Google Ads Location Targeting: Choose Your Area and the Right Location Option

Choosing a city in Google Ads is only part of location targeting. You also choose which connection to that city can make someone eligible to see the ad.

• Presence focuses on people Google considers likely to be in, or regularly in, the selected area.
• Presence or Interest also includes people who have shown interest in that area. Google identifies this as the default option.

For a tightly local service that wants to concentrate on nearby customers, Presence is a sensible option to consider. If customers often buy something for a place they are not currently in, Presence or Interest may fit the buying situation better. Google’s advanced location guidance explains both options. Neither verifies the address where a service will be delivered.

Consider a fictional Ottawa maintenance company. It serves properties in Ottawa, but one owner lives in Calgary and arranges repairs for an Ottawa rental. That enquiry can be useful. A person currently in Ottawa requesting work at a Calgary property is outside the company’s service area. The buyer’s location and the job location answer different questions.

To review the option, open the relevant campaign’s Settings, expand Locations and select Location options. Choose the option that fits your intended reach, then save and confirm it. This follows Google’s documented location-options path. Check the selected campaign before making a change, especially when several campaigns advertise similar services.

The practical goal is straightforward: select an area your business can serve, choose how people should relate to that area, and check whether the resulting enquiries fit. This guide works through those decisions for Search campaigns, then identifies important differences in other campaign types.

Decide what “local” means for this offer

Before drawing a circle or entering a list of cities, name the place that matters to the transaction.

For a repair business, it is usually the property requiring work. For a shop, the buyer may need to visit a particular location. For delivery, it is the delivery destination. For a hotel, the customer may be researching the destination from elsewhere. These situations can justify different targeting choices even if every advertiser calls itself local.

Start with one offer. “We serve Ottawa” may be accurate for planned maintenance but too broad for an emergency callout promise. A technician might accept a scheduled job farther away while needing a smaller dispatch area for urgent work. Advertising both under one broad promise can create a problem that a more precise radius cannot solve.

Write a plain sentence such as: “This campaign invites maintenance enquiries for properties within our approved Ottawa service area.” Then ask the person handling the work where the exceptions are. You need enough clarity to answer an enquiry, not a lengthy territory manual.

Useful questions include:

• Is the whole named area served, or only part of it?
• Do some services have a different boundary?
• Are travel charges, project sizes or appointment days relevant?
• Can customers arrange work while located elsewhere?
• What should staff do when a job is near the boundary?

If the business cannot answer, pause the geographic promise rather than treating the map as an operating decision. An advertising setting should reflect what the team can deliver.

Keep “we can serve it” separate from “we want to advertise there now”. A business may serve a broad region while concentrating a limited campaign budget on a smaller market. That is a marketing choice. Another area may be genuinely unavailable because the team lacks capacity. The reasons lead to different decisions later.

This distinction matters when performance changes. A weak month in a serviceable area could justify investigation. An area the business cannot fulfil should remain outside the offer regardless of attractive click figures.

Choose Presence or Presence or Interest with a real customer in mind

The option should follow the buying situation, not a rule that every local account must use the same setting.

When Presence is a useful starting point

Imagine a fictional same-day bicycle repair service operating from one shop. Customers generally need to bring a bicycle to that shop, and the campaign is intended to reach people associated with the local area. Presence provides a reasonable starting point for that aim.

The reason is specific: the business is concentrating its advertising on a nearby customer base. You can explain the choice without claiming that all interest-based traffic is poor or that the setting will eliminate every unsuitable enquiry.

An emergency field service may have a similar reason for favouring nearby reach. Its limited response area and immediate dispatch needs could make broad remote interest less useful. The business still needs to ask where the work is required; being nearby does not guarantee an in-area job.

When remote interest may be commercially useful

Return to the Ottawa property owner in Calgary. The owner is buying a service for an Ottawa property. Other legitimate situations include a person planning a move, an employee booking accommodation for a colleague or a business arranging work at another branch.

