Country targetting

Is it through IP address or URL

[EricGen]

Hi,

I have just started a new AdWords campain. We only sell to the UK and are based in France. I selected Where to show my Ads as United Kingdom only. Yet, if I go to google.co.uk from here in France, I see my ads for my keywords. I thought it would find out from my IP address that I am in France or is this setting just so that it shows in google.co.uk only? It doesn't seem right to me, any idea?

Thanks

[eWhisper]

G shows ads on that countries search engine. If you are on google.co.uk - G assumes you're looking for UK info, and will show you those ads.

The country selector is really a search engine selector more than a country selector.

[EricGen]

Thanks. That's a shame.

[danieljean]

Here in Canada, I keep getting bumped over to google.ca if I don't specify .com.

That's likely done with IP ranges, and I imagine the Adsense program does the same thing. I also believe they would have to use IPs for closer geo-targetting.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

EricGen, country targeting does in fact work by IP address. Or at least it begins with IP address.

So, for example, when a user in the UK logs in and searches on Google, the system looks at the users IP address, sees that it is located in the UK - and displays ads targeted to the UK.

However, the domain can be thought of as 'overriding' the IP address. By this I mean that a search on google.co.uk will show ads that target the UK, even if the user is in France, or another location.

The exception to this is google.com, on which ads are shown targeted purely by IP address.

Hope this clarifies a bit!

AWA

[EricGen]

Yes it clear now. Thanks for that. In fact it is useful as it means I can see my ads

[Niall Kennedy]

I am in the UK. Is it possible to see what Adwords are being served to the US?

Thanks

Niall

[robertskelton]

Better late than never....

To see US results from any other country, append the following to the end of the Google search URL:

&gl=us

I figure this will work for absolutely any Google search URL, although if the gl was mentioned twice it seems to use the one closest to the end

[eyeinthesky]

On country targeting, is it possible to exclude any country, kind of like negative keyword?

I'm thinking of excluding countries without high fraud rate like Nigeria, Pakistan, etc

Anyone knows? AWA?

[mil2k]

Yes. Select your campaign -> Edit Settings and select the list of countries where you want to show your Ads.

Is this what you were asking?

[eyeinthesky]

No, I am asking for a short-cut way to exclude only 1 or 2 countries instead of selecting each and every country that I want.

Thanks anyway.

[Troppo]

The closest thing to a shortcut is to manually (shift key and mouse) select all countries on the dropdown list and then use the control key and mouse to deselect the unwanted ones.

[eyeinthesky]

Thanks Troppo. Guess that's the way.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

On country targeting, is it possible to exclude any country, kind of like negative keyword?
I'm thinking of excluding countries without high fraud rate like Nigeria, Pakistan, etc

Anyone knows? AWA?

Well, Troppo hit the nail on the head:

The closest thing to a shortcut is to manually (shift key and mouse) select all countries on the dropdown list and then use the control key and mouse to deselect the unwanted ones.

I'll forward the idea of excluding particular countries as a 'feature request' later in the week though, eyeinthesky.

AWA

[eyeinthesky]

Thanks AWA. That will certainly help us keep out fraudulent clicks and requests for samples ;)

Beware of Nigeria (even though their soccer team is not bad).