Google Ads

Location targeting: presence or interest

Whether your ads reach people in your area, or anyone who has shown interest in it.

Google's location setting has a small option under it that decides who "in Mumbai" means. "Presence or interest" (the default) shows your ad to people who are in the location and to people anywhere who searched about it or showed interest in it. "Presence" restricts it to people actually there. For a local business the default buys clicks from other countries: someone in another city reading about Mumbai sees the ad, clicks, and can never become a customer. The setting is two clicks deep in campaign settings and most people never open it. Switching to presence is one of the few changes that reliably lowers spend and raises conversion rate on the same day.

Augusta Bhardwaj

Built Admiral · runs the audits on real accounts