Comments on: Geo Target Your Way To A Higher CTR & Quality Score

By: Lily

Lily — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:16:29 +0000

That’s a very useful post for me. But how can I get the second screet shot open in my adwords account? In my setting page, I click the edit button next to “location” and a different dialog open up, not the one similar to the second screen shot. I searched for a long time, and still couldn’t find out.

By: Camilo Acosta

Camilo Acosta — Tue, 25 May 2010 19:21:53 +0000

Dave,

Very insightful post! I’m a firm believer in improving CTR and I’d love your feedback on my company, Root Orange. Our technology geo-splits domain names so a different business in every city can use the same vanity URL. This means businesses can use generic domains for their geo-targeted SEM campaigns to vastly improve their CTR.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Camilo Acosta
co-President
Root Orange

By: Jay Orban

Jay Orban — Fri, 07 May 2010 08:15:54 +0000

Great post with nice tips Google seems to be making even more strides to make the customers Adwords experience more lucrative which is great.

I am a firm believer in finding keywords that are very targeted that may take some research but are priced very low cost per click. Usually 9 times out of 10 you will come out way more profitable in the end.

But your best bet is optimizing your website, or blog for the search engines so pay per click will just be a backup plan. Free traffic is always the best traffic.

Nice read, thank you!

By: Jordan McClements

Jordan McClements — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:47:24 +0000

Just want to add – I have done some further testing, and if you have a campaign that targets the Republic of Ireland, and your average position is 3 or higher – then the CTR doesn’t seem to be affected much, but if your average position is lower (your ads always appear down the right hand side) then it can give a really noticeable increase.
With regards to how it affects conversions, very early indications are (with only one campaign) that there are no negative effects.

By: Jordan McClements

Jordan McClements — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:58:05 +0000

I was at an official Google presentation in Castlereagh not long ago, and they guy from Google claimed that the Geo Targeting was 90-95% accurate! (and it would get even better when BT sort out the mess which means that a lot of Northern Ireland users appear to be from Scotland in the near future)
mmmm… I remain to be convinced…
Certainly any test I have done with the AdWords traffic estimator seems to indicate that Google’s estimate of how many poeple there are in Northern Ireland is extremely pessimistic (unless for some reason people in N.I. are *much* less likely to search for stuff on Google than people in GB)..

By: Daryl James

Daryl James — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:19:57 +0000

I am reading more and more about Geo Location tagging being the next big thing on the internet. It’s interesting that the mass of global marketplaces are segmenting once again.

By: Dave Davis

Dave Davis — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:24:35 +0000

I’ve heard from a few sources NI is that bad. I guess due to the small market it’s not even a huge priority for Google either :(

By: Jordan McClements

Jordan McClements — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:56:49 +0000

I’m sure it is still better than the ‘Northern Ireland’ regional targeting in the UK (Cant get accurate figures from anyone but I reckon it is less than 50% accurate!)

By: Dave Davis

Dave Davis — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:20:49 +0000

@Xemytica, no, you will not get penalized.

@Jordan, It’s pretty bad as I am sure you are aware. The closer you are to the city centroid though the better.

@Cassidy, that’s the beauty of it. You just need to target a SINGLE campaign to multiple cities.

By: Cassidy

Cassidy — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:10:23 +0000

Hey Dave, I understand how to target different regions, but I’m confused how to get these regions to show up below my ad (without making a new ad for each region)? Thanks!

By: Michael Delpierre

Michael Delpierre — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:22:51 +0000

You just brought up something I took for granted. I assumed that my city + state would show up but if I am able to use this location setting on a geo-targeted campaign then that makes alot of sense. I am going to try that out now.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:23:39 +0000

I’ve been trying to improve the click through rate of my site. Do you think website optimization has anything to do with click through rate? Appreciate a response, thanks very much!

By: website designers mushroom

website designers mushroom — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:58:40 +0000

Excellent information. I have dabbled in Adwords but havent really looked into it. GEO targetting locla businesses has been turned off for webdesign companies.

By: James

James — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:22:07 +0000

Great post… The more highly targeted, the better! If you want a solid CTR, one trick is to target Gmail from inside your AdWords account. If you create a campaign that is solely served to Gmail, you can achieve laser targeting and higher CTR.

By: Roshan Joshi

Roshan Joshi — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:57:42 +0000

makes sense if you are targeting local business else i see it as a bad idea.

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:02:46 +0000

very good point. Regional specific targeting ads rends to have lower quality score than national open targeting ads due to limited impressions and clicks, do you have any other strategy to overcome a low quality score on regional specific targeting ads?

By: Jordan McClements

Jordan McClements — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:26:40 +0000

I know this is not strictly related to the post, but out of interest, do you have any idea how accurate the regional targeting is on google.ie?

By: Dan Perach

Dan Perach — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 08:25:22 +0000

Neil, use the Google Global geospoofing addon, to preview ads local, then you will see the geotarget under the ad ;)

By: Jay Fence from Nashville

Jay Fence from Nashville — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:41:38 +0000

Great post Dave. I’m looking forward to your next post when you cover how NOT to have your address show up at the bottom of your ads.

By: Xemytica

Xemytica — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:01:25 +0000

This is great – but what if I don’t want to show my complete address? Will I get punished by Google with only country/state and no street address?

By: Jess

Jess — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:25:42 +0000

fantastic dave since my website is mainly for local i will try your method

By: Dave Davis

Dave Davis — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:31:09 +0000

Hi David, thanks for stopping by. The point isn’t about conversions. It is assumed that conversion optimization is either already done (can it ever be) or in the process.

The point is about reducing the cost of your clicks (those clicks that convert no less) by improving your quality score.

Lets say you double your quality from 5 to 10 (just an example) and lets say in this example, you half your CPC. For the same budget, you can get double the clicks.

Weather or not they convert is really up to you. The conversion side of things is a topic for another post.

By: A Rezwanur Rashid

A Rezwanur Rashid — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 08:40:53 +0000

this is a nice post.Dave your advices are very important and helpful. It will help me a lot in my jobs

By: David Dalka

David Dalka — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 03:44:13 +0000

Not to rain on the parade here, but if you reduce CPC by increasing clicks, you are still maximizing Google’s revenue, not the sites revenue. How does this correlate to monetizable conversions?

By: Stephen Irwin

Stephen Irwin — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:19:17 +0000

Thanks Dave great advice on Adwords game theory.

By: Virgil Cook

Virgil Cook — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:48:51 +0000

Good information. I have not used much geo targeting in my PPC and this sounds like it would be a very good move for me to make and start using this method. Thank you…

By: SOLUTT Corporation

SOLUTT Corporation — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:02:11 +0000

Good Stuff. This is great information will surely help boost CTR.

By: Kayla S

Kayla S — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:40:18 +0000

very insightful and helpful. i will definitely try localization techniques you’ve suggested. great blog overall; you just got a new fan =) thanks for sharing!

By: Dewaldt Huysamen

Dewaldt Huysamen — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:45:36 +0000

Excellent information. When you launching your ebook?

By: Zubair Mehar

Zubair Mehar — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:24:35 +0000

Good stuff Dave! Maybe you can help with a quick question, we are finding that if we geo target this way, in many cases a client based in Glasgow may have an IP address located in Manchester and therefore Manchester shows under the adwords ad rather than their true location which can be detrimental. Have you seen the same