Decide who can buy and where the work happens, then set the targets and location option to match. Presence is a sound starting choice for a service that only happens locally. Presence or Interest suits a business where someone elsewhere can still become a customer. After that, check where the enquiries came from, because neither setting guarantees a serviceable click.
Choose between Presence and Presence or Interest
Google documents two location options for the campaign types that offer them. Google's advanced location options page says Presence or Interest reaches people likely to be in the targeted location. That includes people likely to be there regularly. Presence or Interest also reaches people who have shown interest in it. Presence reaches people likely to be located, or regularly located, in it.
Presence or Interest is the default. The same page recommends broad geo targeting as a best practice on Search and Demand Gen. Interest can come from the words in a search. It can also come from having recently been in the place, or from content about it.
Search, Display and Shopping campaigns have no interest only option. Exclusions in those campaigns and in Performance Max work on likely presence only. That means you can't exclude people because they showed interest in a place.
Two misreadings trip people up. Presence is not a residents only switch. It covers the office worker commuting into your suburb as readily as the person who lives there. Nor is it a live GPS check, because it relies on an estimate.
Presence or Interest isn't inherently wasteful either. The page says location targeting draws on a variety of signals. Those include users' settings, devices and behaviour on Google's platform. Location targeting is Google's best effort, and 100% accuracy is not guaranteed. Every setting on this page inherits that sentence.
Choose by the buyer's journey, not an industry rule. Take a plumber whose work happens at the customer's address in a defined operating area. That's a clear case for Presence.
Other buyers can be outside the area and still be the right customer. An interstate household arranging a move into Melbourne. A traveller booking a room. A remote client choosing a local professional.
A removalist is not required to use interest reach to find them. Deliberately targeting the origin markets with Presence and ads about moving to Melbourne is another legitimate design. The decision belongs to the business and its journey. That's why the setting should be written down with its reason.
Treat every person outside the area as an irrelevant lead
Ask whether that person can buy a service you deliver in the intended area. Choose the option on that answer
That's a change in how the decision is made, not a measured result. Three places can differ in one enquiry. These are where Google estimates the searcher is, the place named in their search and the job address. Someone in Sydney searching for Melbourne removalists is in Sydney, interested in Melbourne and moving to Melbourne.
A Melbourne specialist clinic drawing patients from regional Victoria doesn't need interest reach to find them. Those patients search from home. The remedy is to include the regional catchments the clinic serves.
Where the three places can differ, ask for the service suburb during qualification, when proportionate to the enquiry. Make the coverage clear in the ad and on the page.
Our audit sample is 180 Google Ads account audits from August 2021 to September 2026. Here's what its local service accounts showed. About 3 in 5 had at least one live Search campaign on Presence or Interest. About 1 in 2 of all those accounts had kept that default since launch, with no reason recorded. That's less a mistake than an unmade decision.
Business | Starting option | Why, for this journey |
|---|---|---|
Local plumber or electrician | Presence | The customer is at the job address and usually searches near it |
Interstate removalist | Presence or Interest, or Presence in origin markets | The buyer is in another state and the job ends in Melbourne |
Specialist clinic | Presence, with regional catchments included | Patients travel in but search from home |
Restaurant or cafe | Presence | Demand is nearby and immediate, and a wide net pays for people who will not travel |
Function venue or hotel | Presence or Interest | A guest planning from elsewhere can book the room or the event |
Online store | Presence or Interest across the delivery area | Anyone in the delivery area can order, including a visitor planning ahead |
The table is a starting point for the conversation, not a rule book. We cover the venue specifics in Google Ads for hospitality venues. That page also covers the destination venue that does draw guests from interstate.
Build a service area the business can deliver
Settings come last. First decide which areas the business can serve at a profit. Then decide which it's willing to test and which it won't serve. Use six facts for each area:
Coverage from the depot or the clinic.
Realistic travel effort.
Contribution after delivery costs.
Capacity on the days the demand arrives.
The destination page that will describe the service there.
How confident the evidence behind each answer is.
Here's an example plan for a Melbourne plumbing business. It shows the method. It establishes nothing about those suburbs' customer quality or profitability for anyone else. Our guide to Google Ads for a trade business covers the rest of the campaign.
Area | Tier for this business | The reason recorded |
|---|---|---|
Brunswick, Coburg, Northcote | Core | Within 20 minutes of the depot, repeat customers, proven margins |
Ringwood | Test | Serviceable at 40 minutes, demand and job mix unknown |
Mornington | Test | Seasonal weekend demand, capacity limited to one crew |
Geelong | Excluded | 75 minutes each way and no team based there |
A radius and a named location are different tools. Google's geographic targeting page lists the available target types. They're countries, areas within a country and a radius around a location. Depending on the country you can target regions, cities or postal codes. A radius must be at least 1 km.
