Imagine you run a small roofing company in Tacoma. Business is steady, and a few months ago you started running Google Ads to bring in more calls. You set the campaign to target Tacoma, wrote a couple of ads, and let it run.
The calls come in, but some of them feel strange. A man from Spokane asks if you can inspect his roof tomorrow. A woman from Portland wants a quote. Someone in Boise is “just getting prices.” None of them are anywhere near you, and every one of them reached you by clicking an ad you paid for.
At the end of the month, you look at your Google Ads bill and wonder how much of it went to people you could never serve.
If this sounds familiar, you are not doing anything unusual. It happens to a lot of local businesses, and the cause is usually a single setting that most people never notice. To understand why, it helps to start with how Google decides who sees your ads in the first place.
First, what is location targeting?
When you create a Google Ads campaign, one of the first things Google asks is where your customers are. This is called location targeting. You can choose a whole country, a state, a city, a list of ZIP codes, or a circle drawn around an address on a map. Google’s guide to targeting ads to geographic locations lists every option.
Think of it like handing out flyers. If you own a bakery in Tacoma, you would not mail flyers to every house in Washington. You would choose the neighborhoods close enough for people to come in. Location targeting is the same idea: you tell Google which areas matter, and Google is supposed to show your ads to people in those areas.
Notice the words “supposed to.” That is where things get interesting.
How Google works out where someone is
Google cannot see where a person is standing. It makes an educated guess using clues, such as the location of their phone (if they allow it), the internet connection they are using, and the places they search for.
Most of the time the guess is good. When you search “coffee near me” on your phone in Tacoma, Google knows you are in Tacoma. But location targeting does not only look at where people are. By default, it also looks at where people are interested in. And that one word, “interested”, is behind most of the strange calls our roofer was getting.
The setting behind the problem
Every Google Ads campaign has a section called Location options. Inside it, there are two choices for the areas you target:
- Presence or interest: “People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your targeted locations.” Google calls this the default and recommended option.
- Presence: “People in or regularly in your targeted locations.”
Google describes both in its help page on advanced location options. They sound almost the same, but they behave very differently. Let’s meet three people to see how.
Sarah, who lives in Tacoma
Sarah notices a leak in her ceiling and searches “roof repair near me” from her kitchen in the North End. She is in Tacoma, so she sees our roofer’s ad with either setting. This is exactly the customer he wants.
Tom, who lives in Spokane
Tom’s mother lives in Tacoma. He is in Spokane, but he searches “roof repair Tacoma” to find someone to look at her house. With Presence or interest, Tom sees the ad, because he is clearly interested in Tacoma. With Presence, he does not.
Is Tom a good customer? He might be. The roof he cares about is in Tacoma. We will come back to people like Tom later, because they are the reason Google offers this option.
Priya, who lives in Portland
Priya is thinking about moving to Washington. She has been reading about Tacoma neighborhoods all week. Now her own roof in Portland is leaking, and she searches “roofing company” for help at home. Because of her recent interest, Google may connect her with Tacoma, and with Presence or interest, our roofer’s ad can show to her. She clicks, calls, and he cannot help her.
Priya is the problem. Multiply her by a few dozen people a month, and you have a real share of your budget going to clicks that can never turn into jobs.
Why Google makes this the default
It is tempting to assume Google sets it up this way just to sell more clicks, but there is a genuine reason. For many businesses, people who are interested in a place are valuable customers. A hotel in Tacoma wants people in Seattle, Chicago and New York who are planning a trip. A wedding venue wants couples who live elsewhere but are getting married here.
For those businesses, “interest” is perfect. For a roofer, plumber, dentist or auto repair shop that serves people where they live, it mostly brings in people like Priya.
What this can cost you
Here is a simple example. Say you spend $1,500 a month on Google Ads, and 15 out of every 100 clicks come from people outside your area. That is about $225 a month, or $2,700 a year, spent on people you cannot serve. These numbers are only an illustration, and your own share may be higher or lower. But even a small leak adds up when it runs every day.
