Improvements to location targeting for international searches

The world is getting smaller. Today, people use search to shop for products and services from around the corner or across the world. This means that every business can now be a global business.

To help you connect with your customers - wherever they’re located - we’re improving the way location targeting works in AdWords. Starting the week of November 11, 2013, advertisers using either the default or ‘location of interest’ setting will be able to show ads to potential customers by taking into account both the location that people are searching for, as well as the location they are searching from -- even when they are international searches. For example, let’s say you own a hotel, and you are currently targeting Paris with the keyword “Paris hotels.” Previously, only people searching on Google.fr or Google.com from France could see your ad. Starting the week of November 11, your ads will be eligible to show to people searching for “Paris hotels” from anywhere in the world -- for example, someone who lives in New York City who is booking a vacation in Paris.

These improvements help you share your message with more customers who have expressed interest in your business and deliver a better set of results to people who are searching with locations in their intent.

Most advertisers will find that this change improves the reach of their ads with no action needed. In fact, this is currently how targeting works within countries. This update just ensures that searches across countries work in the same way. Your ads will continue to show to your target audience based on the location targeting options that you have set. In some cases you may see a change in impression volume since your ads can now show to people who are searching for your business from places where your ads weren’t previously showing.

These changes offer broader coverage for your ads while keeping your existing location options intact. If you prefer to narrow your location settings, you can still do so using advanced location options by selecting the “People in my targeted location” radio button.  You can also exclude geographic locations to prevent your ads from showing in selected regions.
People are searching in ways that transcend geographical boundaries, and we want to ensure that AdWords reflects this global reality. These location targeting updates make it easier for potential customers to find your business, and easier for you to connect with them – wherever they may be looking.

Posted by Nicholas Boos, Product Manager, AdWords

Bidding Best Practices (Part 2): Improving Results with Location Bid Adjustments

Today’s post about improving results with location bid adjustments is the second in a bidding best practices series. The series began with prioritizing and iterating on your bid adjustments.

Your advertising performance almost always varies by location, no matter what kind of business you run. The good news is that if you optimize your bids for different locations, you can increase your sales and ROI.

Optimizing bids for better performance by location
With enhanced campaigns, it’s now much easier to boost bids in locations where your performance is stronger and reduce bids where performance is weaker. Before enhanced campaigns, you’d have to set up and manage an identical campaign for every location where you wanted unique bids. Since this was hard, the most common approach to location optimization has been to cut out underperforming locations using targeting exclusions. But in the long run, this approach can limit your growth and reduce your business competitiveness. So we recommend using bid adjustments rather than location exclusions.

Calculating location bid adjustments
Start by downloading a location performance report. Here’s how, using the AdWords interface:
  1. Set the date range to the past 30 days (longer if your campaign is on the smaller side).
  2. Click on the “Location details” button and select “What triggered your ad.”
  3. Click the View button and select Region.
  4. Click Download.
To maximize orders or leads at a particular CPA or ROI level, a common best practice for setting bid adjustments is to equalize your target metrics across all locations. As a math formula, it looks like this:

Location bid adjustment = 100% * ( ( Campaign goal ÷ Actual performance ) - 1 )

Here’s an example from a campaign with a cost-per-action goal.

Example of calculating your location bid adjustment
LocationConversionsCostCPACPA GoalLocation bid adjustment
Florida100$800$8$10100% * [(10÷8) - 1] = +25%
New York120$1080$9$10100% * [(10÷9) - 1] = +11%
Ohio70$1050$15$10100% * [(10÷15) - 1] = -33%
Pennsylvania85$850$10$10100% * [(10÷10) - 1] = 0%

You can implement your bid adjustments in the AdWords interface (directions) or using the AdWords Editor (directions).

Businesses with local stores or service areas
Closer customers are often more likely to buy from you and less costly to serve. So if your business has local stores or service areas, you should consider optimizing your bids based on customer proximity. For example, you can easily set one location target for customers within 2 miles of your business locations, and a second target for customers within 20 miles of your business locations (directions). Then use the approach described above to calculate your optimum bid adjustment for your two location extension targets.

Tips and reminders
  • Maintain a broad location target to cover your entire potential market. Targeting too narrowly can limit your reach, clicks and conversions.

  • It’s OK to set overlapping location targets with bid adjustments. We’ll only apply the most specific location bid adjustment. For example, say you have a +10% bid adjustment for Canada and a +20% bid adjustment for Montreal. When someone searches in Montreal, your bid will be increased by 20%. And you’ll see distinct performance stats for Montreal and all of Canada except Montreal on the Locations subtab on the campaign Settings main tab.