Presence or Interest may help reach those buying situations. The operational safeguard is a clear destination question: where will the service happen? If the answer fits, the enquiry can proceed through normal qualification.

That does not mean all remote interest should be pursued. It may create screening work, and a small team may decide that the additional demand does not suit the campaign. The important point is to make that trade-off deliberately rather than classifying every distant buyer as wasted spend.

When the answer is uncertain

Look at actual, appropriately collected enquiry information. Are useful customers regularly arranging work from elsewhere? Have staff been rejecting people because of their telephone area code before asking for the job location? Is the campaign’s current offer designed for immediate local action or future planning?

If you lack that information, acknowledge the uncertainty. You can choose an initial option based on the service model and review the resulting enquiries. Avoid describing that initial choice as a proven optimization.

A smaller number of calls after narrowing reach is ambiguous. It could mean fewer unsuitable enquiries, fewer useful enquiries or both. The useful comparison includes the work the business can accept, not just the disappearance of a distant city from a report.

Also remember that “regularly in” has a broader meaning than “standing inside the border right now”. Treat Google’s categories as advertising signals. They are not a live location check you can use to make a definite statement about an individual.

Choose cities, regions or a radius

Google offers geographic targets such as countries, available sub-country areas and radii. Target availability varies by country. The geographic targeting documentation is the current reference for supported choices.

The best option is the simplest available shape that reasonably represents your intended market. Precision on a map is useful only if it corresponds to a meaningful business boundary.

Named areas work well when the service rule follows them

If the company genuinely serves an entire municipality, a matching city target can be easy to understand. Staff, marketing and customers can all use the same place name.

Inspect the matched result before adding it. Similar names can exist in different countries or regions. An interface may offer a municipality, a broader region or another geographic category that resembles the term you typed. Select the actual result you mean.

A list of several named areas can suit a business covering neighbouring municipalities. It can be easier to maintain than a collection of overlapping circles, provided the list reflects the intended footprint.

Be careful with informal metropolitan labels. “Greater Toronto” can mean different things to different businesses and customers. The actual target selected in the interface governs the advertising configuration. The service page should explain the operating area in terms your team can consistently apply.

A radius is a distance approximation

A radius can be useful when customers tend to be around a central point and the business does not define its market by municipal borders. It needs a centre, a distance and a unit.

In Google’s location editor, select the campaign, choose Radius, enter the centre and distance, inspect the map and save. Google currently requires at least a one-kilometre radius and applies privacy thresholds; very small targets may deliver little or no activity. Those constraints do not establish an ideal radius for your business.

The centre deserves thought. A registered office, administrative address or owner’s home may have little relationship to where vehicles begin their work. Use the location appropriate to the campaign’s purpose and the business’s legitimate operations.

A circle also measures straight-line proximity. Two properties equally far from a depot may require very different journeys because of roads, bridges, congestion or access arrangements. If a response-time promise matters, review actual service feasibility separately.

For example, a fictional installer may accept planned projects across several municipalities but avoid a difficult cross-river route for urgent calls. A larger circle would not express that difference well. Named targets, an appropriate exclusion or separate offers may produce a clearer setup, depending on what is actually available.

Do not treat the one-kilometre minimum as a recommendation. A small radius is not automatically efficient, and a large one is not automatically wasteful. Both need to be judged against the service and the demand the campaign is meant to reach.

Postal targeting needs an availability check

A customer database may contain full postal codes, but that does not mean every one is selectable as an advertising target. Check the location types and matched entries actually offered for the country and campaign.

The advertised category can also restrict your choices. For housing, employment and consumer-finance advertising in Canada, Google’s restricted-targeting policy prohibits targeting by full postal code. It specifically permits Canadian forward sortation areas, the first three characters of a postal code, alongside city, country and qualifying radius targets. Check the policy that applies to your offer before using a geographic list; a selectable target alone does not establish that your whole targeting setup is permitted.

