le Ads location targeting: 5 mistakes to avoid

Local businesses can find it difficult to get noticed, especially online. Local SEO is becoming more important for businesses that want to dominate SERPs in a specific city or region. Even with the best SEO strategies, it’s unlikely that you will own the top spot (or even the second or third!) Local searches, especially those that have a purchase intention, are not likely to be ranked in the first (or second or third!) spot. These are local search ads.


Each result above the fold represents a paid result.

To get these highly sought-after spots, you need to be an expert in several areas. You must bid on the correct keywords, use the best ad strategies, and select the appropriate locations.

It’s important to know how to optimize Google Ads location-targeting. This post covers:

Let’s begin!

Google Ads Location Targeting: 5 common mistakes to avoid

You can choose from a virtually unlimited number of location targeting options when you create a Google Ads campaign. The steps to target the entire world, a country, a state, a city or zip code are simple and almost identical.

The simplicity of the endless choices and their ease can lead to advertisers making mistakes even before they have launched their first ad.

Are you worried that your Google Ads are not performing as well as they should? Get a free instant audit >> Ads Performance Grader

1. Do not make decisions based on your gut feelings!

We all have a bias and tend to overvalue our own experiences. Do not let your past experiences influence your marketing. You are probably the most knowledgeable searcher in your business, but your potential customers have different backgrounds than you.

You may assume that your customers will only be people who live in the town where you operate. You might be surprised to learn how far people will travel to find a dentist or lawyer that they can trust. ).

View data in Google Analytics instead of just considering your immediate area to see where visitors have come from and how they converted on your website. You might be surprised at how people search for your company, even from other states or cities.

2. Do not target areas based solely on their demographic profile

You probably know your customers the best, as you see them every day! Understanding the target audience is key for building campaigns. However, it can lead you astray if you are setting up location-targeting. Although cities and towns may have a wide range of demographics, none are homogenous. Your target audience will still search for you, even if they are more concentrated in a particular area.

Consider improving your ads so that they target users by their demographics as well as other audience signals.

3. Do not rely solely on CRM data to determine the location of your customers

You’ll be able to make better business decisions and improve your advertising if you collect data about your previous customers. When it comes to the location data of your customers in your customer relationship management, you should take this with a grain.

Don’t forget that they may not be searching at their home address. Since almost two-thirds searches in the US come from mobile devices your customers will likely find you when they search at home, work and wherever else they are.

Your first party customer data can be used to optimize Google Ads campaigns.

Utilize your CRM data to track offline conversions, and build customized audiences using Customer Match. When setting up location-based targeting, you should use the location data of your customers as a starting place for your analysis and not an end.

4. Be careful of radius targeting

Many local businesses will set the location of their campaign to a radius of a few miles around their storefront. This simple method can ensure you reach your audience from all angles.

radius-targeting may seem simple, but it’s not. Setting a radius as small as “a few miles” could result in your ads reaching an audience much larger than you had intended. It may seem like “targeting 10 miles” is twice as large as “targeting 5 miles” but it is not. This 10-mile area is four times larger than the 5-mile area. The area of a circle grows exponentially as its radius increases.

Beware of this verbal trick as you create your radius targeting. Your agency or marketing team could increase your reach and budget, even if it is unintentional.

The opposite is true as well. Reduce the radius of your targeting if you are a business owner with a small budget. This verbal trick is a clever way to convince a business owner to accept a substantial cut to their campaign’s reach, without sounding as if you are cutting too much.

5. Regularly review your target

It’s easy to forget about your campaign settings once it is running. Campaigns require regular reviews and optimization for their keywords, negative keyword, ads, assets and bids. Too many advertisers don’t revisit their location settings. Even if the location settings were perfect at that time, people move, cities evolve, and search patterns change.

At least once every six months, review and revisit the location targeting of your campaigns. It may be worthwhile to expand a campaign that’s performing well into new areas. A campaign that’s struggling might have a too ambitious scope.

Guide for free >> How to write ad copy that gets the clicks

Google Ads Location Performance Analysis

Google has been changing and hiding its reporting over the years for how your ads are performing in different geos. You can still view where your ads are most visible, their costs and the conversions in different geos.

1. Google Ads location reports can be used to find out more about your ads’ locations.

It is best to begin with the obvious. You can easily access the Google Ads locations report from the campaign’s left-hand side menu. Click “Locations> Locations” at the bottom bar to see a report with all the targeting regions you entered into your campaign.

This report is of little value if you have only one location in your campaign. Even if you included several, this screen is of limited value to many advertisers.

Here’s a trick. Select all the locations you want to target, then click “Narrow By”. You will be surprised at how specific you can make your Google Ads Geo data. This national data can be broken down by state, county or city. You can also see data for specific areas, such as Congressional districts, Nielsen DMAs, or other areas of interest.

Our free guide will help you build a solid foundation to your campaign >> Your Last Guide for Google Account Structure

2. Google Ads Distance Report: How to use it

Google Ads’ distance report can be particularly helpful for advertisers who are using radius targeting. The distance report is your best tool if you are unsure of the size of a radius that your campaigns should be targeting. To access the Google Ads distance report, select the “Reports” icon in the top right corner of Google Ads. Select “Predefined Reports (Dimensions),” “Locations”, and “Distance” from there.

Google Ads Distance report shows how your ads perform when they are at different distances to your Location assets (formerly Location Extensions). You can modify the columns by adding relevant metrics and segmenting the data.

Remember that the report will show cascading radiuse that increase in size as you move further away from your business. The data in each row includes the previous row-for example, the data for “Within five miles” also counts the data for the “Within ten miles” row.

You can quickly manipulate this data in Looker Studio or Excel to see how people behave within these ranges. After exporting the data, you can use simple subtraction to understand how searchers behave at different distances. You can use the location report to find out how well your ads perform between 1 and 5 mile distances.

Google Ads bid adjustments to improve location performance

can optimize your targeting now that you know how your ads are performing in different regions. You can expand your reach to neighboring areas or reduce wasted spend in areas that don’t convert well. Don’t be hung up in the binary of targeting or excluding. You can use location bid adjustments to bid more aggressively near your business, where you expect local users will convert easier and reduce your bids for searchers further away.

By using location bid adjustments you can reach audiences who are far away, while prioritizing and focusing on hyper-local markets.

Easy ways to optimize your Google Ads location targeting

Local businesses can find it difficult to decide where to focus their Pay-Per-Click campaigns. Google Ads gives advertisers many options, but it may feel as if you are risking your budget by choosing a location that is too large or far away from your business.

These reports contain a wealth of information that can be used to maximize your ad budget and reach new customers.

Here are five mistakes to avoid with Google Ads Location Targeting:


  1. Don’t make decisions based on your gut feeling!

  2. Don’t target areas by their demographic profile

  3. Don’t rely too much on your CRM data to determine the location of your customers

  4. Be careful of radius targeting

  5. Re-visit your target regularly

The article Google Ads location targeting: 5 big mistakes to avoid first appeared on WordStream.

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