Often when auditing accounts, we see that geography has been considered a “set it and forget it” type of setting. You can only target where you can target, right? Sure, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any optimizations to be made in order to ensure performance is the best it can be.
Understanding The Geographic Reports
Of course, the best starting point for geographic optimization is to review geographic performance through the dimensions tab in AdWords and the reporting or dimensions tabs within Bing Ads.
Each engine has two reports pertaining to geography, and it is important to understand the difference between the two. The reports look very similar, but they attribute data to geographies differently.
The Geographic Report (AdWords): The geographic report shows the performance of the locations you are targeting. If you are targeting people “in, searching for, and viewing pages about my targeted location” (as opposed to just people “in my targeted location”), you will only be able to view the performance of those people who are not actually within your geotargets through the geographies in which they have shown interest. You will not see the performance of their physical location. You can, however, add the location type column.
The User Location Report (AdWords): The user location report shows the performance of the actually geographies your searchers are physically in, regardless of whether that location is included within your geotargets or if they have seen ads because they’ve shown interest in a different geography.
The Old Geo Location Report (Bing): The old geo location report in Bing combines the two reports that AdWords provides. There are columns to show the searcher’s physical location, as well as the location they were searching for, if they happen to be different. There is not, however, a column to identify location type, as with AdWords.
The New Geo Location Report (Bing): The new geo location report in Bing is more like the user location report in AdWords. It shows the user’s location and also provides a column identifying the location type as a physical location or a location of interest.
Using The Data To Your Advantage
The simplest way to use the data is by pivoting the geographic report to see how the areas within your geo-targets are performing. It’s good to do this on a granular level.
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