I'd like to get a little more perspective on this before I respond back to my AdWords rep with further questions.
Here is the situation: I work for a company who's geographic locality is a competitive advantage. And so we run into the situation where our services are more relevant to a business several thousand miles away than a competing company one mile away from that same business.
I asked the AdWords rep whether our ppc ads were at all showing lower because of our distant proximity to the user viewing the ad and because we don't have a local physical presence. This was the reply:
"I checked with some of my colleagues and we have verified that the location of your [company] will not affect the auction algorithm (i.e. local companies' ads will not have an advantage over yours just because their location is local). As long as you are targeting the correct area, the factors that go into your ad rank are Quality Score and maximum CPC bid."
So is it really true from what you've seen that QS is not affected by proximity of services to customers? Are local and national companies really on a level playing field when it comes to PPC? What about the ads that show on Maps results, is there really no local advantage?
I appreciate any insight and perspective you can share on this. Thanks in advance.
C7Mike