When an operational boundary is more detailed than an available advertising target, make the approximation visible. You might accept broader reach while screening the service destination, choose a narrower supported area or postpone that part of the campaign. The right response depends on the cost of unsuitable enquiries and the importance of reaching the boundary area.

Do not silently drop unmatched entries from a bulk list. It can make an incomplete setup appear complete. Review what was added, what was not recognized and whether any results refer to the wrong geographic category.

A straightforward setup walkthrough

Use a fictional repair company that accepts scheduled jobs in two neighbouring municipalities. The business has approved the whole of each municipality for this service. It wants to concentrate on people associated with those areas and does not advertise urgent response times.

This example describes a setup process. It is not a live account demonstration, and it does not claim that a particular real municipality or postal region was inspected in the interface.

1. Open the correct campaign. Check its name, type, service, ads and destination. A duplicated campaign may still contain settings from a different offer.
2. Inspect the existing locations. Look for an old country-wide or province-wide target before adding smaller areas. Adding cities does not express a narrower plan if a broader inclusion remains.
3. Find each intended place. Include the province or country when searching if needed. Read the full matched label and inspect the footprint.
4. Review exclusions. An old exclusion can override a new inclusion. Resolve conflicts before assuming the map is complete.
5. Choose the location option. In this fictional case, Presence matches the stated aim. A remote-purchaser offer would need a separate decision.
6. Save and reopen the settings. Confirm the final list and option. Check that you changed the intended campaign rather than merely preparing an unsaved edit.

Google documents location editing through the campaign’s Locations controls, with separate instructions for named areas and radii. Use its setup reference if the current interface differs from a screenshot you are following.

Before changing an active campaign, keep a simple record of the existing values and the date. That gives you enough context to explain a later change in reach. A short note is usually sufficient; the purpose is to avoid relying on memory.

Once saved, read the ad again. If it still promises a wider region than the campaign intends to serve, the customer’s expectations remain unclear. The page, form and staff response should reflect the same service boundary even though each plays a different role.

Check exclusions before adding more targets

Exclusions can express a genuine gap within a wider area. They can also accidentally remove the customers you intended to reach.

Google’s exclusion documentation states that an exclusion takes priority when an area is both included and excluded. Including a city does not rescue it from an exclusion of the surrounding province.

Imagine a fictional account where an older campaign excluded Ontario for a previous offer. A new manager duplicates it and adds Ottawa as a target. The city name now appears in the list, but the inherited province exclusion conflicts with the intention. Adding Ottawa a second time would not solve the problem. The exclusion itself needs review.

The same principle applies to an exclusion of the city you just selected. Always inspect both lists together. A clean-looking positive list cannot establish the effective footprint on its own.

Give each exclusion a concrete reason

“No delivery in this region” is a clear operational reason. “Poor performance” needs more investigation. What period was reviewed? Were there enough relevant enquiries? Did the business change its service capacity? Was the report showing a service destination, physical location or interest?

Keep those reasons distinct. An operational exclusion prevents advertising an unavailable offer. A performance exclusion changes a market the business could serve. The latter should be supported by the commercial question and available evidence.

Avoid building an enormous list of the rest of the world simply because unwanted enquiries appeared. First inspect the positive footprint and location option. Additional exclusions add maintenance work and may block legitimate buyers who are arranging local work remotely.

For example, excluding the remote property owner’s location could remove an enquiry for a valid Ottawa job. That may be an acceptable trade-off if the campaign deliberately focuses on nearby buyers. It should not happen accidentally because every distant location was assumed to be irrelevant.

Excluded interest and excluded presence differ

The exclusion rule uses Presence. Interest in an excluded area is not equivalent to being located there. Keep that distinction in mind when an enquiry’s requested destination does not match the buyer’s location.

A person in your included city can still want service somewhere you do not operate. Geographic targeting cannot replace asking where the work is required. The question belongs in a proportionate enquiry process, especially when the service destination is central to eligibility.

After editing exclusions, inspect the saved list and combined map again. The goal is an understandable footprint. Every active target and exclusion should have a reason that still applies to the advertised offer.

