Google Location Intent Targeting Flaws?
- PPC/SEM |
On Campaigns set to target Location Intent only ("People searching for, or who show interest in my targeted location") this would match for potentially anyone in the world including the word "Seattle" in their search if your targeted location was Seattle, WA US. There's several potential pitfalls in this targeting strategy that I think many don't realize and need to be mitigated. The one issue I'm most interested in hearing how many people have addressed it and if/how they addressed it is the fact that Ad wording for a user actually located in the Seattle area, might not be the best wording for someone located in Chicago, IL.
For example, what if someone had a relative in the Seattle area that died and they needed to arrange funeral services for them but they lived in Chicago. The person in Chicago is going to want to probably find a place that they can make arrangements online or by phone. They don't care where the funeral is specifically located or whether they can walk in and browse caskets. So the ad headline for someone in Chicago might include "Easy Arrangements By Phone or Online" where as the ad for the user actually located in Seattle (who searched for "Seattle Funeral Homes") might highlight "Conveniently located near Downtown"
The problem with Campaign Settings is that you can't match to search intent for location Seattle AND user location Seattle, or match to search intent for location Seattle AND user location {Somewhere else}. The settings allow for intent only, location only, or either.
So you can use the excluded physical location setting, but for that setting you can't specify "any location EXCEPT Seattle" or "All United States, except Seattle" As far as I can tell, you'd have to use some sort of combination of radius, state, and then even when getting into the state of Washington, use county/zip/city exclusions to exclude all WA state EXCEPT Seattle.
This seems very off to me that Google hasn't addressed this and simply allowed the location target to be set to, match to search queries with location intent Seattle, but for only users physically located in these places.
For example, what if someone had a relative in the Seattle area that died and they needed to arrange funeral services for them but they lived in Chicago. The person in Chicago is going to want to probably find a place that they can make arrangements online or by phone. They don't care where the funeral is specifically located or whether they can walk in and browse caskets. So the ad headline for someone in Chicago might include "Easy Arrangements By Phone or Online" where as the ad for the user actually located in Seattle (who searched for "Seattle Funeral Homes") might highlight "Conveniently located near Downtown"
The problem with Campaign Settings is that you can't match to search intent for location Seattle AND user location Seattle, or match to search intent for location Seattle AND user location {Somewhere else}. The settings allow for intent only, location only, or either.
So you can use the excluded physical location setting, but for that setting you can't specify "any location EXCEPT Seattle" or "All United States, except Seattle" As far as I can tell, you'd have to use some sort of combination of radius, state, and then even when getting into the state of Washington, use county/zip/city exclusions to exclude all WA state EXCEPT Seattle.
This seems very off to me that Google hasn't addressed this and simply allowed the location target to be set to, match to search queries with location intent Seattle, but for only users physically located in these places.