Google Ads' default location setting includes people who are merely interested in your area. A business that serves only local customers should switch to presence, check where clicks actually came from, and exclude the places it cannot serve.

The setting nobody opened

When a Google Ads campaign is set up, you choose where it should run: a city, a radius around the shop, a province.

Beneath that choice sits a second one, folded away under location options, which decides what being in a location means. Most small accounts have never opened it.

The default, marked as recommended, covers people in your target area, people regularly there, and people who have shown interest in it. The last group is the one that costs money.

It means somebody in Calgary who has been searching about your town can see, and click, an ad from a business that will never be able to serve them.

What counts as interest

Google infers interest from what people search for and read. Somebody who types your town's name into a search, or has been looking at pages about it, can count as interested, wherever they happen to be.

For a hotel or a tour company, that is exactly the right audience. People planning a trip are interested in a place before they arrive.

For a plumber, a dentist or a dog groomer, it is mostly waste. The service happens where the customer is, and a customer two provinces away is not going to drive over for a cleaning.

Nothing in the account warns you when this happens. The clicks look like any others in the campaign reports, which is why the setting survives for years.

Where the stray clicks come from

The first is the hardest to spot. Somebody comparing neighbourhoods from Toronto types the same words a local customer would, and the ad cannot tell them apart.

Presence, and what it changes

The alternative setting is presence: people who are in, or regularly in, the places you target.

Regularly in still covers commuters and people who work in your area but live outside it, which for most local businesses is a feature rather than a leak.

Switching takes a minute per campaign and applies to future impressions only. It will not refund anything already spent.

It also shrinks the audience, which can mean fewer impressions in a small market. That is the point: the impressions you lose were not reaching customers.

The report that shows it

Google Ads can show where the people who clicked your ads were physically located, separately from the place they were interested in.

Among the predefined reports, the user locations report lists clicks and cost by country, province and city. Run it for the last three months before changing anything.

If nearly all the clicks come from inside your area, the setting is costing little. If a noticeable share comes from places you cannot serve, you have found money that can go back into the area you do.

Look at cost as well as clicks. A handful of expensive clicks from far away can matter more than a long tail of cheap ones.

Write the figures down before you switch, so next quarter can be compared with this one.

A worked example

A residential window cleaning company with two vans covers a handful of towns in the Fraser Valley. Its campaign targeted those towns by name, with the location option left on its default.

The owner had always assumed the budget was spent on local searches. Then a customer mentioned that her sister in Alberta kept seeing the company's ads while planning a move to the valley.

The user locations report for the previous quarter showed clicks from Alberta, Ontario and Washington State, mostly on searches for window cleaning followed by one of the towns' names.

The campaign was switched to presence. Washington State was also added as an excluded location, a simple safeguard, since the towns sit close to the border and some of the stray clicks had come from just across it.

A look at the report went into the calendar for the start of each quarter.

The budget stayed the same. It simply stopped paying for clicks from people the vans could not reach.

Exclusions

Excluded locations are the other half of the setting. They stop ads showing to people in places you name, even if they would otherwise match.

A business near a provincial or national border may want to exclude the far side. A business targeting a radius may want to exclude a town inside it that it does not serve, such as one across the water.

Exclusions have an option of their own, and its default is presence, which is usually right: it blocks people who are physically there.

Keep the list short and deliberate. Every exclusion should be a place you have decided, on evidence, that you cannot serve.

Microsoft Advertising too

If you also run ads on Bing, through the platform renamed Microsoft Advertising last month, the same question applies there.

Its location settings also reach, by default, people searching for or viewing pages about your area. Check them at the same time, while the reasoning is fresh.

If either account was set up quickly, or by somebody else, assume the defaults are still in place until you have looked.

The counter-case

Interest is the right setting for some businesses.

Hotels, campgrounds, tour operators, wedding venues and anyone else whose customers plan from far away should keep it, because the audience they want is not in town yet.

So should a business that ships across the country, or one that genuinely serves people arranging things from elsewhere, such as a long-distance mover or a home care service booked by family in another province.

For a business whose customers have to be in the area to be served, though, presence is the setting, checked against the report every quarter.

Fifteen minutes this week

  1. Run the user locations report for three months.
  2. Note the clicks and cost from outside your area.
  3. Open location options in each campaign.
  4. Switch to presence if customers must be local.
  5. Add exclusions for places you cannot serve.
  6. Check the same setting in Microsoft Advertising.
  7. Repeat the report every quarter.

Step two is the one that makes the change worth anything. Without the before figure, nobody can say later whether the switch saved money or simply moved it.

The renaming of the other search engine's ad platform is covered in Bing Ads is now Microsoft Advertising.

Frequently asked questions

What is the default location option in Google Ads?

Presence or interest: people in, regularly in, or showing interest in your targeted locations. The interest part lets people elsewhere see your ads if they search about your area.

Why is that a problem for local businesses?

Because the service happens where the customer is. Clicks from people researching a move, planning a trip or browsing from another province cost money and cannot become local customers.

What does the presence setting do?

It shows ads only to people who are in, or regularly in, your targeted locations, which still includes commuters and people who work in the area.

How do I see where clicks came from?

Run the user locations report among the predefined reports. It shows where people who clicked were physically located, with clicks and cost by country, province and city.

Which businesses should keep the interest setting?

Hotels, campgrounds, tour operators, wedding venues, businesses that ship nationally, and services booked from elsewhere, such as long-distance movers. Their customers plan from far away.

Does Microsoft Advertising have the same setting?

Yes. Its default location settings also reach people searching for or viewing pages about your area, so check them at the same time as Google Ads.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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