The same page permits targeting only for locations that meet minimum privacy thresholds. It warns that small targets might not meet the targeting criteria. In that case, ads might show intermittently or not at all.
A radius is a straight line distance on a map. It isn't driving time, traffic at 5 pm or the shape of the area a crew can cover. A 20 km circle around a Brunswick depot reaches across the bay. No van does that.
Named suburbs and postcodes follow recognised boundaries. But not every suburb or postcode is available as a target. So verify availability in the interface before the plan promises it. Narrower isn't automatically better. That's because a target too small to clear the thresholds serves erratically and tells you nothing.
Approach | What it gives you | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|
Radius | Fast setup and a distance you can explain | Follow roads, travel time or a real service boundary |
Named locations | Recognised boundaries you can report on | Cover an area Google does not offer as a target |
Hybrid | A radius for the core and named areas or exclusions at the edges | Create an intersection between an included radius and an included suburb |
No single starting radius suits every trade. The same business might use 8 km in dense inner suburbs and 30 km in the outer east. The right figure comes from the service area plan, not a rule of thumb.
Some services only happen within half an hour of a depot. Targeting all of Victoria, or all of Australia, for them is the mistake to avoid. The mirror image mistake is excluding half the city before a single enquiry has shown a problem.
Set locations and exclusions step by step
Define the campaign's geographic job
Write down the campaign's tier, the service it sells there and the page that gets the click. A campaign selling emergency plumbing in the core area is a different job from one testing Ringwood. The geography follows the job. The wider build belongs to our Google Ads setup guide.
Add recognised targets or a radius
Google's geographic targeting page gives the path: Campaigns, then Settings, then the campaign, then the Locations panel. A Locations page and a pencil icon handle areas within a country or a radius. A bulk option takes up to 1,000 locations at a time. Because labels move, treat those as a guide rather than a script. Type each suburb, postcode, city or region and confirm Google recognises it before you save.
Inspect the map
Included targets combine. Adding a suburb beside a radius adds that suburb to the eligible area. It doesn't shrink the radius to the suburb. If a suburb already sits inside the radius, adding it changes nothing.
The map is the only honest view of the union you've built. So look at it before saving. Expect approximate edges rather than fences along streets, coastlines or travel time contours.
Add the exclusions that remove real problems
Google's location exclusions page says exclusions prevent ads from showing in parts of your targeted locations. You enter the name of the area to exclude. Bulk exclusion handles up to 1,000 at a time. The number of exclusions should not exceed the number of locations targeted per campaign.
Exclude places inside your targets the business can't serve, and regions where a promotion doesn't apply. Don't build a list of every other city in the country. It's no substitute for choosing the right positive geography and option.
Check the precedence
The same page says that if an area is both included and excluded, exclusion takes priority. Its example is excluding the state of California while targeting Los Angeles. Los Angeles ends up excluded, because it sits inside California. The Australian version, excluding Victoria while trying to include Melbourne, silently removes the city. Review every exclusion against the parents of every inclusion.
Choose the location option and save
Set Presence or Presence or Interest for the buyer's journey you wrote down. Then save and fill in the settings record below.
Google's advanced location options page applies the options to the Search Network, the Display Network and Demand Gen. It notes that hotel campaigns use Presence only. Google's Performance Max setup issues page offers both options for Performance Max too. A campaign type without the setting isn't misconfigured. It simply has no option to set.
Read the settings in that order: what is in, what is out, and who counts as being there.
Test and review
Preview from the intended location instead of searching for your own ad. Google's Ad preview and diagnosis tool page says the tool shows how the ad appears. It also shows why the ad might not be appearing. Previewing this way avoids accumulating ad impressions and affecting your performance statistics. The tool filters by location, language and device.
Then read the geographic report after the first serving days, as the reports section below explains.
Campaign type and capture date: [Search or other, and the date the settings were read]
Included locations and radius: [every named target and any radius with its centre and distance]
Exclusions and conflict check: [every exclusion and confirmation that none is a parent of an inclusion]
Location option: [Presence, or Presence or Interest, with the business reason]
Review owner: [the person who rechecks this after any operational change]
Location exclusions and negative location keywords are different controls. An exclusion concerns where Google estimates a person is. A negative keyword concerns the words in a search.
