For a local Vancouver business, the most valuable switch in Google Ads is often geographic targeting. It lets you draw a circle on the map: people inside see the ad, people outside never trigger it, so the budget goes only to those within reach who might actually walk in. It is not a campaign type; it is the setting in the targeting layer that decides which place your ad is shown to. The payoff is concrete: a Richmond physiotherapy and massage clinic that confines its ads to within ten kilometres of the door does not waste money on people half an hour's drive away who, however tempted, will never make the trip; the same budget, spent on neighbours within a few kilometres who might genuinely book, returns far more. This article makes clear which layer geographic targeting sits in, the handful of ways you can fence a location, and how it ultimately changes what the person at the other end of the ad sees.
Who is this article for? ❓
If you run a local business with a service radius, say a clinic, restaurant, repair shop or call-out service whose customers mostly come from nearby, this is worth a few minutes. It will not walk you through which box to tick in the account. Instead it helps you settle one thing: "where do my customers come from, and which patch of the map should the ads fence in?" That way you stop paying for a pile of distant clicks that will never walk in, and you can follow what whoever manages your ads is saying. If you run an online business with no geographic boundary, selling nationally or even worldwide, geographic targeting matters less to you, and you can skim.
First, be clear which layer geographic targeting is
Google Ads is built in nested layers: the outermost is the campaign (the ad "type"), which decides what the ad looks like and whether it appears on Search, Display or Video; inside that sit ad groups and the actual ad copy; and geographic targeting lives in the targeting layer, answering something else entirely, namely which place your ad is shown to. It is not a campaign type in its own right but a setting you can layer onto almost any type, whether Search, Display or Video. And it is set at the campaign level: it applies to the whole campaign, not per ad group. In short, the type decides the form of the ad and the channel it appears on, while geographic targeting decides which patch of the map it covers. Keep the two apart and nothing gets muddled.
The handful of ways to fence a location
According to Google's official documentation, geographic targeting offers a few main ways to fence a place, which you can use on their own or in combination:
- By administrative area (country / region / city / postal code): pick one or more areas directly. For instance, target one city such as Richmond, or add a few neighbouring municipalities.
- By radius (radius targeting, also called proximity or "Target a radius"): draw a circle around a point and cover only the people inside it. This is the most useful option for any business with premises, where "can they pop over?" is the question. Google requires a radius of at least 1 km and will not let you set one smaller; draw it too tight and there are only so many people inside, so the ad may struggle to get going.
- Excluding locations: the reverse. Carve out the areas you do not want to cover, so the ad does not leak into places that are no use to you.
All of these work in Canada. For most local businesses, radius targeting is usually the first line to draw, and the handiest. Put a circle around your premises, and people outside it are simply kept at the door.
The setting most often overlooked, yet most decisive: "are they there" versus "interested in there"
Once you have fenced the place, there is a further setting that is easy to skip yet decides whether the budget is well spent. Google calls it location options, and the two choices differ sharply:
- "Presence or interest": the ad goes to two kinds of people: those who are actually inside the area you fenced, and those who are not there but whose recent searches or browsing show an interest in that place. This is Google's default, and the broader reach.
- "Presence": shown only to people currently in, or regularly in, the area you fenced.
Why does this setting matter? Because the default also pushes the ad to people who are "not inside the area you fenced right now but have recently shown an interest in it". For a clinic that serves locals only, where the customer must turn up in person, that is usually money wasted, so it generally pays to tighten to "Presence". Google's own guidance agrees: use Presence when you only want to reach people in a specific location and not those who may be elsewhere but are still interested in your product or service.
A worked example: a Richmond physiotherapy and massage clinic
Suppose you run a physiotherapy and massage clinic in Richmond, and almost all your customers are neighbours who come in regularly because it is close by. You use radius targeting to draw a circle of about ten kilometres with the clinic at its centre, then set location options to "Presence". Now only people living in or passing through the area around the clinic see your ad, while those half an hour's drive away, who would never make the trip for a massage even if they saw it, are outside the coverage from the start. The budget is not diluted by useless clicks from far away, so it stretches further.
