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Why No Adwords Exclude By Search Intent Area?

by consultant1027
2 replies
  • PPC/SEM
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In many cases you want to target users in a geographic area with services only offered in that area. However, many users will not include the targeted area name in their search keywords. In Campaign settings, you can INCLUDE users in target area, users in target area and search intent in area, or search intent in area only. However you cannot EXCLUDE users with search intent in exluded area only. Why is this option missing? It creates a significant problem. Example:

Advertiser offers plumbing services so naturally they want to advertise for keyword "plumbing service" in targeted area and most likely will include phrase match and sometimes also broad match. As it is impossible to predict all relevant searches for plumbing service and include as exact match.

What if user has rental home in another area, so user is in targeted area, but searches for "plumbing service {excluded area name}" The ad will still be displayed! The only solution would be to add negative keyword match for area names (cities, counties, states) for all non-targeted areas which would be extremely difficult, especially considering some city names are used more than once in the USA.

Best option would be a new option to allow "exclude users with search intent outside targeted area" or at least allow Exclude by search intent only in excluded areas. If this is not feasible I would be interested in the reasoning?
#adwords #area #exclude #intent #search
  • Profile picture of the author LucidWebMarketing
    Why no such feature? If Google has thought of it, I think the biggest reason may be the cost vs returns. Adding such a feature would add complexity to the system. The cost there would be computer cycles used. Also, they surely know how people search and there may be few instances where it would be useful and few advertisers using this feature.

    I believe the include and exclude settings are good enough. Yes, you will occasionally have searches and clicks that you don't want to target. Take a plumber in New York. There's lots of back and forth between that city and New Jersey, people living in NJ and working in NY. So those searching from work would search "plumber in NJ". That's easy enough to exclude with negative keywords. But you will not get searches for "plumber in SF". It can happen but it is unusual and extremely rare seeing that those cities are so far apart. You wouldn't add negatives for each city in the country. So that's the returns part, a nice feature but would not be used much and costing in computer time. You also don't want to complicate things further for advertisers.
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    • Profile picture of the author consultant1027
      Yes, it is definitely the small minority of searches but if you are advertising on a variety of related services, especially in a competetive niche, the searches with geographic keywords outside the target area do add up and do lower the ROI on advertising spend. I suppose with things like location extentsions and putting the region you server in the display URL you can temper things a bit, just not eliminate them.

      I've used Adwords for at least 8 years The system as a whole is now extremely complex in the number of options, setttings, and features. Yes Adwords Express helps the average Joe get going but they will never grasp all the possible options and setttings. I don't think adding one more setting optionis going to make anywhere a significant difference from a development cost or user interface complexity to the point that would be the reason it's not there.
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