Google AdWords - How Local do You Want to Go?

If you advertise local products and services, Google AdWords has provided regional and local targeting for a few years, but how local do you want to go?

It really depends on what you provide. It could be a home for sale, legal services, Web design, car rental, or local chinese food.

Google’s AdWords platform lets you customize your location(s), but it can be tricky. By default, you can easily show your ads in the Twin Cities area.

These are the areas your Minneapolis-St. Paul (metro) ads will be shown.

This is great, but the above image is broad and shows Bemidji, MN as somewhere in the Twin Cities metro. It’s a pretty cool place, but it’s a long 220 mile drive. You might not want to use this option if you’re looking for impulse in-store traffic.

To put it in perspective, a drive from Pensacola, Florida to New Orleans is shorter by almost 20 miles.

If you’re specifically looking for Minneapolis customers, you can set it up this way…

Your ads will be shown here.

If you want to specify a radius from a city…

Here’s what you see.

More to come on all of this in the near future…