Google Ads Location Targeting: Presence vs Interest
How geo-targeting works, the Presence vs Presence-or-Interest setting that quietly wastes local budget, and the radius, exclusion and bid tools that sharpen it.
Location targeting controls where your ads show geographically. The setting that trips people up is under Location options: Presence or Interest (the default — people in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your area) versus Presence (only people actually in or regularly in your area). For most local and service businesses, switch to Presence to stop paying for remote searchers. Keep Presence or Interest for travel, real estate and tourism.
Control where your ads show — and to whom
Location targeting sets the geography of your campaign: a country, a state, a city, a postal code, or a radius around an address. Google works out where someone is from their IP, device GPS, Wi-Fi and account history — and matches that against your targeting to decide if your ad is eligible.
Presence or Presence-or-Interest?
This one setting quietly wastes local budget. Pick your business and we’ll tell you which to use.
Presence vs Presence or Interest
Buried under Location options (advanced) is the single most misunderstood geo setting. It decides whether “targeting London” means people in London or anyone in the world interested in London.
| Option | Who sees your ads |
|---|---|
| Presence or Interest (default) | People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your locations — including remote searchers |
| Presence | Only people in, or regularly in, your targeted locations |
Travel, real estate, education
The default isn’t always wrong. If you’re in travel, tourism, real estate or education, someone in New York searching “London flats to rent” is a genuine buyer — and Google’s own data shows those verticals get around 5% more conversions on the broader setting. The rule of thumb: sell to people in a place → Presence; sell to people heading to a place → Presence or Interest.
Radius, exclusions, bid adjustments, reports
- Radius targeting — draw a circle (e.g. 10 km) around your store or service base.
- Location exclusions — block areas you don’t serve, to stop wasted spend.
- Location bid adjustments — bid more where conversion rates or value are higher (mostly for manual bidding).
- Location reports — check the matched-locations report to see where clicks really came from, and add poor areas as negatives.
- Location targeting sets the geography of your campaign by country, city, postcode or radius.
- The key setting is Presence vs Presence or Interest under Location options.
- The default (Presence or Interest) shows ads to remote searchers — wasteful for local businesses.
- Switch to Presence for local/service businesses; keep the default for travel and real estate.
- Use radius, exclusions, bid adjustments and the matched-locations report to refine.
Location targeting FAQs
What is the difference between Presence and Presence or Interest?
Which location setting should I use?
Why are my ads showing outside my target area?
How does Google know where someone is?
What is radius targeting?
Can I bid more in certain locations?
Related lessons
Paying for clicks outside your area?
The default location setting quietly leaks local budget. I can help you tighten geo-targeting and stop the waste.
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