To make geo-targeting easier for advertisers Google has connected the location targeting feature with Google Maps. Tapping into that well of information allows the feature to be more accurate, provide location recommendations, and provide more details about locations. That’s the backend; frontend users should find that the interface has become smarter, easier, and well… more useful.

Read on to find out what these changes are and how they’ll impact you:

Instant Location Targeting Suggestions

Similar to when you type a search query into google, the targeted locations box will now instantly provide location search suggestions. This should make it easier to find relevant locations where you should be advertising. See below:

Reach Numbers by Targeted Location

Tired of guessing at which geo-target is right for you? Notice the “Reach” column in the screenshot above? Now the Location Targeting feature will display reach numbers. Because of this, you’ll know if the location(s) you are selecting are small or large. And you can modify your paid search strategy accordingly.

Increased Target Location Limits

You used to be restricted to 300 location targets. Now you can have up to 10,000 locations and 500 additional targets per campaign. It’s hard to imagine anyone capping out with such a high limit, but if you do/might, leave us a comment and let us know!

Warning for Current Location Targeting Advertisers

Polygon targeting is going away by 2012. If you use this feature, you need to get into your account and change to the new “Target a Radius” feature. Have no fear; according to Google you will be able to “selectively add locations within your radius target.” So after the time investment in re-setting things up, your account shouldn’t be any worse for wear.

 
The changes to the interface are now live. Jump into the settings tab on one of your campaigns, go to Locations, click edit and you’ll be on your way. And leave us a comment and tell us if you have increased an account’s performance through the use of location targeting.

Prior to this announcement, any geotargeted campaign was basically opted into the “search intent plus location”-based geotargeting method, as you can probably pretty easily infer from the geographic reports available in your Dimensions tab.

(Note: geo area is Detroit)

Most of your traffic was likely coming from actual locally-based queries, with a decent contingent probably coming from other specific metro areas. Depending on your advertised business and location, the degree of “far-awayness” and volume from these other areas would vary, but by and large it would be fairly consistent from month to month. As such, post the announcement, if you didn’t make any changes, you were automatically set to “search intent plus location”. That maybe seems fine, as there wasn’t really any accompanying announcement of expanded “search intent” targeting and it seems that if you did nothing, everything would stay the same. I can’t say with certainty whether that’s the case or not, but I do know that a small number of clients for whom we closely track the geographic source of leads saw an noticeable increase in leads from areas well outside our technically-geotargeted area. We don’t really want to generate a lot of those leads, because they turn into less-profitable customers in the long term and we’d like to focus budget on the highest-profit areas. So all the campaigns went to location-based geotargeting, and: superb! No lead loss that was irreversible optimization of the properly-geotargeted campaigns, and a lower lead cost with higher lead value. For this client, changing this setting was all win.

Of course, if I ran a vacation home rental PPC account in a lucrative tourist destination, I’d think twice about changing this setting unless my location-based geotargeting strategy was very well-developed with campaigns covering areas I’d be likely to lose good leads from otherwise. In that case, I’d probably use the data available to expand my campaigns and geotargeted areas before I decided to experiment with addressing this setting.

But: If I ran a local-only car rental service PPC account in Greenville (the most common place name in the US…), NY I’d be a leetle bit wary of allowing Google to determine if a search query really meant to find me and not a business in one of the 49 other Greenvilles in the country or one of the other 2 in NY state. But maybe it’s doing a great job (check your Dimensions tab, again) and if it’s not, perhaps I can just exclude a few locations from being targeted with AdWords’ complementary…excluded locations settings!

This is actually true for any advertiser; if this all sounds interesting but you’re afraid of losing leads by changing your settings to location-only, you can always analyze your reports and restrict traffic from a specific region or metro area that is sending you consistently unproductive traffic.

Regardless of the very substantial impact changing this setting (and its friend, the exclusion setting) can have on ROI, I’d bet fewer of us than should have within in the industry have experimented with it. Why? Because this is not a setting that’s available to change for multiple campaigns via AdWords Editor, and if you have a big account or multiples thereof, you’ll have a good time going into each campaign’s settings individually and clicking “Advanced Location Options” and modifying this. But based on my experience changing campaigns over and analysis of differences in CPA in accounts before and after modification my takeaway is: yes, doing it kind of sucks. And yes, it’s important enough to do it anyway.

