Geographic Targeting and Bidding

At a glance

Change the location option to Presence. The default, “Presence or interest”, shows ads to people outside the countries you picked. Exclude the countries you don’t sell to in every campaign, ideally with one shared list, and check it monthly. Judge a region by value per click (conversion rate × value per conversion), not by CPC. Cheap clicks from low-value regions are often the expensive ones. Manual CPC: use location bid adjustments. Smart Bidding: adjustments are ignored, so give regions with very different value their own campaign and target, or use conversion value rules. Split by region only when each piece still gets enough conversions. Small budgets split the least.

This is where the most money gets wasted in B2B accounts, usually without anyone noticing. Nothing in the interface warns you that a campaign aimed at Germany is getting clicks from countries you’ve never sold to, or that your bid adjustments are doing nothing. Work through this lesson once carefully, then use the checklist at the end every month.

US/Canada focus Your biggest risks are leakage from “Presence or interest” (searches mentioning US cities or “USA” from abroad), mixing the US and Canada in one campaign when deal sizes and currency differ, and forgetting Quebec’s French-language searches if you sell there. US clicks are usually the most expensive in the account; that is fine when value per click is also highest.

EU/UK focus Your risks are lumping very different markets into one “Europe” campaign (Nordics and DACH often have different deal sizes from Southern and Eastern Europe), language targeting that doesn’t match how buyers search (many search in English, many don’t), and lost measurement from consent, which makes regions with strict consent banners look worse than they are. Watch EUR and GBP pricing separately.

India focus Clicks are cheap, so it is tempting to read India as efficient. If you have regional (purchasing-power) pricing, the value per conversion is lower too, so compare value per click, not CPC. India also tends to send a lot of student, job-seeker and “free download” searches, which need strong negatives. Expect GST to be added to ad spend when billing in India.

Rest of APAC focus “APAC” is not one market. Australia and Singapore behave more like the US or UK on deal size; Japan and Korea need local-language ads and pages to perform; Southeast Asia often has lower deal values with regional pricing. Don’t run one APAC campaign with one target unless budget forces you to, and if it does, use conversion values that reflect each country.

Latin America focus Brazil (Portuguese) and Spanish-speaking markets need separate ads and pages. Deal values in local currency are often lower, and currency swings change value per click month to month, so re-run the calculator quarterly. Check whether you invoice in BRL or MXN or in USD; it changes what a deal is worth to you.

Middle East/Africa focus This region contains most of the countries companies typically can’t sell to (sanctions), so exclusions matter most here. The Gulf states and South Africa usually carry most of the value; target them deliberately rather than “all of MEA”. Check the Matched locations view weekly in the first month, because leakage from Presence or interest is common.

1. Location settings: Presence vs Presence or interest

Every Search campaign has a Location options setting, hidden under Campaign settings → Locations → Location options. It has two choices for who can see your ads:

Presence or interest (the default, and Google’s recommendation): people who are in, regularly in, or have shown interest in your targeted locations. Someone in Nigeria searching “CRM software USA” counts as interested in the US. Presence: people who are in or regularly in your targeted locations.

For B2B software sold by country, use Presence. You can only invoice and support customers where you sell, your pricing is set per region, and the “interest” traffic converts poorly while still costing full price. Google says the default brings more conversions for some advertisers, mostly travel, real estate and education, where interest in a place really is the buying signal. That rarely applies to software. As of October 2026

Presence or interest (default) Presence (recommended)

Targeted country

Targeted country

outside: no ad shown

outside, “interested”: ad shown, you pay

searcher in country

leaked click

Replay With “Presence or interest”, searches from outside your targeted country leak in when they mention it. Presence keeps only people who are actually there. Illustrative.

How to change it

Open the campaign, then Settings, then Locations. Expand Location options. Under Include, choose “Presence: People in or regularly in your included locations”. Save, then repeat for every Search campaign. New campaigns start on the default again, so add this to your launch checklist.

The exclude side has one option now: people in your excluded locations are excluded. Google removed the “interest” exclusion option in 2023, so an exclusion only stops people physically there. Demand Gen campaigns got the same presence vs interest choice in late 2025, and Google recommends “Presence or interest” there too. If you run Performance Max or Demand Gen, open their location settings and check which option they use. As of October 2026

Check where clicks actually came from

Google Ads has two location views. Mixing them up is how leaks go unnoticed. Both live under Insights and reports, then When and where your ads showed, and both are also available in Report editor. As of October 2026

View What it shows Use it for

Targeted locations Performance by the locations in your settings. A leaked click from Nigeria on a US-targeted campaign shows up here as United States, because that is the target it matched. Comparing the regions you chose. It will not show leaks.

