How do I set up location targeting in Google Ads?

Each campaign targets locations: whole countries, areas within a country such as states, cities or postal codes, depending on the country, or a radius of at least 1 km around an address. Google’s advice is to target where your customers are, which isn’t always where your business is: an online store targets every place it ships to.

A second setting, Location options, decides who counts as being in them. Google reads where a person physically is from their device’s IP address, or, where their settings allow, from GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or cell towers. It also reads the places a person has shown interest in: a place named in a search, past searches, places they’ve been, the page an ad would appear on, and searches on Google Maps.

Google calls all of this its best effort, and says 100% accuracy isn’t guaranteed. It may also show your ads in nearby areas that can’t be targeted on their own, such as the suburbs of a city you target. So even a well-set campaign takes some clicks from outside its locations, and the reports below show how many.

A campaign has two location options, and starts on the first:

• Presence or interest: people in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your included locations. It’s Google’s default, marked recommended. Google’s example is a bakery in Paris that targets Paris: its ads can show to people in Paris, and to people who have shown interest in Paris bakeries, now or in the past.
• Presence: people in or regularly in your targeted locations. Hotel campaigns use only this one.

Interest has no border. Google’s example is someone in Paris searching for “Los Angeles taxi” on google.fr, whom it may count as interested in Los Angeles. For a taxi firm in Los Angeles, that’s a customer on the way. For a plumber there, the same reach buys clicks from people who can’t hire one.

Google recommends Presence or interest on Search, and cites 5% more conversions on Search campaigns for advertisers in travel, real estate and education who switched to it. It says to consider Presence when you only want people in your locations, not people elsewhere who are interested in them, or when your business is in a sensitive category with strict targeting limits. Most campaigns see fewer impressions after switching away from the default; the ones lost are people who aren’t there.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Campaigns, select the Settings tab and select the campaign’s name.
2. 02Expand Locations and select Enter another location. Type a country, region, city or postal code. Add the country or state to a city’s name: Google’s example is a seller of cowboy hats who wants Paris, Texas, not Paris, France.
3. 03Select Location options, then Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations if that’s the one that fits.
4. 04Select Save.

For a radius, go to Campaigns › Locations, select the pencil icon and the campaign, choose Radius, and enter an address and a distance. Google warns that a very small radius or place may show your ads only now and then, or not at all.

To change several campaigns at once, tick them on the Settings tab and choose Edit, then Change locations: you can replace their locations, add to them, or copy another campaign’s. A campaign holds up to 10,500 locations, targeted and excluded together, of which up to 500 can be a radius.

An exclusion stops your ads for people likely to be in the excluded place. It works by presence alone: Google notes that people located outside an excluded area may still see your ads, so it keeps out the people there, not the people interested in it.

An exclusion wins over a target. Google’s example: exclude California and target Los Angeles, and Los Angeles gets no ads, because it’s in California. Google also says there’s no need to exclude a place you don’t target, with one exception: on Presence or interest a campaign reaches people outside its targets, and an exclusion there keeps out the people in that place.

1. 01In the campaign’s Settings, expand Locations.
2. 02Search for the place and select Exclude. For many at once, select Advanced search, tick Add locations in bulk and paste up to 1,000, one country at a time, select Search, then Exclude all.
3. 03Select Save. The places are listed under Excluded locations, and Show locations on map outlines them in red.

Google’s own example is a brokerage in Hawaii with no office on Maui: it targets Hawaii and excludes Maui. A campaign set to All countries and territories, with no location targeted, shows in every country, and can exclude up to 122 of them.

Two reports answer two different questions:

• Matched locations, at Campaigns › Insights and reports › When and where your ads showed, is where your ads showed by the location that matched them: where a person was, or a place they showed interest in. View it by country, region (a state, in the US) or city, and compare each place’s cost per conversion with the rest of the campaign’s.
• The Locations report in Campaigns › Insights and reports › Report editor, under When and where ads showed, is where people physically were, whatever location matched the ad. It’s the one that shows spend from outside your targets.