Batman vs. Joker, Red Sox vs. Yankees, Wile E. Coyote vs. Roadrunner, Google vs. Bing: just a few of the greatest rivalries of our time. In these scenarios we always find ourselves rooting for one side or the other (was I the only one who wanted Coyote to catch the roadrunner just once?). However, if you want to be successful in the PPC world you can’t choose just one. Both Google and Bing’s share of the U.S search market grew last month, so although you may have a favorite it’s time to get comfortable using each of them.

The key to PPC success is having the right ads, showing to the right customers, at the right time. I’ve become pretty good at using AdWords’ targeting features to get my ads in front of the intended audience. I must admit though, I haven’t dedicated as much time as I should have to learning and testing adCenter’s targeting features. This post will let you to follow along with me in learning about all that adCenter has to offer and how similar or different these features are to AdWords.

Targeting Overview

AdWords and adCenter offer similar targeting options, but the approach each search engine takes is a bit different.  The targeting options fall under five main categories:

1. Language
2. Location
3. Device
4. Time of Day/Day of Week
5. Demographics

Below are screen shots of the campaign settings page for both Google and MSN. The location of each targeting function corresponds with the number from the above list.

Google: Campaign > Settings Tab

 MSN: Campaign > Change Settings

In MSN these campaign targeting options can also be set at the ad group level. The targeting section on the ad group settings page is identical to the campaign targeting section.

The rest of this post will take a closer look at Language and Location targeting. They are the two most frequently used targeting options and are utilized differently each search engine. Understanding these differences and adjusting your strategy is necessary to running successful PPC campaigns.

Language Targeting

The language targeting setting aids in determining which user will see your ads. This is the setting where I found the most disparity between AdWords and adCenter.

Google AdWords – Languages

Google offers 40 different language options for campaign targeting. AdWords compares your campaign language setting to users’ Google interface settings. If the languages match, that user will see your ads. There is no maximum number of languages you can select per campaign, but since Google does not translate your ads best practice is to target one language per campaign. You can edit your language setting options at any time.

Microsoft AdCenter – Language and Market Setting

You may have noticed that there is no language targeting feature in the AdCenter campaign targeting section. That is because language and market is set only at the ad group level. To view this setting, go to any ad group in your AdCenter account and click Change settings.

Here you can see the target language and market, but you will not be able to edit it. The language and market must be set when you create an ad group and it cannot be changed later. If you want to target more than one language or market you have to set up multiple ad groups.

The language setting indicates in which language the ads will be written, and the market determines the set of websites through which the ads are distributed. For the above ad group, ads will need to be written in English or Spanish in order to pass the review process. Its target market is the United States so ads will only show when users search on sites like bing.com or yahoo.com.

AdCenter currently offers six language and market options:

• English – Canada
• English – UK
• English – Singapore
• English and Spanish – United States
• French – Canada
• French – France

Location Targeting

Google AdWords: Locations

When you edit locations for a campaign you are taken to AdWords interactive map targeting tool. There are five ways you can specify location targeting:

• Search for countries, territories, regions and cities
• Select a preset bundle of locations
• Choose a point on the map and set a radius around it that you want to target
• Target a custom shape
• Exclude areas within your selected location

Once you select your location Google takes into account three factors to target your ads to these users:

1. Google Domain – if a user searches on the domain http://www.google.co.uk/ the will see ads targeted to the United Kingdom.
2. Search Term – if a user enters a search term that contains a city or region, they can see ads targeted to that region.
3. Internet Protocol Address – Google uses the IP to determine a users location and shows ads targeted to that area.

Microsoft AdCenter: Geographic

Location targeting in AdCenter can be done at the campaign or the ad group level. Campaign locations settings apply to all ad groups, but will be trumped by an ad group location setting. When you click Edit for any of the targeting settings in AdCenter, a new window will appear and you can select the targeting option you want to edit from the right hand column.

Microsoft offers fewer ways to target locations in comparison to Google. Currently, you can target by city, metro, state/province, and country/region.  You can target ads to almost any country. Click Show all countries/regions to view the complete list of available locations.

