Search from another State

[Infra Guy]

We have regional ads within Google AdWords placed in states across the country - meaning, of course, that these ads only appear to those who are searching from within that state.

Being that we are in Illinois, we would like to find a tool that allows us to search as if we were in, say, Arizona and see how the regional ads appear to users within that state.

Anyone know of such a tool?

[littleman]

Now that regions are getting smaller, state by state, and city ads, that's going to be a challenge. If you wanted to view ads being displayed in other countries I'd suggest using proxies, but to find state specific proxies isn't going to be easy.

The simple fix is to get an account from a national provider, say AOL, and surf from local access numbers. You better be sure to flush your cookies to be on the safe side.

[seomike]

From what I understand it's IP based through your service provider. Don't think there's a legal tool that could change your IP to that. :D

It would be cool though!

[OptimizeOnline]

When seeing how searches appear across NATIONAL boundaries you can simply do a search in Google, then simply append '&gl=uk' (without quotes), for the UK for example, to the end of the URL presented in the Address Bar and then press return. I assume there may well be a similar parameter you could use to see how listings differ across State boundaries.

[AussieWebmaster]

This would be a great spot for AWR to give a little insight.

[Infra Guy]

Thanks all for the input!

Our Google rep says, "Not possible" although I wouldn't be surprised if it's the type of thing that only the development teams are aware of.

Excellent suggestion on the UK search string. :cool:

I tried a couple hundred combinations of &st=az or &gl=us&st=az, using various terms and abbreviations for state, regional, zip, area code. So far, only the country codes seem intuitively obvious. But I think there is something to it, once we know what the abbreviations are.

[AdWordsRep]

This would be a great spot for AWR to give a little insight.
Sorry - I'm a little late in getting here today. That's what I get for being out of the office on Monday: lots to do for the rest of the week. :)

Anyway, I tend to agree with the rep that Infra Guy spoke with. But I'll certainly do a little asking around and see if I can learn anything useful.

AWR

[srini]

The question of Infraguy reminds me of a clarification asked by PPCpro in the forum: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2096

I will again clearly put the question:

I target (Regional Targeting) my campaign to US and UK only. If a person from another country like australia, france, or china types in the keyword I have been using then he will not see my results. But if he types in &gl=us then he would access my listings. Now comes the question:

If a user from any other region accesses these listings,

a. Would it be counted as a impression in my account?
b. If that guy clicks on the listing then will it count as a click in the adwords account? If yes, then what is the use of regional targeting?
* It may also lead to big amount of impression and click fraud.

I think these are some questions that should be answered.

Cheers :)

[projectphp]

* It may also lead of big amount of impression and click fraud.
The easiest fraud in the history of fraud to detect.

"Hey Google, it's me, lil' click fraudster from <NOT 1st COUNTRY> here. Um, please show me ads for expensive terms that I can fraudulently click. Is that OK?"
"Yeh, no worries. Click away. we have no way of tracking these, so click on as many as you like. How smart you are. We never thought that &gl= variable would cause any troubles... never crossed our mind at all..."

[AdWordsRep]

I target (Regional Targeting) my campaign to US and UK only. If a person from another country like australia, france, or china types in the keyword I have been using then he will not see my results. But if he types in &gl=us then he would access my listings. Now comes the question:

If a user from any other region accesses these listings,

a. Would it be counted as a impression in my account?
b. If that guy clicks on the listing then will it count as a click in the adwords account? If yes, then what is the use of regional targeting?
* It may also lead to big amount of impression and click fraud.

Srini, in the situation you describe, the answers would be:

a. Yes, it would get counted as an impression.

b. Yes, it would be counted as a click. And the 'use of regional targeting' is to filter users as effectively as possible, so that users in your selected region will see your ad. However, as I hope can be imagined, it is not possible to do this with 100% accuracy.

* projectphp spoke to this concern in a humorous way above, but the essential message is right on target - that all impressions and clicks are filtered before being delivered to your account. (By the way, in case you've ever wondered about the three hour delay in the delivery of your stats, this filtering is an important part of that.)

AWR

[srini]

Thank you AWR for clarifying that. This question was specifically raised as we had visitors from Pakistan and SouthAfrica who have clicked on the Ad. But our campaign was targeted to US & UK only.

"However, as I hope can be imagined, it is not possible to do this with 100% accuracy"

I think the filtering part needs to be improved still to stop these. ;)

[AdWordsRep]

I think the filtering part needs to be improved still to stop these. ;)
Point well taken, srini. I'll certainly pass your feedback along. (I sort of started that already, actually, while I was consulting with the right folks to get the answers to your questions.)

AWR

[AussieWebmaster]

How to see results for other states from different states.
I was given this explanation on how to accomplish this:

You can log into the AdWords Front-end and there is a tool in the 'Tools'
tab that is called Ad Diagnostic tool. This will allow you to run queries
as if you are in other regions.