Matched locations Performance by the location your ad was matched to. Google says this can be the person’s physical location or a location they showed interest in. Finding countries you never meant to pay for. This is the one that reveals leaks.

Open the Matched locations tab for the last 30 days, set the level to Country, and look at Cost, Clicks and Conversions. Any country you don’t target, or don’t sell to, with spend against it is a leak or an exclusion gap. If you want to separate physical location from location of interest, build a custom table in Report editor with the matched location and location type fields. The old standalone “User locations” report is no longer a default report, so older guides that point to it are out of date.

IP location is not perfect Presence is based on signals like IP address and device location. VPNs, corporate networks that route through another country, and travellers mean a few percent of clicks will always show odd countries. Act on patterns (a country with real spend), not on single clicks.

2. Exclusions

Two kinds of countries belong on your exclusion list:

Countries you can’t or don’t sell to. Get the official list from legal or finance. It usually covers sanctioned or embargoed countries and regions, places where you can’t invoice or collect payment, and places with data-residency rules you can’t meet. Countries that send junk. Countries where your Matched locations report shows clicks and form fills but no qualified leads over a meaningful sample (say, 100+ clicks). Base this on your own data, not stereotypes; plenty of real buyers sit in countries other advertisers exclude.

Make exclusions apply everywhere

Exclusions are set per campaign, which is the problem: the next campaign someone builds won’t have them. Three ways to keep them consistent, from fastest to most reliable:

Copy from an existing campaign. When building a new campaign, start from a copy of one that already has the right locations. Quick, but easy to forget. Google Ads Editor. Download the account, select every campaign, open Locations, and paste the excluded country list in one go. Editor also lets you view exclusions across all campaigns in one table, which is the easiest audit. Account-level settings, if your account has them. Google has been moving more exclusion controls to account level. If you see an account-level location exclusion option in Account settings, use it so new campaigns inherit it. Availability varies by account, so check rather than assume. As of October 2026

To check: in the Campaigns view, open the Locations page with all campaigns selected and switch to the Exclusions tab. Every active campaign should list the same excluded countries. Do this monthly and after anyone builds a new campaign.

Exclusions in Middle East/Africa Most companies’ do-not-sell lists contain several countries in this region (for US- and EU-based companies, commonly the comprehensively sanctioned ones). Don’t target “Africa” or “Middle East” as a whole region and hope; target the countries you sell to by name, and also exclude the do-not-sell list in case someone later broadens targeting. Sanctions lists change, so ask legal for the current version each quarter.

Exclusions in EU/UK If you target “Europe” as a region, check that it doesn’t include countries you don’t sell to, such as Russia and Belarus for many companies, or occupied parts of Ukraine, which may need a region-level exclusion. Target countries one by one instead of a continent.

Exclusions in Rest of APAC Targeting “Asia” or “Asia-Pacific” as one region pulls in countries you may not serve, and some where you need a local entity to invoice. List countries individually. Mainland China needs separate thought: Google services are largely unavailable there, so traffic labelled China is often VPN or travel noise.

Exclusions in Latin America Check your do-not-sell list for the region (several companies exclude Cuba and Venezuela for sanctions reasons) and add those to every campaign. Target countries individually so a Spanish-language campaign doesn’t also show in Spain unless you mean it to.

Exclusions for your region Even when you target one country, add the full do-not-sell list as exclusions. It costs nothing and protects you when someone later adds “worldwide” or a broad region to a campaign.

3. Deciding what each region is worth

Cost per click tells you what you pay. It doesn’t tell you what you get. The number that lets you compare regions is value per click:

Formula

value per conversion = average deal value × share of conversions that become customers
value per click      = conversion rate × value per conversion

Then compare value per click with CPC. If a region’s value per click is 10× its CPC and another’s is 3×, the first one deserves more budget and higher bids even if its clicks cost four times as much.

A worked example (illustrative numbers)

Two regions selling the same product, over 90 days:

Region A (list pricing) Region B (regional pricing)

CPC $9 $1.2

Conversion rate (click → trialdemo request) 3% 2%

Share that become customers 15% 10%

Average first-year deal value $18,000 $3,500

Value per conversion $2,700 $350

Value per click $81 $7

Value ÷ CPC 9× 5.8×

Region B’s clicks are seven times cheaper, but Region A returns more per unit of spend. Both are profitable at these numbers, so the question becomes how much to bid in each, which the calculator below answers.

