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Google Ads location targeting: pay for clicks where you actually work.
You set your Google Ads campaign to your city. The ad can still show to someone three provinces away, because the default setting also counts people who are only interested in your city. For a business that drives to the job, that is money spent on calls you cannot take.
The fix is one setting and a short list of places. Half an hour, most of it deciding where you really go.
The setting that is on by default
When you add locations to a campaign, Google Ads has two options for who counts as being there. Google lays them out in its help page on location options:
- Presence or interest. People in, regularly in, or who have shown interest in your included locations. This is the default, and Google marks it recommended.
- Presence. People in or regularly in your included locations.
“Interest” can come from what someone searched, places they looked up on Maps, or places they have been before. So a person in Calgary who searches “furnace repair Halifax” can count as interested in Halifax. Sometimes that is a real customer. For most plumbers, roofers, and cleaners, it is a click from someone you will never meet.
Google’s own page says to consider Presence when you only want to reach people in specific locations. That describes most service businesses.
Draw the area you actually serve
Start with a map, not with the ad account. Write down the cities and towns you will drive to for an ordinary job, at an ordinary price. Then pick one of two ways to target them:
- Named places. Add each city or town you serve. Good when your area follows town lines, like a cleaner who covers Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge.
- A radius. An address and a distance. Good when you go anywhere within a drive of the shop. Use the distance you will drive for a normal job, not the farthest you have ever gone once.
Do not target the whole province “to get more data”. A province is not a service area, and the clicks from the far end of it cost the same as the ones from your street.
Switch the option to Presence
In the campaign, open Settings, then Locations, then Location options. Under Include, choose Presence: people in or regularly in your included locations. Save. Do this for every Search campaign, because the setting is per campaign.
Google says most campaigns see fewer impressions after switching away from the default. That is the point. The ones you lose are mostly the ones that could not become a job.
One honest exception. If people really do hire you from away, such as cottage owners in Toronto booking a septic pump-out up north, or landlords who live in another city, the interest part can bring real calls. Try the default for a month and count where the calls came from before you decide.
Exclude the places you will not go
A radius is a circle and your area is not. If the circle catches a city across the river or a town you never drive to, add it under excluded locations. Exclusions already work on presence, so the ad stops showing to people who are in those places.
It is close, not exact
Google works out location from signals like the phone’s location settings and the IP address. It also says it may show your ad in nearby, closely related areas, like the suburbs around a city you targeted, and that accuracy is not guaranteed. Presence makes the leak smaller. It does not seal it.
Check where the ads matched
After two weeks, open Insights and reports, then When and where ads showed, then Matched locations. Read down the list. If places you do not serve are taking clicks, exclude them or tighten the radius.
Two things to know. Matched location can be the place someone showed interest in, not where they were standing. And a full report of where people physically were takes a custom report in Report editor. For a small account, the matched locations list plus the calls you actually got is usually enough.
What this will not do
Tight targeting stops paying for the wrong town. It does not make a weak page convert. If the ad lands on a home page with no phone number, fix the service page first. That is why ads come last in what to fix first.
In Google Search ads, we set the area and the location option before the campaign goes live, and check the search terms twice a month after. Management is $1,200 a month, with ad spend of at least $1,500 a month on your own card, a $150 setup, and a three-month minimum. Prices in Canadian dollars, before HST. If you would rather set it up yourself, use the steps above. If you want a hand, tell us where you are or write to hello@getcalled.ca.
Questions
Presence shows the ad to people who are in, or regularly in, the places you target. Presence or interest, the default, also shows it to people who have shown interest in those places, for example through what they searched, even if they are somewhere else.
If you drive to the job, Presence is usually the better fit. Google recommends the default for most advertisers, and its own help page says to consider Presence when you only want to reach people in specific locations. If out-of-town owners do hire you, such as cottage or rental owners, try the default and watch the calls.
Yes. Google Ads lets you target a radius around an address as well as cities, regions, or the whole country. Pick the distance you will actually drive for a job, not the farthest you have ever gone.
No. Google bases location on signals such as the device and IP address, and says it may also show ads in nearby, closely related areas. Accuracy is not guaranteed. That is why the matched locations report is worth checking every few weeks.