  • Be careful when you don’t have much data. Otherwise your calculated bid adjustments could end up being too high or too low, and you could end up with worse results instead of better. If you don’t have statistical expertise on hand, we recommend not adjusting bids in locations with fewer than 1000 clicks and 30 conversions, as a general rule of thumb. Lengthening the date range for your reports to the past 90 days or more can help.

  • Periodically check performance and increment your bid adjustments. From time to time, check your performance for each location target on the Locations subtab. Incrementally raise your bid adjustment where your performance is above your goal, and lower your bid adjustment where your performance is below your goal. This will allow you to optimize your bids over time and adjust to changing consumer behavior.
Posted by John Sullivan, Global Search Solutions

Reach local customers searching on Google Maps

Whether they are searching for a rental car near their office or a bakery close to a relative’s house, people expect fast, relevant and useful results from Google Maps. Great local commercial listings have always added useful information to Google Maps and helped businesses connect with consumers.

Ads in the new Google Maps
This past Wednesday at I/O, Google’s annual platform developers event, we provided a glimpse of the future of Google Maps. The new Google Maps instantly draws immersive, uniquely tailored maps for each person that adapt with every click and search to highlight the things that matter most.

We’re testing new ways to show ads in the new Google Maps:
  • Search ads with location extensions can appear directly on the map and just below the search box
  • Search ads without location extensions can appear just below the search box
Ads can appear just below the search box and directly on the map

Just like in the current version of Google Maps, the best way to have your ads seen by potential customers in the new Google Maps is to run search ads with location extensions. You’ll also need ensure you’re including search partners in your campaign network settings to appear on Google Maps.

Enhanced campaigns: Improving online and offline results with location bid adjustments and offer extensions

April 11 update: Offer extensions are now available and can be shown in the UK.

With AdWords, you’ve been able to run campaigns in targeted geographic locations and attach your local business address to your search ads using location extensions. Now, new location-oriented features in enhanced campaigns are rolling out globally to help you achieve even better results with AdWords – online and offline. Read on to learn how to:
  • Improve campaign results using location bid adjustments, whether your customers buy online or offline.
  • More easily reach customers that are near your business locations. 
  • Drive more offline purchases and measurable in-store traffic with search ads using offer extensions.
For a guided walkthrough, tips and Q&A on using these new location-based features and offer extensions, please register and join us at this week’s Learn with Google webinar on enhanced campaigns this Thursday, March 7, at 10am PST.

Geotarget broadly with selective bid adjustments for improved results

Whether your business is online-only, offline-only, or multi-channel, you can improve your overall results by using a broad location target to cover your entire potential market while refining your bids in select areas. With legacy campaigns, you’d need to set up a new campaign for every location you wanted to bid differently on. Now, with enhanced campaigns, it’s simple to increase or lower your bids by a certain percent for any location target in your campaign.

In the AdWords interface, click Locations on the Settings tab, and then click on the bid adjustment column to the right of a location target to increase or decrease your bid. You can also make location bid adjustments with the latest version of AdWords Editor.

Adjusting a bid for a location target
Setting a location bid adjustment (click to expand)

To optimize with selective bid adjustments using the AdWords interface:
  1. Click on the “Location details” button and select “What triggered your ad.” 
  2. Toggle the View button to slice your campaign performance data, including conversion data, by different geographic levels (example screen).
  3. Sort or filter to focus on the locations you want to optimize. 
  4.  Select one or more locations. 
  5. Click the “Add targets and set bid adjustment” button.
For more advanced optimization, you might pair your AdWords reporting with your company’s data on customer value by geography to adjust bids for different locations.
Example 1: A commercial maintenance company targets a 20 mile radius around downtown Denver. The marketing director might know that it costs 20% less to sell to and service customers who are within 10 miles of downtown. He can improve his results by increasing his bids by 20% for customers within 10 miles of downtown Denver, since these leads are more profitable. 
Example 2: An online-only financial services company has modeled its average customer lifetime value by zip code. The company’s search specialist has been asked to achieve an average 8:1 return on ad spend (ROAS), which they define as average lifetime value divided by average cost per lead. The specialist downloads data from AdWords with cost per lead by zip code and pairs it with lifetime value for each matching zip code (example data). She looks for opportunities to improve her results by lowering bids in zip codes where ROAS is below the target and increasing bids in zip codes where ROAS is above the target. She makes her bid adjustment decisions in the spreadsheet and implements them in her enhanced campaign, re-checking the ROAS and volume impact for a few weeks and making changes as necessary. With legacy campaigns, she would have to set up a new campaign for every zip code with different bids, increasing the level of campaign management complexity and effort required.
Experienced search marketers know that bids are an important contributor to campaign results, along with ads, extensions, keywords, and landing pages, so they’re sure to measure periodically and make adjustments. Remember, targeting too narrowly can limit your reach, clicks and conversions, so consider using selective location bid adjustments while targeting broadly. More tips on optimizing your campaigns using location are available in the AdWords Help Center.

