two reasons. First, people are used to thinking of localities that way because that's the way we write postal addresses. It's also the way we enter place names for our ancestors' records in family history software.
The second reason ascending order makes sense is that it fits nicely with the way the system's search engine works, whereas descending order would basically SPAM the search engine. If there is a page named "Cook County, Illinois" and a page named "Illinois," and the user searches on the term "Illinois," all the articles whose titles begin with "Illinois" are listed first in search results and the article which begins with "Cook County, Illinois" is listed later.
The search results would look something like this:
Illinois
Illinois Adoption Records
Illinois Archives and Libraries
Illinois Cemetery Records
Illinois Census Records
Illinois Land Records
Illinois Probate Records
Illinois Tax Records
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County, Illinois Archives and Libraries
Cook County, Illinois Cemetery Records
Cook County, Illinois Census Records
...etc.
This prevents the user from getting a lot of Cook County "noise" mixed in with the search results he wanted -- the stuff relating to the state of Illinois.
If descending order is used in place names -- if the Cook County page is named "Illinois, Cook County," the search results page will have it mixed in with all the articles that begin with the term "Illinois." If the user were to search on "Illinois" the results would look like this:
Illinois
Illinois, Cook County
Illinois, Cook County Archives and Libraries
Illinois, Cook County Cemetery Records
Illinois, Cook County Census Records
Illinois Adoption Records
Illinois Archives and Libraries
Illinois Cemetery Records
Illinois Census Records
Illinois Land Records
Illinois Probate Records
Illinois Tax Records
This list doesn't look too painful until you realize that Cook Co. probably has at least 20 record types -- and so does every other county in Illinois. So where you see all the Cook Co. entries above, imagine over 100, and you'll see where this is going.