Negative keywords for every unserved place name block the person in Sydney searching for a Melbourne removalist. That searcher may be exactly the customer the campaign wanted. Check the intent behind a place name before blocking it. Then build the lists with our guide to Google Ads negative keywords.
We'll check your targets, exclusions and location option against the area you serve. Then we'll tell you what we'd change first.
Match bids and schedules to your locations
A location row inside a campaign does not receive its own budget. The campaign's budget is shared across every area the campaign targets. Smart Bidding allocates it by predicted outcome rather than by a quota per suburb.
Keep locations together while the service, the offer, the team and the schedule are shared. Give a territory its own campaign only when spending, offers, teams, reporting or operating hours need independent control. One campaign per suburb by default multiplies the work and starves each campaign of data.
Our guide to Google Ads account structure covers when a territory earns its own campaign.
Bid adjustments depend on the strategy. Google's bid adjustments page lists location adjustments at campaign level, with a range of -90% to +900%. Where several adjustments apply to the same location, only the most specific is used. Smart Bidding strategies do not use manual bid adjustments.
So telling Target CPA advertisers to add 20% on a strong suburb describes a control that does nothing. Even though a -100% adjustment isn't possible for locations, Smart Bidding still honours targeting and exclusions. The real levers are inclusion, exclusion and, where it's justified, a separate campaign with its own target. Which strategy to run is a separate call, covered in our guide to Google Ads Smart Bidding.
On Manual CPC or Maximise clicks the adjustments work. They should still express a measured difference in value rather than a feeling about a handful of leads.
The order matters. Serviceability comes first and structure second. Bids come last, because a bid adjustment can't rescue an area the crew can't reach.
Schedules run on the account's time zone. Google's ad schedule page says ads will not show during times not listed. Each campaign allows up to six schedules a day. Because schedules are set per campaign, one campaign can't run different hours in different suburbs.
Australia makes this concrete. The NSW Government's daylight saving page confirms Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory skip daylight saving. So look at a Melbourne account's 7 am to 7 pm schedule from October to April. It runs 6 am to 6 pm in Brisbane and 4 am to 4 pm in Perth. The Perth gap narrows to two hours in winter.
Chart data:
| Daylight saving | Rest of year | |
|---|---|---|
| Brisbane | 1 | 0 |
| Adelaide | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| Darwin | 1.5 | 0.5 |
| Perth | 3 | 2 |
SourceNHVR, checked October 2026
Adelaide stays half an hour behind all year. Darwin's gap swings from half an hour to an hour and a half. Brisbane's swings from nothing to an hour. Convert the hours for each market and check them again when the clocks change. Give a market with different operating hours its own campaign if the difference matters.
A schedule is eligibility, not a bid. The bid adjustments page notes that Smart Bidding ignores the manual time adjustments. Even so, Smart Bidding respects the ad schedule. Whatever the schedule promises, a staffed phone and an after hours enquiry route must match the page.
Our guide to Google Ads settings that waste budget covers the rest of the campaign's controls. It also covers the ways each can quietly spend money.
Separate location targeting from local ad formats
Location targeting decides who is eligible to see the ad. Everything in this section decides something else.
Location assets and Business Profile
Location assets can show the business address, a map or the approximate travel distance in ads. Google's location assets page says they draw on Google Business Profile, chain stores or Google Maps. Without them, business locations can't be used for targeting or bidding.
Linking a Business Profile does not configure the campaign's geography. A Business Profile service area is a profile field, not a targeting setting. Nor does linking the profile guarantee an ad placement or an organic Maps ranking. That ranking depends on Google Maps ranking factors rather than ad settings.
Our Google Business Profile guide covers the link from the profile side. Our guide to Google Ads assets explained covers the full asset setup, including accurate addresses and opening hours.
Paid ads on Google Maps
Paid local formats sit on top of that. Google's local ads page says eligibility requires location assets linked at the account or campaign level. Local ads serve on Performance Max and Search. Ads can show on the map as pins at your location and within Google Maps search results.
The outcomes are measured through store visit or direction conversions. Waze formats are limited to the United States.
Local inventory ads
Google's local inventory ads policy page describes a retail programme for physical stores that customers can visit. Australia is among the supported countries. A local product inventory data source in Merchant Center feeds the programme. So it's a product advertising format for stock on shelves, not another name for a local service campaign.
AI Max locations of interest
AI Max adds one more thing that is easy to confuse with campaign geography.