Reach customers near your offline business locations more easily

If you operate an offline or multi-channel business, you can use the new location extensions targeting to reach potential customers or increase your bids when they're near your locations with just a few clicks. It uses the location extensions you’ve already created and a radius that you specify to create targets around your businesses.

Setting a location extension target
Setting a location extension target (click to expand)

You can then assign a bid adjustment to your location extension target to increase your ad’s visibility when customers are near your business, and potentially more likely to shop and buy from you (step-by-step directions).
Example 3: A national multi-channel retail business has been running AdWords campaigns to sell directly online and to drive people to its 400 local stores. The account has already set up location extensions, but it wants to improve its ad visibility even more when customers are searching within a short distance from its stores. With just a few clicks, its search agency adds a single “2.0 mile around each location extension” target and sets a +25% bid adjustment.
Setting a bid adjustment for a location extension target
 Setting a bid adjustment for a location extension target (click to expand)

Drive measurable offline purchases and in-store traffic with offer extensions

Showing a potential customer the right offer at the right time can be the difference that brings them into a local business to buy from you. Offer extensions help you drive offline purchases and in-store traffic with a redeemable offer shown with your search ads across devices. You can use them whether you’re a retailer, manufacturer, or other type of business (currently shown to users in the U.S. only).

desktop offer extension example
Desktop offer extension example
mobile offer extension example
Mobile offer extension example

When customers click your offer, they'll see your offer details, business logo, and nearby stores (see example below). They can print your offer or save it to their Google Offers account for in-store redemption. At the point of sale, customers redeem the offer using either a text code or a bar code.

Offer details example on desktop
Offer details example on desktop (click to expand)

You pay for clicks on an offer just like a click on your ad headline – there are no fees for each redemption. We’ll also remind customers about unused offers through email to improve the redemption rate. Offer extensions are available at the campaign or ad group level. Check out more details and tips on offer extensions usage and reporting in the Help Center.

Please stay tuned for more details on the availability of offer extensions in other countries and improvements with offer redemption reporting. We welcome your feedback on these features and others in enhanced campaigns using this form.

Posted by Smita Hashim, Group Product Manager

Getting more local in Canada, the US, and 9 other countries

Location matters. Whether you’re running a national bank in MontrĂ©al, Canada or a contemporary fashion boutique in Brugge, Belgium, being able to target or exclude certain geographic locations with your online advertising can boost your business and save you money. Today, advertisers in Canada, the US and 9 other countries have even better local targeting options with AdWords.

Canadian Postal Code FSAs
Expanding on our launch of ZIP Code targeting in the US, Canadian Postal Code FSAs are now available for targeting. You can now reach over 1,500 Canadian Postal Code FSAs, the first three digits of the Canadian Postal Code. Now you’ll be able to plan, buy and get reporting with AdWords the same way you do with direct mail. Plus, with the “Bulk locations” tab in the AdWords location targeting tool, you’ll be able to easily enter up to 1,000 locations per country at a time.




U.S. metro changes
We've recently changed our U.S. metro targeting areas to Nielsen® DMA® (Designated Market Areas) regions. Now your online campaigns and reporting will more precisely match TV-based audience data and campaigns. If you’ve been using metros, you’ll notice that the new geographic shapes look different on a map. While you might see some increases or decreases in traffic with the new regions, we estimate the impact will be small for most advertisers.




As always, if your business has a fixed service radius and you want to more tightly target a campaign to that area, we recommend using the radius targeting option to identify and select specific cities and postal codes to reach.

More countries get city-level targeting and location extensions
We’re adding city and region targeting options in the following nine countries:
Belgium (city), Bulgaria (region & city), Denmark (city), India (city), Ireland (city), Romania (region & city), Sweden (region & city), Taiwan (city), Vietnam (city)



That brings our full list of countries with city level targeting up to 43.  

