About location groups and filtering

Location groups allow you to more easily manage locations in your campaigns from within Google Ads. When you've synced your Business Profile and Google Ads accounts or have added Chain locations to your account, these addresses are eligible to show across your account. You can assign specific addresses at the account, campaign or ad group levels.

This article describes what location groups do and the benefits of using them when setting up location assets in your campaigns and promoting those location assets in your ads. This article also shows you how to use location groups to filter at the campaign or ad group levels, and how to add filters to edit at the account level.

An animation that shows how to access the location groups setting in Google Ads.

CREATE LOCATION GROUPS

What are location groups

Location groups are reusable collections of physical business locations that can be applied to your campaign. A group can be selected instead of individual locations to quickly and efficiently apply every location in that group for a campaign’s targeting.

To use location groups, you need to enable location assets in your Google Ads account. Location assets can show you your business information in various formats across Search, Display, Performance Max and video campaigns. Location assets can include both your directly-owned shop locations or shops that sell your products.

Benefits of using location groups

Convenient

Location groups are simple to set up and easy to parse through for editing. The location group interface allows you to find individual locations through searching and filtering.

Reusable

Once created, a location group can be selected and applied to as many campaigns as you want. Any changes that you make to a location group will apply everywhere that the group is being used.

Say you are running a Performance Max for shop goals that applies to every location in California. You can create a new location group that contains each one of your California shop front locations. Once you set up the statewide campaign, you’ll have a location group ready to insert in campaign setup. You can then use that location group for Performance Max with shop goals, as well as other campaigns and ad groups.

CREATE LOCATION GROUPS

Instructions

Add location groups, and edit at the campaign or ad group level

Note: Make sure that your Google Ads account is linked to your Business Profile and that your locations are syncing with Google Ads. Learn more about how to Use location assets

Before performing the steps below, follow the instructions on how to create location groups.

Filter you addresses from Business Profile

In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
Click the Assets drop-down in the section menu.
Click Assets.
Click on the plus button and select Location assets.
Select 'Campaign' or 'Ad group' depending on whether you want to filter addresses to a campaign or ad group. If you’re adding a location asset on the ad group level, choose your desired ad group as well.

Example

Let's say that you own two restaurants: Bob's Barbecue and Bob's Sushi. You'd like to run a campaign solely for your barbecue restaurant. To do this, you create a filter and include only the restaurant where the business name equals 'Bob's Barbecue'.

Add a location group to Google Ads

Choose one of the following:
- Location groups: In the menu, choose the tick box right next to the location group that you have created for 'Bob’s Barbecue' restaurant. If the location group is empty, they function the same as if you had chosen 'No location assets', instead.
- No location assets
Click Save.

Edit location group at the ad group or campaign level

In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
Click the Assets drop-down in the section menu.
Click Assets.
Select the Association from the 'Table view' drop-down menu.
Select Location from the list above the table toolbar.
Each location asset you've filtered at the ad group or campaign level will be listed with your Business Profile. Find the one you want to edit and click the pencil icon when it appears beside it.
Make your changes and click Save.

Add filters and edit at the account level.

Note: This option is only available for location assets using Business Profile. It is unavailable for locations assets with chain locations.

In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
Click the Assets drop-down in the section menu.
Click Assets.
Select Association from the 'Table view' drop-down menu.
Select your Business Profile you want to add filters to.
In the blue bar above the table, click Add to.
Select Account from the drop-down menu.
Hover over the account you want to make changes to and click the pencil icon when it appears.
Under the 'Limit the locations that are synced with Google Ads' section:
- Fill in your business name. Filters will only work if you've entered information that exactly matches the word that you've chosen. For example, if you enter a filter for the business name 'Bob's', you won't filter out businesses with the name 'Bob's Barbecue'.
- You can narrow down the locations further with specific labels. Labels must be added to locations in Google My Business before applying filters in Google Ads. Add label name and click + Or to expand your list of addresses.
Click Finish.

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