Is Targetting Locally For Services Really Difficult?

[Planet13]

I noticed that the adwords ads for a service in my area are particularly bad. This made me wonder if there have been recent changes that make it much more difficult for people to target local services, or whether the people running their campaigns are just really incompetent.

For instance, if I search for:

"county / town specific widget service"

There are several ads at the top that are for local companies that don't provide that particular service for widgets. (They perform an entirely different service.)

There are ads for people who DO provide that specific service, but they are either in a different part of the country - or on a different continent altogether.

Then there is an ad for a referral company that COULD refer you to a provider of that service.

Since I hope to use adwords to promote my own specific local service, is there something I need to be aware of that google is doing to make it more difficult to target specific cities and towns?

Thanks in advance.

[buckworks]

It's not difficult to geo-target ads even to a very small area. AdWords' geotargeting isn't 100% accurate but it's in the high nineties.

It sounds to me as though some of the advertisers you describe need to make smarter use of negative keywords to tighten their targeting.

On the one hand they get extra exposure by showing up in oddball searches, but on the other hand they'll get a poor clickthrough rate and that will push their costs up even for the searches where they really belong.

Being more selective about who sees your ads is often the fastest way to improve the cost-effectiveness of Adwords campaigns.

[Planet13]

Thanks, Buckworks.