Once you select your locations, a box will appear at the top of the map allowing you to set incremental bids for each location. You can increase your bids in 10 percent increments, from 0-100 percent.

If you still want display your ads everywhere, but only increase bids for certain locations, make sure to check Display ads in other locations.

AdCenter determines a searcher’s location using reverse-IP address lookup.  Unlike Google, the search term is not taken into account. What does this mean for your ad? Let’s say you run a local flower shop in New York. You set your location targeting to “New York (state/province). If a person in Texas searches for “flower delivery shop in New York” using Google may see your ad, whereas a person using Bing will not. This would be an instance where you might increase bids for New York searchers but still select to display your ads in other locations.

The concept behind language and location targeting for these two search engines is the same. They help to make sure are ads are shown to the intended audience. The difference comes in how these features function. Hopefully you’ve learned a little more about the similarities and differences in Google and Bing’s targeting features and can use this information to improve your PPC account. Stay tuned for part two where we’ll look at targeting by Device, Time of Day/Day of Week, and Demographics.

As always, we love hearing from our readers. If you have any questions or comments please post below!

Global Market Finder is a lot like the Adwords Keyword Tool, but much more nuanced, and actually geared for finding different locations opportunities for keywords. Before getting into what differentiates this tool from the pre-existing keyword tool, lets first discuss what the Global Market Finder actually does. Global Market Finder allows you to find how a keyword competes in other countries. This is then ranked by “Opportunity,” which is defined by Google as “…a dynamic metric based on local monthly search volume, suggested bid, and competition between different locations in your target market.” (http://www.google.com/support/globalmarketfinder/?hl=en). So, you set your business location and language, enter a specific keyword or keywords, and then filter by global market (G20, European Union, Americas, Africa, Oceania, etc.). The Global Market Finder then ranks each country in your predefined global market filter by opportunity. Next to this opportunity rank it displays statistics for local monthly searches, the suggested Adwords bid, and competition. Also, underneath each country’s listing, you can display what language the keyword is ranking for in that country, as well as a translation. Google boasts that these keyword translations can be applied in up to fifty-six different languages, allowing you to explore most languages that someone could possibly search Google with. So in short, Global Market Finder is a good addition to any business looking for global opportunities in their Adwords marketing campaigns.

Google Ads for Global Advertisers combines Global Market Finder, Adwords, Google Translate, and several other tools to add an international element to any Adwords campaign.  Much like how My Client Center is the hub for any PPC company managing multiple accounts, Ads for Global Advertisers serves as a central page that organizes all of these tools for you the advertiser. Also, it allows several different options for international payment, shipping, and customer service. And, like any other Google service or tool, there are many tutorials to aid in your global expansion.

One of the main advantages of Ads for Global Advertisers is the ability to translate your webpage and ads to a language of your targeting. Google Translate Web Element, one of the main features of Ads for Global Advertisers, allows you to translate your entire webpage (or webpages) into a language of your choosing. This is done simply by selecting the language or languages you want to translate to, and then by adding a snippet of coding assigned by Google into your site’s source coding. Then, your website will be available in the languages you selected. This will not interfere with AdSense coding, however. In addition to entire website translation, Ads for Global Advertisers also allows you to translate documents (PDF, TXT, DOC, PPT, XLS, RTF), sentences, words, or phrases into selected languages as well. In fact, if you are Javascript enabled, you can start typing in English (or your language preference) and Google will instantly translate into another language. And, as is the case with much of Google’s products to Adwords advertisers, these features are free.

Yet Ads for Global Advertisers has it’s own share of shortcomings. The machine-based translations of your website may often be missing the point or larger message, and oftentimes focus on a word-to-word translation as opposed to an overall message/meaning translation.  This can lead to many misunderstandings, as well as an inability to gain international customers. So, Google suggests looking for translators to supplement or replace it’s translation services (for a cost, of course). This can be especially tricky for businesses with a specific industry vernacular, as you have to find a translator with an understanding of what your business actually does, and the type of industry that you are in.

In addition to the issue of your business being “lost in translation,” there is also the issue of cultural practices. You must do your research into an area in which you are attempting to advertise in (here is a video detailing such research). The culture in the area may be much different than what you expect, and as such it is important to address this issue so as to conduct an effective ad campaign. Keep in mind that an ad campaign that works in America might not be suitable for an ad campaign in Europe, or vice versa. Do your homework, and be sure to test out many different types of ads in order to find what works in certain countries.

