Targeted Locations

help with overlapping locations

[AlwaysLearningMore]

Hi,
I recently took over an existing Google Ads account for a client. They have 10 locations and have search campaigns set up per location. The location set ups include both a radius around an address AND the city location, so essential their overlapping.

Can someone please help me understand the benefits and/or negatives to overlapping locations and radius targeting in the same search campaign. Isn't this redundant? Does it hurt or improve search performance? Does it increase your CPC?

Thank you!

[RhinoFish]

Cities can have weird shapes and boundaries, or unincorporated areas that get excluded accidentally, or even badly mapped IP/Geo factors.
Radius can have issues too, like natural boundaries (like rivers or bad roads or high elevations).

Using both overlapping is usually someone trying to overcome the shortages of both techniques.

It should help you cast a more thorough net on a specific area, and since G will put the searcher in just one location, it won't impact performance directly.
Covering a local area more thoroughly though, may allow you to pay a lower CPC (the bigger the pool of people you're bidding across, the more selective you can be with other bidding factors, AND, for a given desired spend, the more traffic you can tap into at a reduced CPC).

Additionally, radius often better attacks the distance issue, meaning the closer someone is to your location, the more likely they'll take the trip. So you might consider one more layer (since you can offset bid on your Geos)... Short Radius, City Geo, Wider Radius... two radius targets plus the city.

Lastly, picture a city as a circle with radius X, now picture your location as NOT being at the center of that circle... picture adding a radius X target... see how radius targeting focuses spend on your location better than the city? Of course you can add radius Y as I suggested, perhaps at a lesser bid. G will use the highest target bid that is eligible, so when you start to diverge your geo offset bids based on measured performance, you've added a new layer of optimization.