Google's geographic targeting page sets the limits. The campaign level target and the location of interest can be different. But a user matched through the feature must still meet the campaign level targeting. The feature can't be used for locations excluded at campaign level.
The location named in the query is considered first. When the query names none, the user's presence is used.
The feature describes interest in a place. That's the removalist's Sydney household looking at Melbourne. The setting isn't a reason to build an ad group and a keyword for every suburb. Don't assume it's on or off without opening the ad group.
Read geographic reports without overclaiming
Google's geographic performance page separates two views. Targeted locations shows performance by the locations you targeted. Matched locations shows performance by the locations where the ads appeared. Those could be users' physical locations or locations of interest.
The matched view is Google's inferred association for each impression: a useful clue, not a verified street address. Even the Most specific location column can show a place someone was interested in, not where they were.
The same page explains the gaps. Rows labelled Unspecified appear in two cases. First, Google can't place the person from their IP address and the search names no recognised location. Second, a Google Maps search covered a large area spanning several cities or regions.
Some impressions are matched only at country level. So metrics below country level may not add up to campaign totals. Performance data can vary slightly from the campaign and billing summaries because collection techniques differ.
The distance report measures from the location that triggered the ad to your nearest business location. But that trigger may be a place the person was interested in rather than where they stood.
Third party tools disagree for their own reasons. They may count every traffic source and refresh their IP data on a different schedule. They may also keep clicks that Google filters out as invalid. That's different systems measuring different things, not a tracking failure.
A distant row in the report isn't automatic proof of waste. It isn't evidence of fraud, either. Even so, it warrants a look at:
the settings
the option
the interest explanation
the lead details
Take a searcher in Geelong who clicked a Brunswick plumber's ad. They may be interested in a rental property in Brunswick. They may have been matched at a coarser level. Or the estimate may simply be wrong.
What settles the question is the enquiry itself. That means the service suburb the person gave, and whether the business could do the job. Compare campaign data against anonymised qualification records at that level. Don't expect call tracking to reveal every caller's location. It records the number and the call, not the address of the burst pipe.
Collect only what the enquiry needs: usually the service suburb, rarely a full street address at enquiry stage. That's good practice for any business. For businesses the Privacy Act covers, it's also the rule under APP 3. That principle lets an organisation collect personal information only where it's reasonably necessary for its functions or activities.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's small business guidance explains who is covered. That's generally businesses with annual turnover over $3 million, plus some smaller ones such as health service providers.
Keep personal details out of every screenshot that leaves the account.
The measurement behind the comparison is set up in our guide to Google Ads conversion tracking setup. Phone enquiries are covered in our guide to Google Ads call tracking.
Review qualified leads and test new areas
Judge an area by qualified leads and what they cost. Every row needs the same conversion definition and outcomes mature enough to count. The figures below are examples, for the same example plumber, not client results.
Example area | Spend, leads, qualified | Raw CPL | Qualified CPL |
|---|---|---|---|
Brunswick | $600, 12 leads, 9 qualified | $50.00 | $66.67 |
Coburg | $500, 8 leads, 6 qualified | $62.50 | $83.33 |
Ringwood | $450, 4 leads, 1 qualified | $112.50 | $450.00 |
Geelong | $180, 1 lead, 0 qualified | $180.00 | Undefined |
Combined | $1,730, 25 leads, 16 qualified | $69.20 | $108.13 |
Read the table slowly. Brunswick's lower raw cost per lead is not, on its own, a reason to spend more there.
Three questions come next. Does the crew have capacity for more Brunswick work? What did those nine qualified leads turn into once the jobs matured? Would more spend buy more of the same demand, or more expensive demand?
Coburg is compared like for like and left alone. Ringwood's one qualified lead in four is a sample, not a verdict. The question is travel cost, lead fit and whether four leads can tell you anything.
Geelong's qualified cost per lead is undefined, because dividing by zero produces nothing. The decision is an exclusion only if Geelong is outside this fictional business's coverage. If it is serviceable, one lead is not evidence either way.
Rank nothing by the wealth of a suburb. Infer nothing about a customer from a map pin. Whether $66.67 or $108.13 is a good figure is a commercial question.
That question is answered against job value and margin. Our guide to what a good cost per lead looks like works through that. The trade specifics are in our Google Ads for trades businesses page.
A location row has no budget of its own. So spending more in Brunswick also needs a structure that allows it.
Inside one campaign on Smart Bidding, three actions are available. Keep Brunswick included. Exclude an area that fails. Or give Brunswick its own campaign and budget, if the capacity and the evidence justify the extra structure.