Regional pricing, currency and purchasing power

Use the deal value you actually book in that region. If you have purchasing-power pricing (cheaper plans in India, Brazil or Southeast Asia, for example), use those prices, not list price. Put cost and value in the same currency. Google Ads bills in the account currency. If the account is in USD and you invoice in INR or BRL, convert deal values at a recent rate and redo it quarterly; currency swings of 10 to 20% in a year are common in some markets. Use a fair horizon. First-year contract value is a sensible default. If churn or expansion differs a lot by region, adjust for it rather than using lifetime value from your best market everywhere. Include taxes and fees you pay on ad spend. Some countries add tax to ad invoices (GST in India, VAT in some places where reverse charge doesn’t apply). That is real cost. Win rates differ by region too, often because of sales coverage and time zones. If your sales team can’t call leads in a region quickly, value per conversion is lower there until that changes.

4. Bidding approach: which geo controls work with which strategy

This is the most common silent mistake. The interface lets you set location bid adjustments on any campaign, but they only work with some strategies. As of October 2026

Bid strategy Location bid adjustments How to treat regions differently

Manual CPC Work. A +30% adjustment raises bids 30% for that location. Set adjustments from value per click (calculator mode “Manual CPC”).

Maximize clicks Applied, but you can’t control the result well because Google sets the base bids. Use only briefly at launch; prefer manual CPC for geo control.

Maximize conversions / Target CPA Ignored. Smart Bidding sets a bid for every auction and already uses location as a signal. Separate campaigns (or region groups) with their own Target CPA and budget.

Maximize conversion value / Target ROAS Ignored. Send conversion values that reflect each region’s deal size, or add location-based conversion value rules (for example, value ×1.5 for the US, ×0.4 for India). Then one ROAS target works across regions.

The one adjustment Smart Bidding does respect is device at −100% (to exclude a device entirely). Everything else in the bid adjustments screen is decoration under Smart Bidding. Google’s bid adjustments help page lists location adjustments as unsupported for every automated strategy, including Maximize clicks, so location adjustments only do anything with Manual CPC. As of October 2026

For a Starter budget Manual CPC with location bid adjustments is a reasonable way to run one multi-country campaign until it has about 15 or more conversions a month. When you switch to Maximize conversions, remove the location adjustments (they’ll be ignored anyway) and accept that Google will balance regions itself. If one country is clearly worth far less, exclude it from this campaign rather than trying to bid it down.

For your budget You’re likely on Smart Bidding. Two routes work: (1) region-group campaigns, each with its own Target CPA set from the calculator, or (2) value-based bidding, where each conversion carries a value that already reflects region (from offline conversion imports or value rules) and one Target ROAS runs across regions. Route 2 needs fewer campaigns and therefore keeps data together, but it depends on trustworthy values. Most teams start with route 1 and move to route 2 once stage-two tracking is live.

Go deeper How conversion value rules work for location

In Goals → Conversions → Value rules, you can add a rule such as “If location is India, multiply value by 0.3”. Smart Bidding strategies that optimise for value (Maximize conversion value, Target ROAS) then see a lower value for Indian conversions and bid accordingly. Rules apply at bidding time and are reported in a separate column, so your raw conversion data stays intact. Value rules only change anything if the campaign bids on value. Under Target CPA, a conversion is a conversion. They also need a base value on the conversion action; if every conversion has value 1, a ×0.3 rule just gives 0.3. Set the multipliers from the ratio of each region’s value per conversion to your average. The calculator’s Target ROAS mode suggests these multipliers.

5. Campaign structure: when to split by region

Split a region into its own campaign when at least one of these is true and the new campaign will still get enough conversions to bid well (roughly 30 a month for Target CPA to be stable, as a rule of thumb):

Its value per conversion differs from the rest by more than about 30 to 40%, and you’re on Smart Bidding. It needs its own budget, because a cheap region would otherwise eat the budget meant for an expensive one. It needs different language ads or landing pages, or different legal treatment (trademarks, consent). Someone is accountable for that region’s pipeline and needs to see and control it separately.

Keep regions together when splitting would leave each campaign with a handful of conversions a month. Thin campaigns make Smart Bidding guess and make your own reports noisy.

Starter: one campaign, one region group Run one Search campaign for your focus region. If you must include several countries, choose ones with similar deal sizes and the same language. Don’t split until total conversions pass about 30 a month. If a country in the campaign has clearly lower value, exclude it rather than building a second campaign you can’t fund.

Intermediate: two to four region groups Group countries by value and language, for example “US + Canada”, “UK + Ireland + Nordics + Benelux” and “India”. Give each group its own campaign, budget and Target CPA. Check every month that each group still gets 20 to 30+ conversions; merge any that don’t.