There is a second cost, too. Google learns from the people who click and call. If many of them are outside your area, the system learns from the wrong people, and that can quietly make your campaign less efficient over time.
How to fix it, step by step
The fix takes a couple of minutes per campaign.
- Sign in to Google Ads and open the campaign.
- Click Settings, then open Locations.
- Click Location options to expand it. (It is easy to miss, because it is folded away under your list of locations.)
- Under Include, choose Presence, the option for people in or regularly in your targeted locations. (The wording on your screen may differ slightly from Google’s help page.)
- Under Exclude, leave the setting on Presence. Google’s FAQ on location options confirms that the “interest” option is no longer available for excluded locations in Search, Display, Performance Max and Shopping campaigns.
- Save, and repeat for every campaign, including any Performance Max campaigns.
One small warning: new campaigns start on the default again. Make checking this setting part of your routine every time you launch something new.
Four more ways ads leak outside your area
Changing the setting fixes the biggest problem, but there are a few other ways ads can reach the wrong people. Each one is easy to miss.
1. The circle is bigger than your real service area
Many businesses target “Tacoma plus 30 miles” because it feels sensible. But draw that circle on a map and you will see it takes in Seattle’s southern suburbs, much of the Kitsap Peninsula, and parts of Thurston County. If you would never drive to Bremerton for a job, you are still paying for clicks from there. A better approach is to list the cities or ZIP codes you actually serve.
2. People search for other cities while standing in yours
The Presence setting looks at where someone is, not what they type. So if Mark, who lives in Tacoma, searches “roofing contractor Olympia” for his parents’ house, your ad can still show, because Mark is in your area. If you do not work in Olympia, add “Olympia” as a negative keyword. As Google’s page about negative keywords explains, that tells Google not to show your ads for searches that include it.
3. Your city shares its name with other cities
Some place names are not unique. Auburn, for example, is a city in Washington, and also in Alabama, California and New York. If your keywords say only “roofer Auburn”, Google has to guess which Auburn the searcher means. Adding the state, as in “roofer Auburn WA”, and checking your search terms regularly keeps your ads with the right Auburn.
4. Nobody checks where the clicks actually came from
Google Ads has a locations report under Insights and reports. Most people only look at the locations they targeted. Switch the view to see where people physically were when they clicked. If you see cities you never meant to reach, something above still needs fixing. Once a month is enough for most businesses.
When “Presence or interest” is the right choice
Remember Tom, searching for a roofer for his mother’s house? For some businesses, people like Tom are a big part of their customers. Keeping the default can make sense if:
- Someone often searches on behalf of another person, such as adult children looking for in-home care or a senior community for a parent.
- Customers plan from far away, such as visitors booking hotels, tours, or wedding venues.
- You sell online and ship anywhere, so the customer’s location matters less.
If that is you, keep the default but watch your locations report closely. Everyone else should switch to Presence.
Back to our roofer
Let’s return to our Tacoma roofer. After switching his campaigns to Presence, trimming his 30-mile circle down to the cities he really serves, and adding a few negative keywords, the calls from Spokane, Portland and Boise should become rare. His budget now goes to people like Sarah, standing in their kitchens with a leak overhead, ready to call someone local.
Nothing about his ads changed. He did not spend more. He simply made sure Google was showing them to the right people.
Frequently asked questions
Will switching to Presence reduce my clicks?
Usually a little, and that is the goal. The clicks you lose are mostly from people outside your area who were unlikely to become customers. Judge the change by your cost per lead and the quality of your calls, not by clicks.
Does this setting apply to Performance Max campaigns?
Yes. Performance Max campaigns have the same location options in their settings, so check each one.
I already switched to Presence. Why do I still see a few far-away clicks?
Google’s location estimate is not perfect, and people travel. A small number of out-of-area clicks is normal. A steady stream is a sign something else, such as a wide radius or a missing negative keyword, needs attention.
Want a second pair of eyes on your account?
At Around29, we regularly review the Google Ads accounts we manage, including location settings, search terms and conversion tracking. If you serve Tacoma or the South Sound, you can see how we manage Google Ads for local businesses, or run a free audit to see where your marketing stands today.