Also new to Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, India, Sweden, and Taiwan are location extensions. Location extensions show your closest business address and phone number along with your search ad, making it easier for customers to visit or call.

Put it together and win in local markets
So let’s say you are a manufacturer in India and sell through retailers in many cities across the country. You can now analyze your performance by city using the
AdWords geographic report. You might see that you're getting a better conversion rate and larger order sizes in big cities like Delhi and Mumbai. So you create a supplemental campaign just targeting Delhi and Mumbai with higher bids and distinct budgets. Next, you set up location extensions to show your local sales office locations in each city. And you use location insertion to add “Mumbai” or “Delhi” to the end of your visible URL whenever your ads show in that city to help make your business feel even more local. You’re now set up to get more clicks, conversions, visits and phone calls to help your business grow where it matters most.

Posted by Derek Coatney, Product Manager

All Politics is Local: Introducing Congressional District Targeting for Google AdWords

Originally posted to the Politics & Elections Blog

In his autobiography, Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said “All politics is local”. With all 435 seats up for election in brand new Congressional Districts this November, that adage rings even more true for House candidates running this fall. Through the redistricting process that takes place every 10 years, every district takes on a new shape - with new voters. This makes reaching the right voters with the right message even tougher.

Starting today, in addition to targeting specific zip codes, we’re enabling an even more useful solution that allows political campaigns to reach voters within a specific Congressional District.

Say you are running for Congress in the 6th District of Maryland - which features a highly publicized race between Ten-term incumbent Rep. Roscoe Bartlett and Montgomery County businessman John Delaney. The 6th is located in western Maryland, and has been a longtime GOP stronghold, but was drastically reshaped by redistricting which has made it more competitive.

Barlett and Delaney’s campaigns are waging a battle in the oddly shaped district that has voters in many zip codes, towns and communities looks like this:


(This map embedded above is courtesy of data from Azavea)

As campaigns know, reaching these households in an effective manner with traditional means takes time and - importantly - valuable resources. This district is a great example - it includes voters who live in the Washington D.C. media market. But, as you can see from the map, buying TV ads in DC won’t reach your voters in the 6th District.

Now, with congressional district targeting in AdWords, campaigns can quickly and easily target their search, display, mobile and video ads *solely* within that particular district’s border. You can start by heading into AdWords and selecting your District number from the location menu populated with district information in simple Google Maps format, prepared by Azavea. Build your ad and you’re on your way.


We’ve built a sizable team that is working around the clock to help all candidates get the most from their online advertising efforts. Congressional District Targeting in AdWords is just one more way that we’re working hard to deliver better ads for users and voters and better tools for political campaigns.

By working across all four screens, digital ads are highly accountable, precise, and continually evolving. Google’s complete solution helps thousands of political campaigns in all shapes and sizes make the web work for them. Our products are designed to work together, enabling campaigns do more with less online. Head over to the Four Screens to Victory site to learn more about how your campaign can win the moments that matter.

Posted by: Charles Scrase, Google Politics & Elections Team

Get Local with ZIP Code targeting



As previously announced, you can now target 5-digit U.S. ZIP codes in AdWords campaigns on Google Search and Display networks. ZIP code targeting can help you reach the same audiences as your direct mail campaigns, target specific service areas, reach more profitable customers, or optimize national campaigns at a more local level.

To help you make the most of ZIP code targeting, here are a few best practices covering ZIP code campaign setup, selection, bulk uploads, and reporting. You can also sign up now for our June 12th webinar on how to increase online and offline sales with ZIP code targeting.

Campaign Setup
Based on feedback from early adopters, we recommend that you get started by supplementing your national or regional campaigns with a separate local campaign, so you can optimize bids, budgets and creatives at a ZIP code level while maintaining your reach and volume with the more broadly targeted campaign. This supplemental campaign can be implemented by targeting specific ZIP codes of interest to you.

Jef Hall, Paid Search Manager at Sterling Commerce Group, a telecommunications reseller company, shares his strategy for using ZIP code targeting. “We use ZIP codes to better target our service areas. Our first approach is to create supplemental campaigns that target ZIP codes in areas that we sell to,” said Jef. “We also are testing a different method by targeting broadly at the state level and excluding the ZIP codes for areas we don’t sell to. After testing, we’ll go with the method that performs best according to the lead volume of the area, and the cost per lead metrics that we track.”