To recap, Global Market Finder is a great tool in which to see business opportunities in various other countries. Also, like the Keyword Tool, it can help to show you what keywords are working in different areas as well as in what language they are being searched. Ads for Global Advertisers is a great new addition, as it combines many of Google’s pre-existing tools, and puts them together in an easy to use interface. So, if you are looking to expand your global marketing reach, these tools are a great way to start looking into an increased clientele. And, as Google says on it’s Global Advertiser homepage, “There are 1.9 billion Internet users worldwide. Wouldn’t you like to add them as customers?”

Everyone Can’t Be Everywhere

Some products or services can only be offered to people within a certain distance from your actual physical location, so you better only show your ads to people either within that distance, or who are using search queries that contain your location. This is important to remember for local businesses, who often also have small PPC budgets, and for larger businesses with multiple locations. Targeting the people searching in a certain area with keywords and ads that are specialized for that area is much more likely to return success.

The World is Not Homogenous

In addition to the somewhat specialized case above, some…many…all? products or services are going to have geographical locations in which they sell better. If you use the data available to you properly, you can determine where these are and devote more resources to a population you’re more confident will convert.

There are a few ways to find out where your high-value location targets are. For one, you can use analytics data to determine continents, regions, or cities where your conversions are concentrated. Depending on the analytics package you use, you’ll have different levels of detail available, but in any case, this can be a helpful place to start. For those without analytics availability or who just want more detailed information, sourcing this information directly from your conversion data can be a viable option if you have the right tools.

For some people, leads come in the form of form submissions that ask for data such as city, state, and zip code. On top of that, for sales or revenue-based clients, you have shipping and sales address information available.  That means that you have all sorts of potential to geotarget your PPC campaigns.

So What to Do?

Almost everyone can get this data compiled into a spreadsheet, which is great but can be overwhelming. A year’s worth of conversion data? This could be 32,428 rows in excel, and sounds completely daunting to sort through to try and find conversion location patterns. Which basically gets us to the point I’m trying to make: the idea overwhelmed us, too, until a team member discovered this very neat website: BatchGeo. You just paste in your properly-formatted spreadsheet information and it maps the locations of your whatever- sales, leads, high-value customers- on a Google maps map. It can even handle missing information and can map city/state combinations, address/zip code combinations, and zip codes only. It’s free, and it has been an extremely helpful tool for us in identifying areas in which leads are concentrated.  Whether you’re using this kind of raw data for geotargeting now or not, it won’t hurt you to plug the data in and see how the map looks- you might get a useful surprise!

The problem with most multilingual pay-per-click campaigns is laziness. Many advertisers will launch international campaigns without consideration for accurate translations and culturally relevant messaging. Thankfully this problem is easy to overcome with a little extra consideration and planning. So before you launch a multilingual pay per click campaign, take to time to focus on the following best practices:

1. Translations. Translations. Translations. The success or failure of a multilingual pay-per-click campaign lies in the crux of translations. The quality of translation is the most critical component, and thus should receive the most attention and consideration. Many advertisers are guilty (often unknowingly) of translating ad copy in a literal sense without consideration for localization. When this happens, ad and landing page copy is often confusing to a native speaker, decreasing the effectiveness of your campaign. Not to mention, literal translations stick out like a sore thumb, native speakers can immediately pick up on the lack of consideration for their language, and will immediately dismiss your message.Don’t fall victim to this common mistake. Don’t use a simple online tool. You need a human! Spend time researching a quality translation service at the onset. A quality translation service will read the content in English, then rewrite the content to it conveys the same message and tone in your language of choice. Once you receive translated content, run it by a native speaker to ensure the job was done right.
2. Leverage Existing Campaign Structure. Campaign structure is very important with a multilingual pay-per-click initiative. Regardless of the quantity of languages targeted, campaigns and ad groups should be separated based on language. You can only set language and geographic targeting at the campaign level in Google, so your language breakdown must be at this level.Leverage your well-organized campaign structure from your English-targeted campaigns. To build a campaign in another language, duplicate the structure (but not the keywords) of your English campaigns. Next, modify the keywords (see multilingual keyword research below), ad text and landing pages accordingly.
3. Pay Attention to Your Campaign Settings. According to the AdWords help section, “the AdWords system looks at a user’s Google interface language setting to see if it matches one of the languages that your campaign targets.” If your campaign only targets “Spanish” for the campaign settings, then the ads will only serve to users who have designated “Spanish” in their Google account. For example, a user is searching on Google.com and has their personal account settings set to “Spanish,” then they will see ads from Spanish-targeted campaigns. Similarly, if someone is searching on Google.fr the language default is French, etc. If you are targeting users in a different country that speak one common language, then set your AdWords campaign to target that language.However, depending on your campaign objectives, this type of language targeting may narrow your search too much. Particularly when you are targeting a bilingual audience. In this case, you can expand your campaign targeting by changing your campaign settings to target more than one language.
4. Conduct Multilingual Keyword Research. Don’t just translate your keywords! In most cases, keywords or phrases can have multiple meanings when translated in another language. If you use a direct translation, then your keywords or phrases may not be relevant to your product. Conduct multilingual keyword research to best target keywords in the targeted language. Get started on your keyword list with the following:
   • Search Query Report. Run a search query report to identify existing foreign language keywords that are serving your ads.
   • Competitive Research. Refer to competitor ads and landing pages to identify keywords or phrases that are relevant to your campaign. Note, be aware you’re your competitors translations may not be accurate. Always run these keywords or phrases by a translation service or a native speaker prior to launch.
   • Translate Existing Keywords. Start with the keywords that you are targeting in English. Hire a strong translation service to identify the most common translation for that keyword or phrase—be careful of taking direct translations!
   • Ask a Native Speaker. Once you have completed your keyword research, run your list by a native speaker. This simple step will identify any red flags in the translations. It can also spark new keyword-targeting opportunities.

   If you plan to target a campaign in Spanish, you need to target keywords in Spanish. While some advertisers target Spanish speakers with English keywords and ad text, it is strongly recommended to cater your messaging to the native language. First, keywords in other languages are much less expensive, so you will see lower cost-per-clicks within these campaigns. Secondly, your campaign will be much more relevant to your target audience if you speak their language. Take the time to translate your entire language-targeted campaigns, this simple step may give you a leg up over your competition.

5. Use Language-Specific Ad Text and Landing Pages. Translated ad copy and landing pages are mutually exclusive. You cannot have one without the other. The landing page needs to play off of the cultural promise from the ad text. So, if your ad text is in Spanish, then your landing page needs to be in Spanish. To maximize relevance and effectiveness of your campaign, both ad text and landing pages need to be translated to the targeted language.As with keywords, both the ad text and landing pages should not be a direct translation of the English copy. I apologize if I am starting to sound like a broken record, but work with a strong translation company to translate your landing page and ads from English to your targeted language. A strong translation service will make adjustments to cater to local dialects and cultures. Landing page localization does not just stop at translations— incorporating culturally relevant images, design and color schemes also should be considered to improve relevancy.

Have your launched a multilingual campaign? Please share your experience and suggestions!

In most cases, the way to most effectively reach a local audience is to combine geo-targeted PPC campaigns with accurate local listings. No matter what the user’s intent, your presence in both the ad space and local listings will help convey that you are a reliable resource.

Geo-Targeting

So let’s start with the three options you have for setting up your PPC campaigns. The first is to create a geo-targeted campaign, which allows your ads to only show in specified locations. The best part is that you have a wide array of areas that you can choose from, including countries, cities, and even a certain radius around your location. The second option is to add geo-qualified keywords to your campaigns, which are keywords that include the location in them, but any searcher, in any location, can see them. The third option would be to place geo-qualified keywords in your geo-targeted campaign, but the strategy you choose will be dependent on your target audience, and what makes the most sense in how to reach them.

Once you have identified the best way to reach your target audience, and you’ve set up your geo-targeted campaigns, you can move on to verifying your local listing information.

Setting Up Your Local Listings

Google, Yahoo!, and Bing all have a local listing center where you can set up and claim your business. However, I prefer to use GetListed.org, because you can set up and manage all three from one interface. It’s also a great way to keep tabs on the reviews your site has received, and keep a to-do list of the items that will help your local listings rank better.

