- Your ads show to customers physically or regularly in the locations that you select, and to customers who express interest in these locations. You can also exclude specific locations where you don’t want your ad to show.
- Choose your location settings carefully. If your settings are too broad, you may end up paying for interactions with users who aren’t potential customers.
Keep in mind
Location targeting is based on a variety of signals, including users' settings, devices and behaviour on our platform, and is Google’s best effort to serve ads to users who meet your location settings. Because these signals vary, 100% accuracy is not guaranteed in every situation.
As always, you should check your overall performance metrics to help ensure that your settings are meeting your advertising goals and change them accordingly.
How location settings work
Where your ads show
Google Ads uses the following methods to determine the locations where your ads show:
- To customers in your locations: Your ads can show to those who are regularly or likely to be in the locations that you set up.
- To customers who show interest in businesses in these locations: Some users who view your ads aren't in the locations that you select, but they might have included words related to your locations in their searches, such as postcodes or the names of nearby cities. Customers who show interest in both your chosen locations and in businesses like yours can view your ads.
Example
- A dental office in Los Angeles is setting up a campaign. Since the dentist’s patients are all in the London area, the campaign’s location settings are set to show ads within 25 miles of the office address. Ads show to customers in this area who are searching for a dentist, and to those who search for 'Dentist in London', no matter where they’re located.
- A holiday-home rental company in Weymouth is setting up a campaign. Although they have holidayers from all over the world, they select Weymouth and nearby towns for their location settings. Their ads could show to anyone who searches for 'Cape Cod holiday rental,' no matter where they’re located.
Where your ads don’t show
Google Ads uses the following methods to determine the locations where your ads won’t show:
- To customers in your excluded locations: Your ads won’t show to customers located in the excluded locations that you set up.
An online-only sporting equipment retailer is setting up a campaign. Although they're in London, they deliver goods to customers all over the country. For their location settings, they select all the states that they deliver to. Their ads show to customers in these states searching for sporting equipment. If they only deliver to specific parts of the UK, they could target these areas and then exclude those where they don't deliver.
Instructions
How to edit your location settings
You can choose your location settings when you create a Smart campaign. To change your location settings after creating your campaign, follow the instructions below.
- Find the campaign you want to edit.
- Click on Edit on the 'Location' card.
- Click Edit. Edit as needed.
- Click Save
Choose your location settings
When choosing where your ad does and doesn't appear, you can choose either a radius around your business or specific postcodes, cities or regions. Google shows your ad to all locations within the areas that you select and exclude them in the areas that you specify. If you have more than one ad in a single campaign, the location settings for that campaign will apply to all ads within that campaign.
You can change your location settings for your campaign at any time.
How the location report works
Once your campaign begins serving, your location report will begin populating. Your ads show to customers who searched for these locations or are currently in them. The location report allows you to:
- View the locations included in your campaign and exclude the irrelevant ones
- Search the full location list for specific locations
- Sort by location, impressions, clicks or spend
Using this report, you can make edits to your campaign’s location settings directly to fine tune your location targeting.
Instructions
How to edit your location settings from the location report
- Click the name of the campaign you want to edit.
- Click on Edit on the 'Location' card.
- Click the 'Location report' tab.
- Edit as needed.
- To exclude a location from your campaign, check the box next to that location and then click Exclude selected locations at the top of the table.
- To remove a location from the exclusions list, check the box next to that location and then click Remove from exclusions list at the top of the table.