Google notes that the figures below country level may not add up to the campaign’s total, because some impressions are matched only to a country.

Where people outside your locations take real spend and you can’t serve them, switch the campaign to Presence. If it’s on Presence already, those clicks are its regulars seen elsewhere, or Google placing people loosely: exclude the place that took most of them, if you don’t sell there.

Where a country or state converts far below the rest, Google suggests excluding a region that keeps getting clicks at a low conversion rate; its example excludes Wyoming from a campaign targeting the United States. Be sure the gap is real first: a few conversions either way is often chance.

Where one converts far better, give it more. Under manual bidding or Maximize clicks, a location bid adjustment, from −90% to +900%, changes the campaign’s bids for a place it targets. Under Smart Bidding, Google sets the bids itself and says a manual adjustment isn’t supported. Google’s other suggestion works under either: a campaign of its own for the place, with its own budget, as in its example of a snorkeling store that sells most in Hawaii.

Naming the place in the ad helps as well. Google’s example turns “coffee shop” into “Boston coffee shop”, which fewer people outside Boston click.

Every day Goldbeater reads each campaign’s locations, its location option and where its clicks came from over the last 30 days, and raises:

• A campaign on Presence or interest, with the change to Presence drafted.
• Spend outside your targets: a campaign that spent at least $20 on people outside the locations it targets, as Google itself reports it, with the places named and what each took. On Presence or interest it drafts Presence. On Presence, where one or two places took at least half of it, it drafts excluding them, and only where Google’s location table shows the place shares no ground with anything the campaign targets, so an exclusion can’t stop the ads where you mean them to show.
• A campaign that can show in every country: a Search, Display, Performance Max, Video or Demand Gen campaign with no location, radius or location group targeted, that spent at least $20. It lists the countries it spent in and where its conversions came from, for you to set the ones you sell in.
• A country or state far below the rest: one that bought under half the conversions its spend would at the rate of the campaign’s other countries, or the rest of its country, on at least $20, and too far under to be chance once every campaign and place tested in the account is allowed for; where your conversion value is real, its return under half too. For a state that bought nothing it drafts excluding it, and for one the campaign targets by name under manual bidding or Maximize clicks, halving its bids there. For a country, it says what its conversions cost above the rest’s price.
• A country or state far above the rest: over twice, by the same test. Where the campaign targets it by name under manual bidding or Maximize clicks, it drafts a fifth more on its bids there; under Smart Bidding, the finding says when a campaign of its own would let it have more.

Each drafted change goes to the change set, and nothing reaches your account until a person approves it and presses Apply; an applied change can be undone.

On the same campaign, the spend outside its targets is a finding of its own: what it cost, from the Locations figures above, and each place it went. On Presence or interest its drafted change is the one above, so adding either finding to the change set is the same change.

The same setting is one of the common Google Ads mistakes, and the audit checklist has every location line with where to find it in Google Ads.

Why are my Google Ads showing outside my target location?

Most often the location option: Presence or interest, Google’s default, also reaches people elsewhere who search for your locations or show interest in them. Even on Presence, Google counts people regularly in your locations wherever they are, may show ads in nearby areas that can’t be targeted on their own, and calls its reading of location a best effort.

What’s the difference between Presence and Presence or interest?

Presence reaches people in or regularly in your targeted locations. Presence or interest also reaches people elsewhere who have shown interest in them, through their searches, places they’ve been or the pages they read.

Can I target a radius around my business?

Yes. On the Locations page choose Radius, and enter an address and a distance of at least 1 km. Google warns that a very small radius may show your ads only now and then, or not at all.

Do location bid adjustments work with Smart Bidding?

No. Google says Smart Bidding strategies such as Target CPA and Target ROAS set bids themselves, and a manual bid adjustment isn’t supported. Your targets and exclusions still apply.

What happens if I target and exclude the same place?

The exclusion wins. Google’s example: exclude California and target Los Angeles, and Los Angeles gets no ads.