Upon entering your company’s name and zip code, you’ll be taken to the snapshot page where you can see how many, if any, of your listings have been claimed in the engines.

From this page, you can click the links to claim your listing, and you are taken through a simple two to three step process. During these steps you will be able to enter valuable information for your customers like store hours, accepted forms of payment, and a description of your products or services. Once you are finished, you will have a direct line to each of the local interfaces where you can see that your listings have been verified, and you can make any necessary changes as time goes on.

Advanced Location Settings In Google

In addition to preventing your listing from being hijacked, claiming your listing can also benefit your PPC campaigns in Google. Under campaign settings, you now have the option to show relevant addresses with your ads to searchers that are in your targeted area. When you think about it, what better way is there to stand out to your potential customers than to have a relevant geo-targeted ad along with an accurate address?

In order to turn this feature on, after your listing has been claimed in Google, click on the campaign you want to edit, and go to the settings tab. Under Locations, Languages, and Demographics click on the link that will allow you to show relevant addresses with your ads (advanced). From here you will see your location extension options.

Though it is possible to enter an address that has not been verified, the benefits of claiming your listing far outweigh the effort to do so, so I would not recommend skipping that step.

Positioning Your Business For Success

Marketers today consider local search to be the fastest growing online division. And according to Michael Boland, program director, Mobile Local Media (MLM), The Kelsey Group, “As mobile data consumption rises, we expect local marketing to be a big winner. There is a strong correlation between local search and the mobile use case, which will cause a good portion of the ongoing mobile application boom to focus on local.”

Positioning yourself with geo-targeted PPC campaigns and tying them to your claimed local listings will help you get ahead of your competition, and establish a local presence where qualified consumers are. Doing the work today will help ensure that you are ready to ride the wave of local and mobile search, and your money will be spent on the most qualified traffic.

This could potentially hurt some local advertisers, especially the ones who rely on the local business ads but do not run any PPC ads. However, if you are running PPC ads there is a mini solution to this issue until Google gets their LBA’s back up and running.

They’re called Location Extensions. If you’re running a PPC ad with a location extension your PPC ad will show the local address you entered as the extension in your PPC account as well as a map allowing customers to at least get your business name, address and even directions.

The location extensions will show your PPC ad with a plus sign below the ad text. Upon clicking on that plus sign your map will come up.

To enable the location extensions in your account, simply click on any campaign, then click on the settings tab.

Under ‘locations, languages and demographics’ you should see an option to ‘show relevant addresses with your ads (advanced). Click on that link.

Once you click on the link, another link will pop up saying, ‘add an address’. Click on that.

Then, you simply add the name of your company, address, phone number if you’d like, city, state and zip and hit save.   Your final version should look something like this:

These ads with address won’t replace Google’s LBA’s but they will help your customer see where you’re located. The location extensions won’t show up for searches located outside of your geographic location as well.  In addition to, if I’m not mistaken, the plus box allowing the customer to see your address is only available in positions right below the search box or in the shaded sponsored ad area in Google.

A great way to help increase your CTR and conversion rates is to take your top  performing keywords, and put them into new campaigns, targeting each state individually. When you write your ad text, be sure that state’s name is in your title and if possible in your description line. This will help increase your click through rates because even if people aren’t typing in a state or location specific keyword, tailoring your ad text to the users location still makes it a custom ad specific to that user.

In addition to tailoring your ad texts to that particular location, you can also customize your landing pages by using dynamic landing pages for a particular location. Now personally I think making 50 different landing pages with a state name in the title is a bit much. However you can create one landing page with dynamic titles that will change depending on the users search query.

I would try testing out a few of your top performing locations before making the big leap into creating 50 different campaigns targeting all 50 states. One place you can look is Google Analytics to find out which location is driving a majority of your traffic.  Simply login to your Google Analytics account, under visitors to the left, click on ‘map overlay’.  Scroll down below the map and you’ll see a list of countries, click on United States, and that will give you a breakdown of each state within the US. If you sort by visits, then you’ll get the state with the most visits first. You can see in the screen shot below, for my PPC account Indiana and Kentucky drives the majority of traffic to my website. Therefore I could create two new campaigns and landing pages targeting Indiana and Kentucky specifically to increase conversion rates.

