How accurate is the Geo-Targeting of Google and Bing/Yahoo PPC ads?
-
I have a client who serves a local market and who has had trouble in the past with people out of her service area clicking on ads. She asked how accurate the geo-targeting option is. I know it's not possible to be completely accurate resolving the location of IP addresses, but was wondering if there are any recent statistics out there regarding how accurate or inaccurate geo-targeting is. I did some quick searches but did not see any current numbers.
Many Thanks!
-
Keep in mind it goes based on the location of the isp and not users real address.
-
FYI, this may help filter out some of those inaccurate results:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/03/location-targeting-on-adwords-now-with.html
-
Thanks, that was real close to my own estimates. Would be interested if anyone had done any actual research into the accuracy lately though.
-
I've read in the past that geo-targeting is about 85% to 95% accurate. That's the short ball park answer.
While search engines are getting better at geo-targeting, I'd say that right now it depends on how specific of a market you're targeting. Done on a national, state or (major) city level and it's going to be pretty accurate to about 95%. If you're narrowing down on specific zip codes, or using custom shapes you will see clicks from non targeted areas.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What are the best practices for server-side A/B testing?
When performing a full-site server-side A/B test, what best practices should you follow to ensure that you're: not cloaking or at least not being shady only showing Google (and other search engines) the version you want them to see (i.e. not the test pages) Thanks in advance!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | vsem0 -
Viability of PPC for Competitive Keywords?
My company is a commercial real estate agency in New York City that helps businesses acquire office space. We are thinking of running a PPC campaign on Google Adwords. However our targeted keywords can cost up to $30 each. Perhaps we can spend $2,000 to $3,000 per month. Is there any way to predict if this campaign would be cost effective? If only 1 out of 15 site visitors generated by the PPC campaign contacts our firm, and one out of ten of those is a viable prospect, and we close with one out of five of those, it would mean that it would cost 750 clicks per transaction. If an average click is $20, that means that we would need to spend $15,000 per transaction. Our average commission is $20,000. So this is very marginal. Is my calculation overlooking something? A few keywords we would be competing on are the following: Manhattan office space rates
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Kingalan1
Manhattan office space for lease
Rental office Manhattan
Midtown office space for rent
Office space for lease nyc I might ad that we are competing against huge companies like Loopnet, Weworks, Regus, and several large real estate brokerages and landlords. Also, many of PPC visitors are running office space like searches when they are looking for shared executive office suites with very short term leases. This is not our market, we are seeking tenants that need their own demised space for a lease term of at least 3 years. Is there any way PPC can filter out clicks so we don't pay for visits from the executive office suite market? The site that we would be marketing is www.metro-manhattan.com Thanks,
Alan Rosinsky0 -
HELP: Analysing data to make decisions, SEO vs PPC
Hi mozers! I have recently been seeing good results in the serps lately for my main keywords in my country NZ, now I'm seeing good results in Australia for these keywords and our USA domain is not far behind and making good progress... However, our NZ results show that we may get around 1 conversion every 3 days from our organic search. I read other places that click share for ppc was much higher, but there is no way we can match our competitors budgets from 3k - 300k per month. So our option was to focus on SEO. To me, the SEO results seem quiet low, however I'm not really sure how to go about diving deep into the analytics of it all to find out where I need to improve or focus on, which keywords are bringing these conversions. Maybe I need to go for long tail keywords etc... It seems my rankings are coming from general keywords which are still highly competitive, but even so, we are not performing to what I know we should be. Our competitors are mostly paying ppc, however I was told my ROI would be better spent via SEO. Any suggestions perhaps what I might be missing or doing wrong in this case. (I have recently done a new design overhaul with a new registration process) I have 3 top level domains you can see the site here http://bit.ly/1yhz96v
Conversion Rate Optimization | | edward-may0 -
I am confused on adding Google+ authorship markup to a multiauthor WP blog
The blog for a client is at http://blog.multiview.com . I am not sure how to tell them to add Google+ authorship tags to the site, and link the posts to the individual G+ profiles of each individual author. One source shows it is highly complex, seesee http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-google-authorship-markup-123218 However, in the Google webmaster account, there is a real simple explanation, i.e. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2539557?hl=en Considering that this is an area that is very murky for me, is one of these directives out of date? Is one preferable? How complicated would that be, for this particular blog?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | DianeDP0 -
Any tips and tricks to increase Conversion Rates on Google PLA?
I have recently organized my Adwords (Product Listing Ads) campaign according to this link: http://certifiedknowledge.org/blog/how-to-create-a-state-of-the-art-pla-campaign While I like the organization and control this provides, my fundamental concern is to increase conversions. I understand conversions are dependent on other factors such as landing pages etc. Are there any Google Adwords tips someone has had success with to increase CTR and increase conversion rates? Pating $10/day to Google Adwords while only getting a sporadic business every 3 days is getting a bit frustrating. Are there any tools in MOZ that can help find faults and generate simple reports on the Google Adwords campaign? Any help is much appreciated.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | amitramani1 -
Analytics (Other Than Google) & A/B Testing Tools
Hey, I have Google Analytics on my website, like most people, but I was looking at some other analytics and testing tools like heat maps, click maps, A/B, etc. I was hoping that some of you could recommend a few that you use to see where pages are going wrong, track user behaviour and to how improve conversion rate. I have had a look at a few websites like: https://www.clicktale.com/
Conversion Rate Optimization | | JonathanRolande
https://www.optimizely.com/ It would also be interesting to know how acurate these tools actually are, they seem quite legit. Cheers0 -
Testing Google Tag Manager
Is there a way to test if the Google Tag Manager is set up correctly? Am I right in thinking that the only code that will be output on the page will be the actual embed code, eg: SCRIPT REMOVED Cant work out if there is an issue with what has been set in the account of if there is a problem with how the code has been added to the page..
Conversion Rate Optimization | | edwardlewis0 -
A/B Testing. What do you use?
About to do some A/B testing (conversion improvement) for multiple clients. There are so many solutions out there. Does anyone have any suggestions. A/B testing will be done for both SEO & PPC Campaigns.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | waqid0