Selecting ZIP Codes
To implement your strategy, go to your campaign Settings tab in AdWords. Then simply begin typing a ZIP code to view its estimated reach and to add or exclude it as one of your targeted locations.


Alternatively, when selecting your locations, click the Nearby link to view a map and nearby locations which can be filtered by metro, city, or postal code.


If we are not able to associate people with a selected geographic location by their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, we’ll show a Limited reach badge next to the location name. This location will still receive traffic from searches with a specific location mentioned in the query and from users with high-end mobile devices that have enabled the "My location" feature.


If many of the ZIP codes you target have limited reach, consider setting up ZIP code targeting via a supplemental campaign that complements existing campaign targeting more broadly at a city, metro, or state level. That way you maintain your desired reach while bidding more aggressively and customizing campaigns for specific ZIP codes.

Bulk Uploads
With over 30,000 US ZIP codes available for you to target, we want to make the location targeting selection process fast and easy when you’re targeting a lot of ZIP codes.

In the AdWords location targeting tool, you’ll see a new tab called, “Bulk locations.” You’ll be able to enter up to 1,000 locations in a single country at a time. After copying and pasting your list of ZIP codes, click the Search button and review the matched results below before adding them to your campaign. If you’ve ever had to split up campaigns because of location target limits, you’ll be happy to know that we recently raised the location target limits from 300 to 10,000 locations per campaign.


Reporting
To see how your campaigns are performing at a granular level, ZIP codes now appear in the “Most specific location” column in your AdWords geographic performance reports. This is an excellent way to identify your top and your low performing ZIP codes and make campaign optimization adjustments accordingly.


We’re eager to hear about your experience getting local with ZIP code targeting, so share your story here. In addition to our June 12th webinar, you you can also find out more about postal code targeting, the bulk locations feature, and geographic reports in our help center. ZIP Codes are already available in the AdWords API as a beta feature and will be included in the next release of AdWords Editor.

Posted by Aileen Tang, Senior Product Manager

Get Local with AdWords


Get organized this spring with new location features in AdWords and share your stories

Over the past 30 years, California Closet Company has grown from the brainchild of a college student organizing his dorm room closet to a successful business with more than 77 franchise locations. To reach customers across the U.S. and internationally, the company centered their digital marketing strategy on creating locally relevant campaigns.

It’s no surprise that local campaigns are a focus for many businesses--from finding directions to looking up a phone number, more people are going online to find local information. In fact, more than 20% of searches on Google are related to location, and people often act quickly on local searches. Research shows that using smartphones, 88% of people who search for local information take action within a day.

To help you organize your local ad campaigns this spring, we’re introducing three new features in AdWords to help you create ads that are more relevant to local customers.

Target customers by zip code
If you customize your direct mail, outdoor ads, or newspaper ads at a postal code level, you now can easily do the same in AdWords in the US. We are introducing the ability to target more than 30,000 US ZIP Codes with your AdWords campaigns.

You will be able to add up to 1,000 postal codes at a time to your search ad campaigns with AdWords Location Targeting. Plus, you can get feedback on the performance of your local campaigns by viewing campaign performance statistics at the postal code level.

"Location targeting within AdWords helped us double lead volume and cut the cost to acquire new customers in half,” said Lois Erbay, Director of Marketing, California Closet Company. “We plan on building on that success by using ZIP Code targeting to create even more locally relevant campaigns for our customers.”


More locally relevant ads in less time
To help you easily create a custom ad title, text, display URL, and/or destination URL for all of your locations at scale, we’ve developed location insertion for location extensions. You’ll no longer need to create multiple ads for multiple locations--this new feature automatically inserts the city, phone number, or zip code of your local business into your ad text.

For example, if your ad text says: “Find a {lb.city:Local} Store or Shop Online,” a user viewing your ad in Chicago would see: “Find a Chicago Store or Shop Online.” This new feature cuts out all the work to building out ad text featuring local information for all your locations.

Ad with location insertion in the text and display URL

“We’ve had amazing success manually customizing our creative with local information for our top markets, which shows us that customers want locally-relevant results when it comes to a service like storage,” said Chris Laczi, Advertising Director, Uncle Bob's Self Storage. “That’s why we’re very excited about location insertion. It will simplify the task of creating locally customized ads for our 400+ locations, and we expect it will greatly enhance conversion rate of our ads.”

