Adwords local and polygon targeting problems

[djmathu]

Ok I've tried two things for clients interested in a local UK audience only:
a) X mile radius of latitude targeting and
b) Polygon based targeting by a series of latitudes.

Neither seems to work well - ads either drive leads from the wrong areas or don't serve any more than 5 or 10 impressions. I have now given up on the idea of promoting this service to customers as I think it falls far short of the levels of accuracy needed and Google support has taken 7 days to get me nowhere.

Interestingly if you specifically target all the countries that fall within the 'UK' (England, Wales, Scotland, Channel Islands etc.) you get less impressions than if you just target country UK. But they should be the same (theoretically).

Anybody else with experience of the success or failures of local targeting?

[doppelganger]

There are some major flaws in this type of geotargeting. Regular online media, i.e. banners, etc... have been trying this for a while.

The reason you are probably seeing such low click volume when you specify these "regional" preferences is that, from what I know of the product, users that meet certain criteria will never see your ad because Google knows it can't resolve their location. As Google says on their site:

"Occasionally, proxy servers for large internet service providers (ISPs) make it difficult for the AdWords system to determine a browser's actual location. In these cases, Google will deliver nationally-targeted advertising instead of regional advertising."

What I think is happening in your case, is that even though you are targeting a larger area, because you have regional targeting "switched on", Google knows it cannot resolve the locations of many users of large ISPs (like AOL), so it's not even serving them the ad... This means lower inventory for you.

It's probably also worth noting that the AdWords regional targeting is still in beta, so there are bound to be problems. But what exactly is it that they are doing differently.

[djmathu]

They are definitely only serving adverts if they know for sure where somebody is located, that's why they also put 'England' underneath an advert if you only intended to target England - presumably in case they accidently serve it to the wrong region - to discourage wasted clicks.

The local market is a bit of a way off yet then.

[doppelganger]

Actually, one of the best venues right now for local are the online yellow pages. Their CPC products offer the "old school" way of targeting a specific geographic location. Worth a look.

[djmathu]

...but in the UK I have yet to see any evidence of online customers actually using yell.com and they don't have a PPC model yet.

[OptimizeOnline]

...but in the UK I have yet to see any evidence of online customers actually using yell.com and they don't have a PPC model yet.

According to Hitwise Yell.com's UK market share of visits of all UK search engine and directory sites is 0.38% - position 21 in the rankings for that sector.

However I certainly wouldn't dismiss Yell.com out of hand who have always done a very good job at presenting regional-based suppliers and services in their listings.

Regional targeting is becoming a much bigger issue with all search engines and directories at the moment. The technology that sits behind Google's local targeting can only get better.