UK Geotargeting accuracy / coverage

[nickyo]

Just wondering if anyone could point me towards resources / advise on the quality of Adwords geotargeting accuracy?

We need to target searches within a 20-mile radius (not London), but I fear volume will be very low - not due to number of searches, but that Google cannot identify users from my location.

I believe Google has more difficult with the UK than the US in this respect? Can anyone advise precisely why that is?

Thanks

[poster_boy]

I believe Google has more difficult with the UK than the US in this respect?

Sounds like this is more a theory than a question. Have you seen supporting information for this?

[T_Media]

I have used geo targeting very successfully for Hull,England.

Not sure if you've heard of it..

For a relatively small area like this, there's definately a big decrease in visitors, you need to be targeting wide topics and the product needs to have enough profit margin to make one or 2 sales every so often, worthwhile.

As for how accurate it is. I've found it to be pretty much on the ball, only occasionally do I get visitors outside the range I specified, its not such a big deal.

[beesticles]

My understanding is that it's done by IP address, and that the way UK IP addresses are assigned means that they're not as well defined geographically compared to the US.

I think you'll just have to give it a go and see what happens. I suspect you have more luck with cities than in the country.

@T_media - is Kingston Communications still the dominate telco in Hull? Perhaps that's why you've found it to be accurate.

[T_Media]

Yeah, karoo still completely owns all the telephone systems here - so it kinda makes it easy to target.

But still, I've been successful when targeting areas outside of hull like s#*$!horpe, Grimsby and Beverley.

[T_Media]

my god, when will filtering software ever learn that S C U N T H O R P E is a town and not a rude word.