Geographic targeting

Geographic targeting is the setting that says where a campaign may show. It is also the setting most often left as it was created, which on a new campaign can mean everywhere.

For an organisation that serves one city, everywhere is not generosity. It is impressions in places where nobody can use the service, from people who will not click — and on a grant account that is the click-through rate being spent on an audience that was never the audience.

It is also a policy requirement rather than a preference. Google's account management policy asks for “proper location settings” — ads shown where the organisation's work is useful — and names account structure among the things an account is deactivated for, beside the two sitelinks it asks for in the same breath.

The setting under the setting

Google offers more than one meaning for “in” a location: people who are there, and people showing interest in it. For a food bank the first is almost always what is meant. For a national campaign about a cause, the second may genuinely be. The default is not always the one you want, and it is worth looking at rather than assuming.

• Name the places the organisation actually serves, at the grain it serves them — a city, a county, a radius around an address.
• Exclude what you will never serve, which is quicker than listing everywhere you will.
• Check the locations report after a fortnight. It says where the clicks came from, which is not always where you thought you had pointed.

Questions people ask