Location targeting

How it works

You set it per campaign: countries, regions, cities or a radius around an address, plus locations to exclude. Demand Gen also allows it per ad group. A second choice decides who counts as being in a place:

• Presence reaches only people who are likely to be in the location or regularly there.
• Presence or interest, Google’s recommended default, adds people who have shown interest in the location through their searches, past visits or content about it.
• Search interest reacts to searches for the location and works only in Search and Standard Shopping campaigns.

The default option matters in cross-border ecommerce: under Presence or interest, a campaign built for one country can reach people who are in another. Exclusions work on presence: by default, Google leaves out people who are likely to be in an excluded location. Our guide to location targeting for international campaigns covers how to set this up for several countries.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop delivers only within Czechia and runs one campaign targeting Czechia with Presence or interest. A person in Vienna who has been searching for trips to Czechia can see the shop’s ads, although the shop does not deliver to Austria. With Presence, the ads reach only people who are in Czechia or regularly there.

Not to be confused with

• Feed label — picks which Merchant Center products a campaign advertises. A country code in it does not by itself let ads show in that country; location targeting does.
• Targeting — the wider set of conditions: location, language, audiences, devices and keywords. Location targeting is one of them.

Right and wrong readings

• Wrong: “My campaign targets Czechia, so only people in Czechia see the ads.” Right: under the default Presence or interest, people elsewhere who have shown interest in Czechia are eligible too. Only Presence limits the ads to people who are in the location or regularly there.

Sources

• Location targeting — the definitions of Presence or interest, Presence and Search interest; Search interest only in Search and Standard Shopping; exclusions by presence as the recommended default; radius targeting; campaign level, ad group level in Demand Gen. Checked 2 October 2026.
• Performance Max for online sales with a product feed (retail) — a country code in a feed label does not enable ads in that country without location targeting. Checked 2 October 2026.