You must have location extensions set up and running in order to enable location insertion. Location insertion will work even if your location extensions don’t show because of other extensions. We detect location based on where your customer is physically located or by the geographic locations she may have shown interest in.


Better clarity and control
When we launched advanced location targeting in March 2011, we provided you with more control over how you geographically target your ads. Based on advertiser feedback, we’re implementing four additional enhancements that will make location targeting options clearer and more powerful. Read more about these enhancements in the Help Center and in this blog post.

There is significant opportunity for businesses to reach local customers online and win moments that matter by delivering the right ad in the right context. Stay tuned for more information on how ZIP Code targeting can help you grow your business.

We want to hear from you about your success in getting local with AdWords--share your story here and we might reach out to you to participate in our upcoming blog posts.

Posted by Richard Holden, Product Management Director

More clarity and control with location targeting improvements

When we launched advanced location targeting in March 2011, we provided you with more control over how you geographically target your ads. Based on advertiser feedback, we’re implementing four additional enhancements that will make location targeting options clearer and more powerful. Here’s an overview of what’s changing.

Location targeting is now easier to understand.

First, we’ve reworded the options to help make them clearer. Here is what the options for advanced location targeting used to look like:


Here is what we’re unveiling today:


Show ads to people in a physical location, without exception.
Previously, if you had selected “Target using physical location,” your ad would show to people in your targeted location as long as they were not searching for something related to a different location. Now, when you select “People in my targeted location,” your ad shows to people in your targeted location, without exception.

Let’s say you are an airline using physical location targeting to reach customers in Atlanta, GA looking to fly to Hawaii. You have the keyword “flights to hawaii” in your ad group. Previously, your ad wouldn’t appear for any prospective customers in Atlanta that were searching for “flights to hawaii” because the search term indicated that they were interested in Hawaii. With the new setting “People in my targeted location,” the airline can now reach the customers in Atlanta searching for “flights to hawaii.”

This enhancement has been beneficial in increasing VEGAS.com’s ability to target offers to users based on where they are located at the time of the search. “As a leading destination travel site, our goal is to send the right message to a user as they plan their travel well ahead of time from their home market. Advanced Location Targeting has given us that ability,” said Dan Hippler, Vice-President of Marketing, Vegas.com.

Greater control over location targeting on the Display Network
Previously, the only location targeting signal applicable to ads on the Google Display Network was the likely physical location of the user. Now, both the location extracted from the content of the page and the likely physical location can be used, making advanced location targeting applicable for the Display Network for the first time. The default setting is to show to people “in” or “viewing pages about” your targeted location, but you can edit this option at any time.

Let’s say a customer in Atlanta is planning a trip to Hawaii and she’s looking at websites about fun things to do in Hawaii. A coffee plantation tour service from Hawaii would like to show ads about its offers to such a user. Similarly, an airline would like to advertise flight services to this user. The new targeting enhancements give the tour service and airline such capabilities, as both an ad targeted to Hawaii for a coffee plantation tour and an ad targeted to Atlanta for flights from Atlanta may now both show on the same page.

There are several situations in which we will not use location to target an ad. For example, a user reading about news in Hawaii may not be interested in “Hawaii tours”. For this reason, we currently only consider the location signal on a limited set of pages when we believe it may be useful. You can gain insight into the sites on which your ads are showing on the placement report, and into the locations on the geographic report.

Note that all campaigns targeting the Display Network will automatically be opted into the default option, which is to reach people in, searching for, or viewing pages about your targeted location. If you wish to exclude campaign traffic from people viewing pages about your location, you can choose “People in my targeted location” in advanced location options.

More easily avoid getting impressions for excluded areas
We have also changed the advanced location exclusion methods. Previously, the less restrictive option, “Exclude by physical location only,” was the default. Based on feedback from advertisers, we have re-worded the exclusion options and made the more restrictive option, “People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my excluded location,” the default. This way you avoid getting impressions for excluded areas regardless of whether your customers are located or interested in those areas.

What it looked like before:


What we’re launching today:


For example, now by default excluding Chicago means your ad won’t show for customers in Chicago or those outside Chicago who included “Chicago” in their searches.

This change will only impact newly created campaigns and will not affect existing campaigns.

Remember, advanced location targeting may limit the exposure of your ads, so it isn’t suited for all advertising goals.

To find out more about advanced location targeting or to change your settings, visit our help center. If you use AdWords Editor, details on how these changes will impact you can be found in the AdWords Editor help center.

Posted by Smita Hashim, Group Product Manager Local Ads