Google Overcharging by 5x

failing geographic location element

[doortodoororganics]

Google is displaying ads, set to display on in the United States, worldwide. We had some of our accounts set to display for:

Global or nationwide
• United States

and determined that the ads were being displayed to many IP's outside of the US.

We changed the ads to the Regional/Cities option, and selected each of the 50 states and have noticed our traffic is 20% of its previous 4 month average!

What follows is the dialog between us and google on this issue.

We wrote Google seeking clarification. They responded as follows:
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<paraphrased> Google looks at your IP address when showing you ads, no matter which Google search you are on, such as Google.co.uk. So, if you have a U.S. based IP, and search Google.co.uk, Google will show you ads targeted towards the U.S. as that is your registered IP address. </paraphrase>

We sent them one of the many IP addresses we had collected and Google responded:
-------

<paraphrase>Please provide us with the keyword and Google domain being searched so we can try and replicate what you are seeing. </paraphrase>

--------

we sent the info they asked for. and got this:
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<paraphrase>Please send us the domain name you were searching on.</paraphrase>
--------

i provided this information. here is their final
email:

--
<paraphrase>Google tracks users by IP. Sometimes, our IP locator will show an IP as unknown. In these cases, the default IP used by Google is U.S.

If you want to make sure that only U.S. searches see your ads, you can change your targeting options to include all of the U.S. states </paraphrase>

----

thoughts?

[edited by: eWhisper at 1:15 pm (utc) on Feb. 24, 2005]
[edit reason] No email excerpts, please see TOS #9 [/edit]

[doortodoororganics]

no one is interested in this? my adwords spending is down 80%....

google's overcharging you --- your ads!

come on boys!

[mr2828]

So you switched to targetting all US states, and your clicks and cost declined by 80%?

Are you still getting the same amount of sales/orders/conversions as before?

[doortodoororganics]

Yeah, no decrease in sales...the products only ship within the US. I'm surprised no one else is noticing this in their logs - i'm seeing it on every PPC i manage!

[steve40]

doortodoororganics
thanks for the heads up late last year I ran an adwords campaign targetted at USA only but dropped completly due to the poor ROI ( I suspected fraud but did not have the tools in place for detailed analysis ) .
I will now try again next month using advice from yourself
on targetting by states only , possibly lose some potential customers but may make the campaign viable ROI
thanks
steve

[TerriGW]

I tried this and now when my ads appear they have MY state listed underneath them. I don't want the state I am in to be listed as it might deter buyers from other states... so it doesn't work for me, but sounded worth a try. Thanks

[mr2828]

I don't think this will work well for us, not only because it would have our state under the ad, but because our ads would only show on Google and not on the other search sites that Google powers such as AOL:

[adwords.google.com...]

[MovingOnUp]

I'm sure AWA will have more to say on this, but I bet there are other explantions. A large part of it is probably IP addresses that are in the US but that can't be narrowed down to a specific state. AOL is a prime example of that.

[doortodoororganics]

I think a large part of it is a poorly kept database of IP addresses. Where a very up-to-date database is available, i thing G is playing stupid.

In their responce to me they indicate "sure sure, we see that your IP is clearly outside of the US."

yet, the ads were being displayed to the ip address.

[ogletree]

If you do this your ads will not show up on aol at all. Your state does not show up on the search. Their state shows up. Think about it you said only show in each state. So whatever state they are in is what will show up not yours. You would need to use a proxy to test this. If you do anything regional you will eliminate all aol users.