7 replies to this topic

[awall19]

Adwords Geotargeting - cool feature

[Vertster]

Hi awall19,

Good find! I will be interested to see how people use this feature. It will certainly benefit many locally focused businesses...

[Haystack]

That is a enhancement to their system. Here's the first application I've tried:

Instead of bidding on just regionally targeted terms:
"Fort Worth web hosting"
"Dallas web hosting"

I could bid on "web hosting" with Dallas/Ft. Worth regional targeting.

This should be good for Google too because it should create more competition for the more general term ("web hosting") by companies who could now bid on that term within their geographical area, thus likely delivering a better conversion rate.

Another use: Companies who work nationally with a few exceptions. I've seen this with some loan companies before. Now they have a better way to exclude traffic from states where they can't do business (compared to -california, -illinois, etc)

[Cygnus]

From a loan company perspective though, the end user rarely types in 'kansas payday loan'; rather, they type in 'payday loan.'

So, while I agree this is a good step, I'd still like to see it refined further [possibly determine regionality based on IP?...no easy solution yet]

Cygnus

[Haystack]

Cygnus, it sounds like that's exactly what Google is doing.

"How does AdWords know where my target users are?
The Google AdWords system maps anonymous IP addresses of browsers to the 210 Designated Marketing Areas (DMARs) in the United States."

So now a company offering Payday Loans could regionally target their "payday loans" ad to the specific states where they offer their services rather than paying for clicks from markets they can't serve.

[Cygnus]

Oops! Thanks, I'll go check this out now.

Cygnus

[cline]

I've already set up geo-targeted Adwords campaigns for a couple of my clients who deliver services only within their metro areas. Let's see how this works....

[cline]

I hate to say much about a few hours of data for just 2 clients, but, here goes.

For client A this looks like it could be a home run. It's a major uptick in traffic and it looks like it may have good conversions.

For client B it looks like it may help a little.

In both cases the campaigns are complicated to set up. Keyword-driven regional campaigns are simple: take all the possible location names and attach them to all the major keywords. This is much tougher. It requires the same degree and quality of keyword research as for an international or national ppc campaign.