Read location reports without turning them into customer addresses

Once the campaign has activity, the location reports help you investigate where that activity was associated. Begin by checking which view you opened.

Google’s geographic reporting explanation distinguishes Targeted locations from Matched locations. The first organizes performance by selected targets. The second can reflect physical locations or locations of interest. The information is aggregated across users.

A row labelled Ottawa therefore needs its report definition beside it. It does not automatically mean every person represented was physically in Ottawa, and it does not verify that every resulting job was there.

For the remote property owner, three places might appear in different business records: the buyer’s current location, the place associated with the advertising match and the property’s service location. A disagreement between them is not enough to prove that the campaign ignored its settings. They may describe different things.

Google’s current report-navigation instructions direct you to Campaigns, Insights & reports, then When and where your ads showed for matched-location reporting. Confirm the campaign, dates, geographic level and filters before interpreting the rows.

What to inspect first

Start broad enough to understand the pattern. Is activity associated with the intended country or region? Does a surprising row account for a meaningful amount of spend or only a small observation? Did the settings change during the reporting period?

Then examine the relevant detail. A recently added target may have little history. A period spanning two configurations mixes their results. A screenshot cropped to a city and cost column can hide the date, view and location type needed to explain it.

Keep unspecified locations visible. Some activity cannot be attributed to the same detailed area as other rows. Also, sub-country figures may not reconcile exactly to the campaign total. Do not distribute missing amounts among cities just to make a chart balance.

If the available detail does not answer the question, use a broader supported view and state the limitation. A more detailed-looking chart is not useful when its interpretation depends on guesses.

Be careful with distance reports

Distance reporting is relevant when appropriate location assets and campaign types are involved. Google explains that the reference can involve a triggering location of interest and that reported distance can differ from a targeting radius. The report is not a record of a technician’s drive to a customer’s property.

If a distance looks impossible, inspect the definition and reference point before changing the radius. A store shown in an ad, a location of interest and the customer’s actual service destination can be different.

For a field-service business, the most direct fulfilment question remains the job location. Use the advertising report to investigate reach and the enquiry process to establish whether the requested work is serviceable.

If calls are coming from outside your area, investigate in this order

An unsuitable enquiry is frustrating, especially when staff have to spend time explaining that they cannot help. It still needs the right diagnosis. Changing every geographic setting at once can hide the cause and remove useful demand.

1. Ask what is actually outside the area

A telephone area code is not a reliable description of the requested job location. People move, retain numbers and arrange services for other properties. Ask the relevant service question before classifying the enquiry.

For the fictional Ottawa company, a concise opening might be: “Which municipality is the property in, and what work do you need?” That gives staff the two facts needed for initial screening without collecting unnecessary personal information.

If the property is in the territory, a distant buyer may be entirely appropriate. If the property is outside it, the enquiry is a genuine service-area mismatch even when the buyer is nearby.

2. Establish the source as far as the records allow

An enquiry arriving during an advertising campaign may have come from organic search, a referral, a directory or an unassigned source. Check the evidence available before attributing the problem to Google Ads.

You do not need perfect attribution to notice a customer-service issue. You do need to distinguish “we received this enquiry” from “this campaign generated it” when deciding which settings to change.

If several campaigns point to the same form, inspect the relevant ones. Finding one correctly configured Search campaign does not establish that every active campaign promoting the service uses the same settings.

3. Review the configuration that applied at the time

Check the positive targets, exclusions and location option. Look for an inherited national target, a similarly named place, an unexpectedly large radius or an old excluded province.

Use the date of the enquiry. A correction made this morning cannot explain the settings that applied last week. If your reporting range crosses the change, separate the periods where possible.

When you find a clear error, correct the error through the account’s normal approval process. You do not need to wait for a statistical experiment to remove a place the business never intended to advertise to.

4. Inspect the message customers saw

An ad or page saying “Serving All of Ontario” can invite work the company later declines. A narrower target does not make that wording accurate. Review the public offer as well as the geographic controls.

