Facebook testing 'Popular Pages in Your Area' feature

Wondering what pages people in your area like? Facebook is apparently testing a sidebar feature called Popular Pages in Your Area.

As brought to Inside Facebook’s attention by Samuel Edwards of Tenthwave and Danny Goodwin of Search Engine Watch, some users are seeing a sidebar module that allows users to see popular pages liked by people in their area.

It doesn’t appear that this is an ad unit, but rather something randomly (or strategically) generated, in an effort to get users to like more pages.