Mountain View, California — One of the most essential elements of Google Adwords has been the ability for advertisers to target specific locations to ensure that their ad spend was happening in the geography of their business. Keeping this in focus, Google on Monday announced some revision to its location targeting application within AdWords to Google Maps, which provides more info about locations, make relevant location suggestions and improve accuracy in targeting.
Interestingly, with the latest update, Google has connected AdWords with Google Maps, which provide more information about locations, and further empower advertisers to search and discover new targets, view targeted areas on a map, and get additional information about the audience likely to see the targeted ads.
The update also includes a new “reach” column which estimates potential users within the location target. On the list of results, advertisers can choose the ones that they want to target or exclude. Along with this, they have also refreshed the location targeting interface in AdWords. “Let us say that you want to target your latest AdWords campaign to New York City, explains Smita Hashim, Group Product Manager on Google’s Local Ads Quality team.
Next, “On your Campaign Settings tab, as you type ‘New York’ into the search box in the location targeting section, you will instantly see helpful search suggestions. The suggestions include (1) matches like the city of New York, (2) locations that enclose New York (such as the state of New York), and (3) related locations that may be near the location that you have entered, have a similar name, or enclose a location that has a similar name. You can then pick the options that make the most sense for your business and quickly make the appropriate selection,” the post explains.
Moreover, as the targets have been chosen, Google utilizes its Maps capabilities to illustrate a map of the geographic area being targeted. The company is also now offers reach numbers to estimate how many people use Google properties within the selected target. Besides, in some geographic areas, Google may not be able to target by IP but will just use intent data–when people use the name of the place in their search–to do the targeting. In those cases, the interface will say “Limited Reach.”
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“You can also view your locations via a map, which shows more detailed location outlines,” adds Hashim. “The new application also allows you to view the boundaries of multiple locations that you have selected simultaneously, so you can see how much area the city of New York (smaller area shaded in blue) covers in relation to the entire New York metro area (larger area shaded in gray). Once you choose a location, you can easily add, exclude, or view nearby locations by clicking the appropriate links.”
When an advertiser targets a radius, it will show “locations within this target”. Also, what may be the most important aspect to the update is the increase of total location targets per campaign. No longer will campaigns be limited to just 300 targets, you can now set 10,000 locations per campaign (plus 500 additional proximity targets).
Last but not least, Google is now eliminating polygon targeting. It will be supported only through the end of the year. Google recommends using the “Target a Radius” feature instead.