If the service boundary is important, state it clearly near the enquiry decision. Avoid turning a simple service page into a long list of places solely for advertising. Explain the actual coverage and how a customer can check a boundary case.

A broader problem with unsuitable services, unrealistic expectations or poor follow-up belongs in the Google Ads lead-quality guide. Location settings are one possible cause, not a complete diagnosis of every disappointing lead.

5. Separate remaining uncertainty from a confirmed defect

Google describes geographic targeting as a best-effort process using multiple signals and does not guarantee complete accuracy. A carefully configured campaign can still produce an enquiry that does not fit the business.

That limitation does not make review pointless. It means the conclusion should match the evidence. A wrong-country target is a concrete configuration error. One unexplained enquiry is a reason to investigate. A repeated pattern with clear campaign attribution deserves deeper attention.

Keep the enquiry facts and the report meaning separate when escalating a problem. Explain the intended area, the actual configuration, the relevant period and the pattern observed. Avoid presenting an inferred personal location as a verified fact.

Judge the change by serviceable demand

It is easy to celebrate a decline in unwanted calls and overlook a larger decline in useful work. After a geographic change, look at both.

For a simple review, count enquiries with an accepted service destination, confirmed outside-area requests and requests whose destination remains unknown. Keep service type and sales outcome separate. A local enquiry can be unsuitable for another reason, and an accepted location does not guarantee a sale.

You can often make a useful early decision from clear counts and examples without creating a complicated percentage. Suppose a fictional weekly review shows twelve requests for accepted locations, three outside the territory and four with no location recorded. The immediate problem is that four requests still need classification. Describing all nineteen as geographically assessed would overstate what the team knows.

If you use a rate, state the denominator. “Three outside-area requests out of fifteen with a known destination” answers a different question from “three out of nineteen total requests”. Neither should hide the four unknowns. Use the same definition across periods.

The purpose is a commercial decision. Has qualified demand held up? Has screening work become more manageable? Are useful remote buyers being lost? Can the team actually deliver the enquiries now arriving?

Give outcomes enough time to become meaningful

The appropriate review period depends on volume and the buying process. A business receiving a few enquiries a week may need longer to distinguish a pattern from ordinary variation. A longer sales cycle also means recent enquiries may not yet have been fully assessed.

Compare similar offers and conditions where possible. A storm, holiday, staff shortage, promotion or budget change can alter demand independently of location targeting. Record material differences rather than attributing every movement to the setting you changed.

A before-and-after review can support a practical decision while leaving causation uncertain. If you narrowed locations, changed the offer and doubled the budget together, the resulting movement describes the combined change. It cannot isolate the location option’s effect.

Keep a demonstrated correction separate from a performance experiment. Removing an unintended target fixes a mismatch. Comparing two reasonable approaches to remote demand asks a different question and needs a suitable evaluation plan.

Do not confuse lower cost with better coverage

A location with cheaper clicks may produce work the team cannot serve or enquiries for the wrong service. A more expensive area may generate viable projects. Geographic cost differences need the business outcome beside them.

Similarly, zero conversions in a small row do not establish that the place is permanently unprofitable. Check volume, conversion definitions, delayed outcomes and whether the area was actually given a meaningful opportunity.

You can decide to limit advertising for budget reasons without claiming that an area has failed a conclusive test. A candid explanation such as “we are concentrating this month’s budget on our core service area” is often more accurate than declaring every other location worthless.

Decide whether locations need separate campaigns

You do not need a campaign for every town merely because each appears on the map. Separate campaigns are useful when they support a real decision you need to make independently.

A branch with its own budget, phone handling, service hours or offer may justify separate control. An emergency repair offer and a planned-installation offer may need different territories and messages. A region with a distinct language and landing-page experience may also need a different arrangement.

By contrast, ten neighbouring towns served by the same team, under the same offer and budget, may not need ten copies of the campaign. Excessive fragmentation adds maintenance and can make each result harder to interpret when volume is small.

