You will most likely see differences in your CPC when you have duplicated terms in different campaigns that will be targeting different geos. Unless you are also running a National campaign, you will not bid against yourself which is always the issue with the duplicated terms approach.

The beauty of using geo-specific campaigns is that different terms will give you different results based on:

- What the interest is in that geo
- Bidding Pricing
- Your ad copy/landing page strategy

I had a client who sold sports apparel and we would use geo-targeting so that we could be more aggressive on sports coats/jackets in the north while lowering positioning in the south. This improved the ROAS drastically….

What is the experience here with duplicate keywords across multiple geo-targeted campaigns?

Obviously the metrics will report differently based on location based differnces, but are there any other draw backs you’ve noticed

Good luck Jessica and George!

The readers have spoken! The 3 comments following your own all contain helpful information. I’m with Eloi on this one, however, in that I feel you will have the most accurate reporting and control over your targeting by creating separate campaigns for each area you are geo-targeting.

@ Kalin,

Thanks for your input! You are absolutely correct that geo-targeting doesn’t stop with campaign settings and organization – you must follow through with location-specific text in the ad copy. And why stop there? Your landing page should reflect the go-targeting as well. This is a perfect reminder of the symbiotic relationship between account-keyword-ad-landing page. They all have to work together.

@ Eloi,

Thanks for jumping in and sharing your expertise again. I get the feeling that geo-targeting is one of your favorite aspects of PPC! : )

If you have one campagin targeting all of these locations, then you would see data for those keywords, for all the locations. Having several campaigns for each city will allow you to see/compare data individually (data from San Diego vs data from LA vs Data from Palm Springs) whilst also presenting the searcher with a more tailored ad, which will help the QS.

However, in terms of quality score, it is now attributed at every search (as opposed to just looking back at your account history’s information)… I have a feeling that if San Diegans click your ads more, then you might get a better QS (position) over there, once Google detects their IP.

But the fact of having several campaigns with tailored ads should increase the performance and QS of your campaign much more anyways, so I recommend the multi campaign approach. Even though it’s 3x the optimisation work (or however many campaigns you have).

- Local Business Ads which highlight the location of the firm
- Use of the City or State in the ad copy
- Local Phone Number instead of 800 number

These simple techniques in ad copy can take a normal regionally targeted campaign and really take it to the next level. Why set up a campaign to target an area specifically then fail to have your ad copy highlight the area? Just some food for thought, love the blog guys!!

It would make sense to have a single one because of budget management and the ability to say have negative terms at campaign level (if required). Due to having different budgets per campaign – this might affect volume of impressions?

Also if you alter the day parting (not sure if any of the Southern California would be in different time regions) you might see different min bids at different times of the day in the different regions – having 1 campaign would not allow this obviously?

You’re right that IP will likely drive more traffic. I’ve found this is typically because I can run broad match or phrase match in those campaigns knowing that I’m still targeting the right searchers with my geographic settings!

@ Eloi,

Thanks for the additional feedback! I totally agree that building your geo targeted campaigns with a new campaign for each location offers a scalable solution and gives you the most control.