Google Ads Location Targeting: Options, Exclusions and Reports Explained

Google Ads location targeting decides which geographic areas your ads can appear in, and the location option decides whether “in that area” means people who are physically there or also people who have shown interest in it. Getting both right is one of the simplest ways to stop paying for clicks from people you can’t serve.

This guide covers the targeting and exclusion options under their current names, how Google estimates where someone is, radius targeting, why clicks appear from outside your area, how to read the location reports, and a checklist for reviewing your settings.

What Google Ads location targeting can include

Google says campaign locations may include countries, areas within a country, a radius around a location, or location groups, and that you can add up to 1,000 location targets at a time in bulk. Targets and exclusions are managed in the Locations section of each campaign’s settings.

Two practical points before choosing:

• Target where you can deliver. A business that ships nationwide and a business that sends a technician to the customer’s door need very different settings.
• Match campaigns to markets. If different regions have different prices, delivery terms or conversion values, separate campaigns make the location data easier to act on than one campaign covering everything.

How Google determines where someone is

Location targeting depends on Google’s estimate of where a person is, and that estimate is built from several signals. According to Google’s overview of how location targeting works:

• Physical location is typically based on the IP address of the device or, on Wi-Fi, the network’s IP address.
• If a mobile device connects through a mobile carrier’s proxy server, Google may use the carrier’s IP address.
• Depending on the user’s location settings, Google may use a precise device location from GPS, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and a cell ID database when Wi-Fi or GPS isn’t available.
• Separately, Google may detect locations someone has shown interest in, for example through terms in their searches that indicate a place.

Google states plainly that because these signals vary, 100% accuracy is not guaranteed. It also notes that targeting a city may show ads to people in nearby suburbs. In practice, corporate networks and VPNs can make a device appear to be wherever the network connects to the internet, and carrier routing can blur location on mobile. None of that is unusual, and none of it is evidence of anything suspicious on its own.

Presence vs presence or interest

The location option is easy to overlook because the default is set for you. Google’s page on advanced location options describes two choices for targeting:

Google explains that interest can come from search terms, recent presence in a location or content viewed. Its own example is a Paris bakery: with the default, ads can reach people in or regularly in Paris and people who have shown interest in Paris bakeries.

Several details on the same page are worth knowing:

• The interest-only targeting option can no longer be set for Search, Display or Shopping campaigns.
• For exclusions, the option is Presence: people likely to be located in the excluded areas won’t see your ads, but people outside them may still see your ads. The interest-based exclusion option can no longer be set for Search, Display, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns.
• Hotel campaigns use only Presence targeting.
• Google says it makes a best effort to match users to your settings, but that 100% accuracy is not guaranteed.

The phrase “regularly in” matters too. A commuter who works in your target city but lives outside it may plausibly be treated as regularly present, which is often what a lunchtime restaurant wants and rarely a problem.

Location exclusions

Google describes location exclusion as a way to prevent your ad from showing in certain parts of your targeted locations, such as a city within a region you otherwise target. Rules worth knowing from that page:

• If an area is both included and excluded, the exclusion takes priority. Excluding a state therefore also excludes a city inside it that you target.
• You can exclude up to 1,000 locations at a time in bulk.
• Google says the number of locations you exclude shouldn’t exceed the number you target per campaign.
• Since March 31, 2024, campaigns that target all countries and territories are limited to 122 country-level exclusions.

Exclusions are most useful for carving out areas inside a broader target: a neighborhood you can’t service, a region with different regulations, or a market handled by a separate campaign. They don’t stop people elsewhere from seeing ads about a place, because the exclusion option works on presence.

Radius targeting

Radius targeting draws a circle around an address. Google requires a radius of at least 1 km around any given location, and Hotel Ads campaigns can’t be targeted by radius. To set one, you choose the Radius option in the location settings, enter the center address, set the distance and unit, and check the map before saving.

Some practical considerations:

• Circles ignore travel time. A 10-mile radius may include areas across a river or a toll road that customers never cross. Compare the map with where your customers actually come from.
• Small radii limit volume. A tight circle in a low-density area may not produce enough impressions to learn anything.
• Several radii can overlap. Overlapping circles around multiple branches are easier to manage when each branch’s performance is reviewed separately.