Start with the operational difference. What would you do differently in this area? If the answer is only “report on its name”, explore whether the available reporting can answer that question without another campaign.

A branch example

Imagine a fictional maintenance company with Ottawa and Kingston teams. Each handles its own appointments and has a separate spending allowance. The services are similar, but the destination pages, contact routes and available capacity differ.

Separate campaign control may be sensible because the business needs to allocate money and enquiries independently. The location settings should follow those branch responsibilities, and each ad should explain the relevant service.

Now imagine a single Ottawa team serving several neighbouring areas under one schedule. Creating a campaign for every small area may introduce more copies of the same ads, settings and exclusions without improving the decision. A simpler arrangement may be easier to maintain.

Neither example establishes a universal structure. It shows the question to answer before dividing an account: does the separation support a meaningful budget, offer or delivery choice?

A new service area needs a delivery decision first

Suppose the Ottawa team wants to advertise in a neighbouring market it has never regularly served. A location target may be easy to add, but the business still needs to decide what happens when an enquiry arrives.

Can the team offer the same appointment windows? Does travel change the quote? Is the advertised service available throughout the area or only on planned route days? Who will answer a request that crosses the boundary between teams? Resolve those questions before using the existing ad unchanged.

An expansion can begin with a narrower, honest offer. The business might invite scheduled-maintenance enquiries while keeping emergency work within its established territory. The copy and destination should explain that distinction so a customer does not infer immediate local availability.

Keep the new area identifiable in the review. You need to see whether it produces serviceable demand and whether fulfilling that work is practical. That does not automatically require a separate campaign; choose the structure according to the budget and operating decisions you need to make.

Avoid interpreting an early enquiry as proof that the area can sustain a full service operation. Equally, a quiet opening period may say little if the campaign reached very few relevant people. Look at the actual opportunity, the enquiries and the cost of delivery together.

The advertising map is useful for testing reach. It does not establish staffing, transport capacity or the commercial terms of a new territory. Those decisions remain with the business, and the public promise should follow them.

Check the campaign type before reusing these instructions

The main walkthrough concerns Search. Other campaign types can have different control levels and restrictions. A campaign name such as “Local Leads” does not tell you which product rules apply.

Performance Max: Google’s setup troubleshooting guidance discusses Presence, Presence or Interest and negative locations. Review its settings separately rather than assuming a Search correction updated it too.

Demand Gen: Google’s current FAQ explains that location and language controls operate at the campaign or ad-group level, depending on setup, rather than simultaneously at both. Radius targeting is available at campaign level. Identify the controlling level before declaring the campaign checked.

AI Max for Search: Optional ad-group locations of interest add another condition alongside campaign targeting. A matching ad group does not override the campaign’s geographic requirements or exclusions. Review both layers when the feature is in use.

Hotel campaigns: The documented restrictions include Presence-only targeting and no radius targeting. A general local-service radius tutorial should not be applied unchanged.

These are applicability checks, not reasons to add more campaign types. If your existing campaign does the job, focus on understanding its current controls. Confirm unfamiliar features against the relevant product documentation and the actual account before editing.

Questions that often cause unnecessary changes

Should I exclude every country outside Canada?

Start with the intended positive locations and the chosen location option. A global exclusion list is not a substitute for understanding why someone qualified for reach. It can also affect legitimate people arranging Canadian services from elsewhere.

Use exclusions where they express a specific decision. Review overlaps and the current product limits before a bulk operation. If an unwanted pattern remains, investigate the relevant campaign and report definition rather than adding places indefinitely.

Will Presence stop every out-of-area enquiry?

No setting verifies the requested job address or guarantees perfect geographic inference. Presence can fit a campaign that wants to focus on people associated with the target area, but the business still needs clear service information and proportionate enquiry screening.

If someone nearby asks for work elsewhere, the targeting and the unsuitable service request can coexist. Fixing that issue may involve clearer copy or a destination question rather than a smaller circle.

Should I add a city name to every keyword?

