If you run an Adwords campaign, Geo Targeting is a tool for which you have options about where you want your ads to be shown and Google, in theory, places the ads in front of anyone from that area who conducts a search enquiry using your key information.
The reason this confuses so many people is that if you do not get the settings for your GEO Target just right, Google decides for itself what it is it thinks you meant, which is usually as wrong as it could possibly be.
Telling Google to show your ads to the Amish countryside in Reading Pennsylvania without the proper settings in place might get your ads shown to people in Paraguay, wherever that might be, geographically speaking. (Somewhere between Bolivia and Brazil in South America…, I think.)What do they speak there, Paraguayan?
The Google Shuffle off to Paraguay Sidestep
By the way, you can sidestep Google’s decision-making process altogether if you adjust your “Advanced Location Options” settings and can be tracked with the new Google universal analytics. Just make sure that you have only selected “People in” and not the “based on Search Intent” as this limits Google to just following your directions for location and not guessing the intent of every search on the planet that has your ads keywords or metatags in them. It is a simple trick that saves you a world of frustration.
The Many Faces of Geo Targeting
For the rest of us, Geo Targeting is a simple phrase that has both a technical meaning and practical application that can produce amazing results when tempered with Geo Fencing. First, let us get the technical definition out of the way. The technical is, in itself, a confusing thing to have in front of you.
