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…
February 4, 2008 at 1:40 am
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Matt Hanson
February 12, 2008 at 4:55 am
I’m a MInnesotan (Maple Grove) living in Prague, Czech Republic and working on local search for this city.
The distances in the U.S. are amazing for Europeans. Minnesota (87,000 sq. miles) is about three times the size of the Czech Republic (30,000 sq. miles), but I have gotten used to Europe and now think of driving to Dresden, Germany from Prague as major trip even though it’s all of 92 miles away. I’d think nothing of driving 90 miles in Minnesota.
Using the area covered by the Google AdWords MSP Metro area for Prague would have you showing your ads to people in at least three surrounding countries, where they wouldn’t even be able to understand the language of the ad!
February 12, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Thanks Matt and Jack.
Jack, I didn’t think of it that way before. I was surprised to see that graphic when I was messing around with it.
Minnesota says hello to Prague!