A test area is run the same way as any other experiment. Before launch, name:
the area
the budget ceiling
the period
the qualified outcome that counts
the review date
Keep the conversion definition identical to the core area's. Then let the outcomes mature before comparing.
Don't exclude a serviceable area after one poor lead. Don't declare a winner in week four because the calendar says so.
Some out of area enquiries arrive whatever the settings. Our managed account sample is 45 service accounts from May 2024 to September 2026. In each account's first month, out of area enquiries ran at 10% to 20% of the total. Out of area means the service address fell outside the stated coverage. Before narrowing the targeting, make sure the page and the qualification script state the coverage plainly.
Campaign and review date: [the campaign and the date of the change]
Service area and business reason: [the tier change or new area and why the business wants it]
Included locations and location option: [the targets and the option after the change]
Exclusions and conflict check: [what is excluded and confirmation no parent overrides a target]
Bid strategy and account time zone: [the strategy in use and the time zone the schedule runs on]
Qualified outcome evidence and uncertainty: [the counts, their maturity and what remains unknown]
Change owner and next review: [who made it and when it is read again]
A record like this lets you find an overbroad exclusion six months later. It also lets you explain to a new manager why Ringwood is a test and Geelong isn't.
When location changes do not resolve a performance problem, look beyond the map. Our guide to what to check when Google Ads is not working covers the rest of the account.
Keep coverage current after launch
Geography is reviewed as evidence matures, not on a fixed day count.
Before launch, confirm the settings record, the enquiry route and the page's service area statement. In the first serving days, look for the obvious:
an exclusion that swallowed a target
a schedule in the wrong time zone
a report full of Unspecified rows
tracking that did not fire
Then wait for qualified outcomes at a pace the volume allows. For a small account that can mean months rather than weeks. Read them beside delivery cost.
Review the coverage whenever the business:
moves
hires or loses a crew
changes seasonal hours
adds a service that is not available everywhere
expands into a new region
Paid and organic reach can legitimately differ. A page that ranks across the state costs nothing per click. But a campaign that serves across the state does.
The broader first month schedule is in our guide to the first 30 days of Google Ads. If an agency runs the account, maintaining this coverage and its record is part of the job. Google Ads account management covers that upkeep.
Buyer and job
Who can buy, where the work happens and whether they differ are written down with the option chosen
Targets
Every target is recognised, the map shows the intended union and the radius is a decision, not a default
Exclusions
Each exclusion removes a real problem and no exclusion is a parent of an included area
Bids and hours
Adjustments match the strategy, the schedule is converted to each market's time and staffing matches it
Reports
Targeted and matched views read with their limits, Unspecified rows noted and distant rows investigated
Outcomes
Areas compared by qualified leads with one definition, mature data and a dated change record
What we recommend at Elev8d
Start with the area you can serve. If the crew travels to customers, we set Presence on the core area's named suburbs or postcodes. We add a radius only where it matches how the vans travel. Core and test areas share one campaign until budget, staff, offer or hours genuinely differ.
Exclusions stay short. Each one removes a place the business can't serve. We check it against the parents of every target before saving. We don't exclude half the country to make the map look tidy.
We switch to Presence or Interest when the buyer is genuinely somewhere else. Think of an interstate move, a booking from out of town or a client choosing a professional remotely. Then the ad and the page do the filtering. So both say plainly where the work happens.
After that, we:
leave the settings alone long enough to learn something
judge areas on qualified leads with mature outcomes
read the matched locations report beside the service suburb on each enquiry
put every change in the record
A test area that keeps winning qualified jobs at a cost the margin carries earns its own campaign. Our guide to scaling Google Ads sets that out. If the geography is right and the leads still don't come, we stop touching the map. Instead, we look at the rest of the account.
Next steps
Write the service area plan
The plan covers core, test and excluded areas, with the six facts behind each. Add the location option and its business reason. Finish the plan before anyone opens the campaign settings.
Audit the current settings
Capture the targets, the radius, the exclusions and the option in the settings record. Check every exclusion against the parents of every inclusion. Then preview from the intended location.
Compare one month of enquiries with the plan
Compare service suburb against targeted area, and qualified leads against spend by area. Write the maturity and the sample size beside every conclusion.
Sources
- Two new features available in the Ad Preview and Diagnosis toolsupport.google.com
Google Ads Help. The tool's location, language and device filters.
National Heavy Vehicle Regulator. Australian time zones, their UTC offsets and the gaps between states during daylight saving. The time zone chart uses them.