Why clicks appear from outside your target area

Out-of-area clicks often prompt suspicions of fraud, yet there is usually an ordinary explanation:

1. The location option. With Presence or interest, someone elsewhere who searched with your city in mind is a valid match.
2. Regular presence. Commuters, students and seasonal residents can count as regularly present.
3. Approximate signals. IP-based location, carrier proxies and VPNs can place a device somewhere it isn’t.
4. Nearby areas. Google notes that city targeting may reach nearby suburbs.
5. Travelers. Someone physically in your area today may live elsewhere, so the phone number or billing address in your own records points somewhere else.
6. Report labels. The location shown in the reports may be a location of interest rather than the person’s physical location, as the next section explains.

Note: A click from an unexpected region is a data point, not a verdict. Before treating it as invalid traffic, check the location option, the matched location and the behavior of the resulting sessions. Our guide to segment-level ad traffic analysis shows how to compare locations fairly.

Reading the location reports

Google offers two views of geographic performance, described on its page about measuring geographic performance:

• Targeted locations shows performance by the locations you targeted.
• Matched locations shows performance based on the locations where your ads appeared.

The “Most specific location” column shows the most detailed information Google has about the location used to match your ad, and Google says that location may be either the person’s physical location or a location they showed interest in. The same page lists several caveats: metrics below country level may not add up to campaign totals, some areas are unspecified when an IP address can’t be resolved to a location, the distance report may show distances greater than your radius, and invalid clicks are filtered out, so click counts by area can differ from other data sources.

To open the matched view, Google’s instructions for viewing matched locations and distance reports point to Campaigns, then Insights & reports, then “When and where your ads showed,” then the Matched locations tab. The distance report, which measures the distance between the location that triggered your ad and your closest business location, is built in Report editor, is available for Search and Shopping campaigns, and is most useful if you use location assets.

How to read them well:

• Compare cost per real conversion by location, not clicks or click-through rate.
• Look for regions you don’t serve, then check whether the location option explains them before excluding anything.
• Cross-check with your own records, such as customer postcodes in a CRM, which reflect where buyers actually are.
• Ignore tiny numbers. Three clicks from a distant city tell you very little.

How location settings waste budget and trigger false alarms

Location problems show up in two ways.

Budget waste. Interest-based reach for a business that only serves residents, a radius drawn far wider than the real service area, and missing exclusions for areas handled elsewhere all buy genuine clicks that can never convert. Time zones add a quieter problem: Google says ad schedules are set based on your account’s time zone, so a campaign targeting customers in another time zone needs its schedule adjusted, or ads may run at night for the people you want to reach. Location is one of several structural causes covered in our guide to finding and fixing Google Ads budget waste.

False fraud suspicions. A cluster of clicks from another state looks alarming in a dashboard, especially in an analytics tool that infers city from network data. Before treating it as abuse, rule out the explanations above. Google defines invalid traffic as traffic that doesn’t represent genuine interest in your business and filters it with automated systems and manual review; out-of-area clicks that come from interested people are not invalid in that sense. If clicks from a location rise sharply without any change to your settings, treat it as a change to diagnose: a structured Google Ads performance investigation checks settings, demand and tracking before traffic quality, and our overview of practical safeguards against invalid clicks covers what to do if suspicion remains.

For background on what each recorded click represents in the first place, see our explainer on how Google Ads counts clicks.

A location settings checklist

Key takeaways

• Google estimates location from IP addresses, device signals and stated interest, and says accuracy is not guaranteed, so some out-of-area clicks are normal.
• The default option, Presence or interest, also reaches people interested in your area; Presence restricts ads to people likely to be there or regularly there.
• Exclusions take priority over targets and work on presence, which makes them good for carving out areas inside a broader target.
• The matched location in reports can be a location of interest, so read it together with your settings and your own customer data.
• Rule out settings, travel and approximate signals before treating unexpected locations as invalid traffic.