Advanced: region campaigns plus value-based bidding Run a campaign per major market (or per country for your biggest ones), each with its own budget. Once offline conversions bring pipeline or revenue values back, move to Target ROAS and use location value rules or regional values instead of more splits. Use campaign experiments to test structure changes rather than switching all at once.

6. Common mistakes

Check your account against each of these. The ones most relevant to your region are highlighted.

Leaving “Presence or interest” on. It is the default on every new campaign. Fix: Presence, every campaign, on the launch checklist. Missing exclusions, or exclusions on old campaigns but not new ones. Fix: Editor or account-level list, monthly audit. One Target CPA for every region. A $300 target is too low for the US and too high for India, so Google underbids where value is high and overspends where it is low. Fix: region-group campaigns or value-based bidding. Bid adjustments that Smart Bidding ignores. Teams set +50% for the US on a Target CPA campaign and think they’ve acted. Fix: remove them so nobody is misled; use the controls in section 4. Splitting too finely. Ten country campaigns with three conversions each. Fix: merge into groups until each has enough data. Judging regions by CPC or cost per lead alone. Fix: value per click and pipeline per region from the CRM. Reading the Targeted locations view and thinking there are no leaks. Fix: check the Matched locations view. Targeting a continent or “all countries” to get volume. Fix: list the countries you sell to. EU/UK: one “Europe” campaign in English only, and treating consent-limited data as poor performance. Compare regions on CRM outcomes, which aren’t affected by cookie consent. India: bidding up because CPCs are low and lead volume is high, without checking how many leads qualify or what they pay. Fix: value per click with regional pricing, strong negatives. Rest of APAC: one English campaign for very different markets. Fix: split at least Australia/NZ/Singapore from the rest once volume allows, and localise for Japan and Korea. Latin America: Spanish ads shown in Brazil, or deal values left in last year’s exchange rate. Fix: separate Portuguese campaign, quarterly currency refresh. Middle East/Africa: targeting the whole region and leaking into do-not-sell countries. Fix: country-by-country targeting plus full exclusion list. US/Canada: one campaign for both countries with USD deal values applied to Canadian deals. Fix: convert CAD values; split only if Canada has enough volume on its own.

7. Geo bid calculator

Export a location report for the last 90 days (or 180 if volume is low) with cost, clicks and conversions by country, add the average deal value per region from your CRM, and enter them below. Use the same currency for cost and deal value. The example data is illustrative.

How to read it

Value per click is the main number. Value ÷ CPC above your target return means the region can take more spend; below it means bid down, fix conversion rate, or stop. Manual CPC mode suggests a location bid adjustment from each region’s value per click relative to the average of regions with enough data, rounded to 5% and capped at −90% and +100%. Changes under ±10% are left alone. “Affordable max CPC” is value per click ÷ your target return: the most you should pay for a click there. Target CPA mode suggests a CPA target per region (value per conversion ÷ target return) and compares it with the current CPA. If two regions in one campaign need targets more than about 30% apart, that is your signal to split them, budget band permitting. Target ROAS mode keeps one ROAS target and suggests a location value-rule multiplier where a region’s value per conversion differs by 15% or more from the average. Too little data means don’t act on that region alone. Keep it in a group and revisit next quarter.

Assumptions:

Every conversion has the same chance of becoming a customer (the % you enter). Deal value is first-year value in the same currency as cost. The period is long enough to cover your sales cycle.

If win rates differ a lot by region, run the calculator once per region group with its own win rate. Your inputs are saved in this browser.

8. Using your LLM on location data

Export two reports as CSV: the Matched locations view (country, cost, clicks, conversions; add location type from Report editor if you have it) and the campaign location settings (from Google Ads Editor, or a screenshot of each campaign’s Locations page). Then:

Check before you apply LLMs make arithmetic slips and sometimes misread CSV columns. Spot-check two or three countries by hand (or in the calculator above) before changing bids, and never change more than a handful of regions at once.

Do this now

Every Search campaign set to Location options → Presence. Do-not-sell list from legal/finance excluded in every campaign (checked in Editor or the Exclusions tab). Matched locations view checked for the last 30 days; leaks noted and fixed. Location bid adjustments removed from any Smart Bidding campaign (or confirmed as manual CPC). Calculator run with 90 days of data; region groups and targets decided. Calculator run once you have 90 days of data; any clearly low-value country excluded or bid down. Monthly location audit added to the weekly review calendar (first week of each month).

Next: Budget Decisions