Not only can you increase your conversion rates by taking users to a more specific landing page targeted to their location, but you can also increase your click-through rates with your new location targeted ad texts. By increasing your CTR’s you can easily increase your Quality Scores and decrease your cost-per-click without losing position. It’s a win-win situation.

First, I’ll describe what I found within one of our AdWords campaigns. Since one of our client provides international service, one of our campaigns was targeting a wide range of countries. As we were targeting a wide range of locations, the ‘All Languages’ setting was chosen as our default setting.

Overall, this international campaign worked well. Each month we generated a good number of leads with a cost-per-lead below our target CPL. However, good campaigns can always perform better. As part of our on-going optimization strategy we ran a search query report in order to find new keywords to add to our account as well as find new negative keywords to improve our traffic quality.

Upon running a search query report, we found quite a few search queries that weren’t even in English (but all of our keywords are English). Here is a short list of search queries that matched for the term “hydraulic pump repair:”

accident barrage hydrolique dans le monde
accumulator hydraulisch
accumulator rexroth
acheter vendre verin hydraulique pour fendeuse
aeroquip
yollu vana hidrolik
apparatuur of systemen hydraulisch druk
ñlkmhftgtgtr rexroth
bobina rexroth 12v
bomba linear de pistões axiais vickers
camion hydraulique
camper hydrolisch
groupe hydrolique
groupe idrolique
grszesio chydra?lik
havayla çal??an hidrolik
haydrouliekbedrijven
hitroli ciftarafl?silindirliftler
hydrauliek onderdelen
hydraulische steuerung
hydraulisk klippebord
hydraulisze agregat
idrolique a villeneuve de marsan
karakteristik fluida hidrolik
la pompe hyd cabire
le nom de huile de frein hidraulique
macam macam hidroulik
matériel professionnel pinc idrolique
ogloszenia hydrallik wroclaw

The reasons these queries were a problem is three fold:

• The most important reason is that these terms were not converting into leads
• Our ads and landing pages are not targeted to these languages
• The point-of-contact for our client doesn’t speak these languages so communication issues could arise easily

So, why was this happening? This was happening for a few different reasons:

• Within this campaign, our language setting was on “all languages”
• We were targeting broad match keywords
• We were targeting a wide range of countries in a single campaign

Remember, location targeting is set at the campaign level. When targeting an international audience you you should keep few a things in mind:

1. When targeting a specific country, you are targeting the Google domain extension for that particular country. For example, if you’re targeting Canada, your ads will appear on www.google.ca. However, your ads will show only for a certain user if your language settings match their user preferences.
2. Also, your ads will appear according to IP address as well. If someone is located in Canada but they use Google.com for their search, your Canadian-targeted ads will appear here as well.
3. The language settings are important when targeting an international audience. Each Google user sets their own default language. If no language preference is set, the default language for that specific Google domain is chosen.
4. For example, if you target Spain but your selected language is only targeted to English, more-than-likely most your traffic is coming from users with an IP address in Spain who are using Google.com. However, if you add Spanish as a targeted language, then you’ll receive traffic from Google.com as well as Google.es.

And this is why we were seeing so many different languages in our search query report: we were targeting numerous countries with numerous languages. Now that’s some expanded broad match!

We are optimizing our international distribution by employing these tactics:

• Running a geographic report in AdWords and creating campaigns for the countries that are currently generating the most leads with the lowest CPL. And we’ll eventually create campaigns for each country we want to target.
• For now, our language setting will be English. We want to maintain a good Quality Score and displaying English ads for foreign keywords may hinder our score as the keywords aren’t in the same language as our ad or landing page.
• Also, we’ll target phrase match as opposed to opening up the broad match flood gates.
• Yes, Google does provide a translation tool so we could create ads in specific languages but for now, we want to have more control over our messaging. And I’m uncertain as to how accurate these Google translations are. If they’re anything like Babblefish, I’ll stay away.

In summary, casting a wide net within international waters can generate mixed results and you need to pay attention to the details. One of the most important aspects in AdWords is that you can control everything (your settings, at least) so make sure that all of your campaigns, whether they are domestic or international, are as focused as possible.