Geo bleed in multi-location Google Ads accounts

Geo bleed is money spent on clicks from people outside the area the business can serve. For a dentist with three practices, a click from 200 km away is a cost with almost no chance of a patient.

It rarely shows up as one big number. It is a few percent in each campaign, in each location, every day. Multiply by fifty locations and it becomes a budget line nobody approved.

Every campaign has a location option. The default includes people in your locations and people who have shown interest in them, wherever they are.

For a business people visit, Presence is almost always the right choice. For a hotel, interest is the market, so the default can be correct.

Google Ads shows two location views. The gap between them is the bleed.

• Targeted locations shows results by the areas you chose.
• Matched locations shows where your ads actually appeared, which can include areas outside the ones you chose.

Open Insights and reports, then When and where ads showed, then Matched locations. Compare the clicks and cost from outside your areas with the conversions they brought.

A radius per location is the cleanest way to say 'people near us'. Two problems are common in multi-location accounts.

• Overlapping radii. Two practices 8 km apart with 15 km radii compete for the same people. If they sit in separate campaigns, the account competes with itself.
• One size for all. A 20 km radius suits a rural branch and spends far beyond a city one, where people rarely travel that far.

Set each radius from how far customers actually travel, and keep locations in one campaign when their offer and budget are the same.

Account settingsOppy

Show your shop's address on the ads

Store visits counted, no location asset

Ad schedules run in the account's time zone, not the location's. An account set to Paris time that serves a branch in Lisbon starts and stops its ads an hour off.

For businesses that answer the phone, this matters twice: the ads run when nobody can pick up, and the unanswered calls teach the bidding that the keywords do not work.

A campaign with no language set serves to every language. A campaign set to one language misses everyone searching in the other. In Belgium, Switzerland or Canada, both mistakes are easy.

Set the campaign to the languages your locations serve, and write ads in each one.

With Smart Bidding, location bid adjustments are not used: the bidding sets its own bid per auction. So you cannot fix bleed with a lower bid on distant areas. Fix the targeting instead, with Presence, radii and exclusions.

1. 1

   Switch to Presence

   For every campaign of a business people visit or call locally.

2. 2

   Read 90 days of matched locations

   List areas with real spend and no conversions, and the share of clicks from outside your targets.

3. 3

   Fit the radii

   Size each one to how far customers travel, and remove overlaps between campaigns.

4. 4

   Exclude what you cannot serve

   Areas, regions or countries with spend and no realistic customers.

5. 5

   Set schedules in the right time zone

   Match each location's real opening hours, allowing for the account's time zone.

6. 6

   Show the address

   Link your Business Profile in Google Ads so location assets can show the nearest address and distance.

The audit names campaigns on presence or interest with the share of clicks from outside their locations, countries that took money and returned nothing, missing radii on accounts that count walk-ins, schedules on call accounts, and languages that miss part of a country.

Oppy can switch a campaign to Presence, add locations, exclude areas and set schedules to your hours once you approve.