Location options allow you to control how a target location is interpreted by Google. For example, if one of your campaigns is targeting “USA”, they ads could still be seen by people outside of the US. For a detailed explanation of all location options, check this article.

Location options can be configured for each campaign but not for individual ad groups.

Step 1: How to change your location options

Click on a campaign -> Settings -> All settings (tab) -> Location options (advanced)

The default setting is “People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my targeted location (recommended)”

Step 2: Check how your location options affect your ad delivery and performance

Click on a campaign -> Dimensions -> View: Geographic

Note: If you can’t see the column “Location type” in your report, click on “Columns” (drop down menu) -> Modify columns. You can then add the column “Location type” to your report.

Now let’s look at the example below to see how location options affect your ad delivery:

– The campaign above was set to “People in, search for, or viewing pages about my targeted location (recommended)”
– Targeting was set to Germany
– The analysis shows that 2,061 clicks were generated by the location type “Location of interest”. These are users who are not located in Germany but still considered relevant by way of their search behaviour. Assuming this was a campaign for a hotel, someone located in France search for “hotel berlin” might still see the ads even though the targeting is set to “Germany”.
– You can avoid this if you set your location options to “People in my targeted location”