And do not forget the person at the other end of the ad. A neighbour who has just searched "physiotherapy near me" in Richmond sees a clinic right on their doorstep, a few minutes' drive away. To them the ad is useful, right when they need it, not an out-of-reach interruption. Meanwhile someone living far off, who could never realistically make the trip, is never bothered by it at all. Both ends are better off.
The flip side: letting people "not yet in Vancouver, but planning to come" see you too
Neither location option is right or wrong. It depends on where your customers come from. Take a different scenario: you run a hotel in Vancouver, and your custom is precisely out-of-town visitors. Here you should do the opposite and extend reach beyond your own city. For instance, fence in people elsewhere, in neighbouring cities or your main source markets, who are searching "hotels in Vancouver" or "places to stay in Vancouver", and keep the "interest" option on, so you are seen while they are still planning the trip, before they set off. It is the same geographic-targeting tool. A local clinic uses it to fence in only the people right here; an outward-facing business uses it to fence in the people about to come. It all turns on where your customers are.
Where this sits in your business
Geographic targeting is the step in marketing and customer acquisition that sifts out the right people by location, and it is usually the first piece played in the targeting game. For a local business, it is very nearly the make-or-break one. It is one of three layers in the same game as ad type and bidding: the type decides the form and the channel, targeting decides which place it goes to, bidding decides how much you pay for each opportunity. And it works hand in glove with your website. Geographic targeting brings the right people nearby to the door; the website catches them and makes them want to book or call.
What happens if it is set wrong
The most common waste is the ad quietly leaking to a crowd out of reach. Either the location option was never tightened, so the default also pushes the ad to people far away who merely have "a passing interest in the area"; or the area is fenced too wide and a local business ends up advertising across the whole region. The budget drains away, and most of what comes in is "just looking, never coming" clicks. The reverse trap exists too: a radius drawn too small, or nearby areas wrongly excluded, leaves customers you could have reached unable to see you at all. The essence of geographic targeting is fencing it just right, neither too much nor too little, to cover exactly the people who will walk in.
When it is worth sorting your geographic targeting out
A few common moments: your customers have a clear geographic range (local only, or a fixed service radius); you are already advertising but find a good share of enquiries coming from places you simply cannot serve or reach; you are just starting out and want to keep the budget from leaking beyond the fence from day one; or you are in the opposite position, wanting to reach out-of-town customers "not here yet but planning to come". Meet any one of these, and it is worth thinking carefully about which patch of the map the ads should cover.
Leave this to 5U Website
Geographic targeting may look like drawing a circle on the map, but the hard part is the judgement: how big a circle, which way to fence it, and whether to tighten or loosen the location option. Fence too wide and money leaks to people out of reach; too narrow and you shut out the neighbours. Over our years building websites and doing digital marketing for Vancouver businesses, we have seen plenty of local firms blanketing half the region with ads while wondering why the money went out but nobody came, and the trouble almost always traces back to this layer never being tightened.
So for a small business that only serves its local area, here is what we recommend: tighten the reach to your actual service radius rather than blanketing the whole region from day one. Draw a radius around your premises that matches where your customers actually come from, then set the location option to "Presence", rather than letting the default spend on distant searchers who merely have a passing interest in the area. The one exception is a business whose customers travel in from elsewhere, such as a hotel, a tour operator or a destination service. For those it is worth keeping "interest" on, so you reach people while they are still planning the trip. In other words, whether to tighten or loosen this switch has no single right answer; it turns entirely on where your customers come from. What we do for clients is work that out first, then decide whether to fence by radius or by area and how to set the location option most economically, and keep fine-tuning as the data comes in, so the budget stays, as far as possible, only on people within reach who will walk in. If you are about to advertise, or have an account that has long shown no results, take a look at our website design and digital marketing services, or send an email describing your situation. We usually reply within one to two business days.
To tie the whole picture together, read on: what Google Ads is and which layers it has, the overall logic of targeting in showing ads only to potential buyers, and the method so often stacked with location, targeting by audience traits such as age and income.
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