bumpski - 12:50 pm on Jun 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

Interesting, I live in Northeastern PA.
I see ads on one of my websites for Landscapers from Boston, NY city, etc. I don't think these landscapers will travel out here to dairy country to provide their services to me.
Oops

I also have ads showing for Landscapers from Dallas, Texas. Guess where my ISP is located Dallas! Pennsylvania!
Oops

So now I have a bunch of miss-Geolocated ads that are displacing ads that do pay. This must happen for site users all over the US!

Adwords advertisers can only set a "National" or country location, but Adsense, clearly trys to Geo-locate ads based on a user's IP and the perceived location of the advertiser, at least in the US. For example the advertiser has the word Dallas in his lawn mowing service ads. My ISP is in Dallas too. The only problem is there is more than one Dallas!

This type of "Local" Geo-location appears to be quite flawed. I have been blocking unfortunate mistargetted Advertisers. The Dallas Texas lawn mower service advertiser does not want people from Dallas, PA. clicking on his ads (Adsense?)! This geo-mis-targetting hurts this advertiser and it would hurt my site's Smart Pricing rating.

I'm an Adwords advertiser as well and this observation implies if you put location information in your Ads they may be misinterpreted and therefore mistargeted, perhaps not even shown! I suspect this may include local phone numbers as well.