Location targeting and keyword relevance are separate controls. A city name in a query can be useful context, but it does not prove the person’s physical location or replace the campaign’s settings.

Review actual search intent before making broad keyword changes. The search-term review guide addresses that work. Keep a geographic correction focused unless the query evidence reveals a separate problem.

Why can’t I see my own ad?

Your own search is not a reliable location audit. Eligibility and auction conditions involve more than the place you selected, and you may not match the intended audience. Google’s geographic guidance points advertisers to the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool for checking an ad without treating a personal search as proof of serving.

Inspect the campaign’s status, settings and available diagnostic information. Avoid repeatedly changing location targets simply to make an ad appear in your own search results.

What if the service boundary cuts through an available target?

Choose an approximation consciously. A broader area with clear qualification, a narrower supported footprint or postponing that boundary area can each be reasonable. The decision depends on the value of reachable demand and the cost of enquiries the business cannot serve.

If the boundary reflects a firm operating restriction, do not advertise an unconditional promise across it. The platform’s available geography does not authorize the business to accept work it cannot fulfil.

Make the next change small enough to explain

Return to the fictional Ottawa property owner. The useful question is whether the business can maintain the Ottawa property. Rejecting the enquiry because the buyer lives in Calgary would miss that distinction. At the same time, advertising a service across an area the team cannot cover would create a genuine problem.

Review your own campaign with that separation in mind. Confirm the service destination, inspect the effective footprint, choose the location option and read the resulting enquiry evidence. If you find a wrong target or exclusion, correct that specific issue. If the choice is between two reasonable kinds of reach, evaluate it as a business decision with uncertainty.

The existing location-targeting worksheet kit is available if you need a place to record the current settings and service-area exceptions. Its fictional templates are optional support for the review.

A useful outcome is a campaign whose geography you can explain in a sentence, together with a clear way to recognize whether the enquiries fit. For help investigating a mismatch, contact Canada Create about the campaign and the areas your team can serve.

Frequently asked questions

How does Google Ads location targeting work?

You choose an area and then a location option that decides how people must relate to it. Presence focuses on people Google considers likely to be in, or regularly in, that area, while Presence or Interest also includes people who have shown interest in it and is the default. Neither option verifies the address where the service will be delivered.

Should I choose Presence or Presence or Interest in Google Ads?

Let the buying situation decide. Presence suits a tightly local service that wants nearby customers, such as a shop people must visit. Presence or Interest fits when buyers arrange something for a place they are not in, like a Calgary owner booking repairs for an Ottawa rental.

How do I change the location settings of a Google Ads campaign?

Open the campaign's Settings, expand Locations and select Location options. Pick the option that fits your intended reach, then save and confirm it. Check that you are in the right campaign first, especially when several campaigns advertise similar services.

Why is my Google Ads location targeting not working?

Start by asking what exactly falls outside the area, then trace the source as far as your records allow. Review the configuration that applied when the enquiry came in and the message customers saw. Separate anything still uncertain from a confirmed defect, because a person searching from elsewhere may still need work inside your service area.

Should I target a radius, cities or postal codes in Google Ads?

Named areas work well when your service rule follows the same boundaries. A radius is a distance approximation, so check where it overlaps places you cannot serve. Postal targeting needs an availability check before you rely on it.

Can I set location targeting at the ad group level in Google Ads?

Location targeting in Search campaigns is set for the whole campaign. If branches or service areas need different locations, budgets or messages, decide whether they deserve separate campaigns. A new service area also needs a delivery decision before it gets its own targeting.

Which location exclusions should I add in Google Ads?

Add an exclusion only when you can give it a concrete reason, such as an area your team cannot serve. Excluded interest and excluded presence behave differently, so check which one the setting uses. Review existing exclusions before adding more targets.

What is geotargeting in advertising and how does it work?

Geotargeting shows ads to people according to location. In Google Ads you choose cities, regions, postal codes or a radius, plus an option that sets how people must relate to that place. It works when the selected area matches where the business can actually deliver.