Google Ads location targeting: check your service area

Can you set location targeting at ad group level?

Sometimes, but the campaign type and the kind of location setting matter. A blanket answer that every Google Ads location setting belongs only to a campaign would miss current AI Max and Demand Gen features.

There is also a wording difference inside Google’s Demand Gen guidance. Its audiences overview lists proximity among options available at campaign and ad-group level, while the more specific FAQ says:

You can only set the radius for location at the campaign level.

Our reading: use the specific radius instruction for Demand Gen rather than treating the overview’s broad list as an ad-group radius procedure. The creation guide likewise directs radius targeting to campaign-level location and language settings.

How do you set a radius or exclude a country?

Use the actual location controls, then check both the included area and its exclusions. An exclusion can remove a place that a broader target would otherwise include.

Google’s radius instructions, checked 20 Oct 2026, go through Campaigns → Locations, the blue pencil, Select a campaign, then Radius. Enter the centre address, distance and measurement unit, check the map and save the target and settings.

The same page requires a radius of at least 1 km. It warns that a very small target may show intermittently or not at all if it does not meet targeting criteria. A permitted minimum is not a recommendation for your service area.

For an exclusion, Google’s exclusion guide uses campaign Settings → Locations: search for the area and choose Exclude, or use Advanced search, then save. Inspect Excluded locations afterwards. Select the intended country or area from the returned match rather than trusting a typed name alone.

Google’s exclusion guide says that when an area is both included and excluded, the exclusion takes priority. Its advanced location guide says the default exclusion concerns people likely located in the excluded places; people outside those places may still receive ads.

Our suggested check: compare the saved result with the business’s accepted addresses, especially where a broad region contains a town the team does not serve.

There is a narrower country-limit rule: campaigns positively targeting all countries and territories are limited to 122 country-level exclusions in Google’s exclusion guide. Do not apply that count as a universal limit for every local campaign or every kind of location exclusion.

Should a local business choose Presence or Presence or Interest?

Our suggestion for a service strictly limited to one town is to test Presence, with suitable enquiries as the acceptance measure. That agrees with the local-service suggestion in our Google Ads audit checklist; it is not a universal setting for every advertiser.

Google’s advanced location guide describes Presence or Interest as reaching people likely in, regularly in, or interested in the targeted locations. Presence concerns people likely in or regularly in them. Advanced options apply to Search, Display and Demand Gen.

Google calls Presence or Interest the default and recommended option and a best practice on Search and Demand Gen. It warns that most campaigns see fewer impressions after switching away from the default, and lists wanting only users in specific locations as a case for Presence.

For example, a person arranging work at a property in your town may be useful even while elsewhere. That is our business example, not a promise about how Google identifies a particular person. Confirm the job address and the service required before labelling an enquiry geographically wrong.

For PMax, use our PMax lead-quality guide for the diagnosis and Google’s PMax guidance for its specific out-of-area-lead scenario.

Google also warns that its location signals vary and do not guarantee complete accuracy:

100% accuracy is not guaranteed in every situation.

Our reading: Presence is not proof of residence, and changing it does not establish what caused an earlier unsuitable enquiry. Keep the old setting and business evidence with the proposed change.

What does the location report prove about your leads?

A Google location report describes an advertising location basis, not a verified service address for each enquiry. Keep those records separate when deciding what to change.

Google’s geographic-performance guide distinguishes Targeted locations, the places configured, from Matched locations, which may be physical locations or locations of interest. These views aggregate across users.

The matched-location instructions use Campaigns → Insights & reports → When and where your ads showed → Matched locations.

For physical location, Google’s Report Editor Locations reference describes users’ physical locations regardless of the location used for matching; it maps this to the legacy Locations → User Location report. Inspect it in Report Editor if it is available in the account; the product described below does not fetch it.

Our suggested acceptance card below is entirely invented: a repair business serves Stonebridge but not Eastbank. The campaign is Search, the enquiry window is 5–11 Oct 2026, and the business checks the same enquiries through 20 Oct. Place names, settings, figures and decisions are examples, not a real account or Google benchmark.

In this invented card, 12 + 4 + 2 = 18. If the same campaign spent $420 in the same 5–11 Oct window, its descriptive cost is $23.33 per enquiry and provisionally $35 per suitable enquiry. Those ratios are not a forecast, profit or the incremental cost of the four outside-area enquiries.

Our reading: a location-labelled report row and an unsuitable job address are different evidence. Neither establishes the other without the actual enquiry record; an unresolved address must remain visible.

Which location change should you make first?

Our suggestion: change the evidenced mismatch before broadening or tightening every location setting. Choose one intervention that the operator can explain and the business can check.

1. Confirm the promise. If the ad or landing page suggests a wider service area than the team accepts, record the wording and the actual boundary. A targeting change cannot make an unavailable job deliverable.
2. Inspect the saved target. Compare the radius, units, inclusions and exclusions with the accepted addresses. Preserve the previous values and the reason for the proposed edit.
3. Choose the location option deliberately. For the strictly local invented service, our proposed test is Presence after the boundary check. Keep useful outside-area buyers distinct from outside-area jobs.
4. Assess the same outcome. Compare confirmed suitable, outside and unresolved enquiries using the same definition and a stated observation window. An immediate fall in total leads is not, by itself, evidence of an improvement.

Use the change-history guide to record what changed, and the tracking guide if the enquiry count itself is unreliable. Correlation between a geographic edit and a later cost change does not settle causation.

What can Variafy help inspect?

Variafy is in the free beta, with Google Ads support live. For an authorised connected account, it reads campaign location settings, returned geographic targets and exclusions, and radius values with their units. It also reads the campaign’s returned location option and ordinary advertising performance, subject to coverage limits.

It does not read ad-group locations, so Demand Gen ad-group targeting and AI Max Locations of interest are not visible to it; empty campaign locations there do not mean no targeting.

It does not read Google’s User Location report or the physical address of each lead. The business supplies its own service-area rule and enquiry evidence; Google Ads changes are made manually.

A suggested request is: “Show this campaign’s included and excluded locations, radius with units, location option and data limits. Compare those settings with the service-area rule I provide; list the mismatches and questions that still need a person to confirm.”

What should the operator and office check next?

Our suggestion: hand over a short acceptance card with a named owner, rather than an instruction to “fix location targeting”. The card should make clear which evidence is available and which question still needs an answer.

For the invented business, the immediate office task is to confirm the two unresolved job addresses. The operator checks whether the saved radius matches the actual service boundary and records the proposed Presence test. Neither task needs a claim that every outside-area report row is a targeting failure.

How we checked

Questions

Related guides

• Google Ads audit checklist for a lead business (with AI)
• Google Ads not spending? Diagnose zero and low impressions
• Performance Max for lead generation: check the leads you can accept