Viewing AdWords Ads in Distant Locations

[abbottsys]

Let's suppose you're in San Francisco and you're running a national adwords campaign to sell widgets. New York City is a big market for you, so you need to see how your ad is ranking in New York City. And you also want to see what type of local competition you're up against.

So, you construct the URL below and you click it.

I do this type of thing all the time. And I've used this technique for ages. But how accurate is it? How close is what I see to what someone who is actually in New York sees?

LOOKING AT YOUR WIDGET AD IN NEW YORK
http://www.google.com/search?q=widgets&gr=US-NY&gcs=New_York

What *exactly* is this URL doing?
AWR, others, - any ideas?

[AussieWebmaster]

pulling results that would be sent to someone from that area... so you can see if your ads are running if you are doing local search or international search etc.

[AdWordsRep]

What *exactly* is this URL doing?
AWR, others, - any ideas?

I'm sorry to say I am not really sophisticated enough to know, technically, what the URL you mention is actually doing - nor how accurate it would be.

Rather than creating this URL, though, I'd recommend using the Ad Preview tool, and filling in the info for country (or territory) and state in the entry boxes provided. My understanding of this tool is that it recreates the search as if it were done in the location you specify, at the moment you submit it.

I'm certain you are aware, however, that the ads that you see when you do any search can easily vary from one search to the next, even if the searches are just seconds apart. This is true of the ads preview tool, just as it's true for any 'ordinary' search you might do.

Ad Preview tool: http://www.google.com/adpreview.

This is also available for mobile ad preview: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=64854

AWR

[AussieWebmaster]

always the clear answer mate

[abbottsys]

As near as I can tell the two methods (preview tool and my URL method) give the same results. I prefer the URL method since it's a bit more convenient e.g. you can send the URL to a client and one click gets them what they want. Also, if you know additional google "&" search parameters, the URL method can do much more than the preview tool method. I suspect there is a huge library of google "&" search parameters somewhere :)