Showing ads in only one country problem

[xtom]

I've set up my ad campaign to only show ads for Ireland. But someone with a UK IP searches on Google.ie and clicks on my ad. Is this how it's supposed to work?

[gregbo]

Geotargeting is not reliable. Also, searching on the site that is "targeted" to the country in question (e.g. due to its TLD) may very well carry more weight than the presumed "location" of the IP address. Finally, there are situations where this is a completely reasonable action to take. Suppose someone is visiting the UK but wants to search on their favorite engine from Ireland?

[xtom]

"Suppose someone is visiting the UK but wants to search on their favorite engine from Ireland? "

This would be a very very small percentage that I would gladly sacrifice.

An option to set how tight geo targetting would be good.
ie. an option to only show for ips for the same country or ips + the native tld.

[gregbo]

IME, geotargeting does not work well enough to guarantee the level of control you want. In general, you cannot guarantee that the country of registration of a particular IP address is the country from which access to a site is initiated.

[idolw]

can't you try advertising in certain area of the country you target?

[suzyvirtual]

FYI, geotargeting also includes searches qualified by the location in the keyword. So, if you are advertising in Ireland only for the keyword "widgets" and somebody from any location searches for "widgets ireland" you WILL show up.

[xtom]

"can't you try advertising in certain area of the country you target?"

I could but I want to appear for "widgets Ireland" which would be a lot more searches.

"FYI, geotargeting also includes searches qualified by the location in the keyword. So, if you are advertising in Ireland only for the keyword "widgets" and somebody from any location searches for "widgets ireland" you WILL show up."

I never knew that, my keyword does contain Ireland. Surely if someone wanted this to be the case they would not specify a region in the first place. It seems targeting for a specific region is more flexible than I thought.