Google AdWords offers many great reports to help you determine the success of your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. I’ve already discussed the benefits of the Search Query Performance report, but today I’m going to discuss the importance of the Geographic Performance report.
The Geographic Performance report allows you to segment campaign data by geographic origin, down to the city level. Here’s an example: of the 50 conversions you received last month, you can see that 28 came from California, while two came from Michigan. Going even more granular into the report by checking the “City” option (see screenshot below), you find that 10 of the California conversions originated from Los Angeles while 5 came from Sacramento.
So what action items can you take from this report? You may decide to change which region(s) receive most of your budget. Let’s take the example from above. Your campaign is targeting the entire United States with a budget of $150 per day. You find that over half of your conversions originated in California so you might decide to create a new campaign that only targets California. Of the original $150, you set aside $65 to be used in this campaign. You are still targeting the entire country through two campaigns, but you are better exposing your ads in a region where you have a history of getting conversions.
You can also exclude your ads from running in regions where you are not seeing satisfactory results. For example, while running the report you notice that the state of Pennsylvania has a lower conversion rate and a higher CPA than your national average. You go deeper into the report and determine that the city of Pittsburgh is using a lot of your budget without delivering results. You may decide to block your ads from showing in Pittsburgh.
Keep in mind that the Geographic Performance report should not be the only source of information when you decide to segment or exclude regions. You also need to review your analytics and the quality of the leads you are receiving from each region. Used in conjunction with these other factors, the Geographic Performance report can help you increase your revenue while excluding unproductive regions from the campaign.
October 23rd, 2009 on 8:52 am
I found there to be a lot of information missing from a google adwords geographic performance report. I have found they do not show geographic location information for a majority of my impressions usually. What are your thoughts on this?
October 25th, 2009 on 5:20 pm
Hi Melanie,
Though the AdWords geographic report does not grab metrics for every geographic location (instead these metrics are all lumped together with the classification “all other cities”), it is much better than when it was first rolled out.
I am able to make assumptions and decisions with the information I see in this report (along with other factors discussed in the entry). Of course I realize this report is not perfect, but it has helped me further target my AdWords campaigns.
October 26th, 2009 on 5:29 am
Do you have any idea as to how they get their geographic stats? I don’t understand how they don’t have geographic information for more my impressions. I also wonder if they begin storing (and reporting) geographic information for impressions primarily after a first click on an ad has been received in that location. I would definitely enjoy Google posting how they get their geographic stats for the geographic performance reports.
October 26th, 2009 on 4:34 pm
You can read more about Geographic Performance reports from Google’s help section:
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?answer=100476
Google grabs the visitor location from the IP address. Also, a cookie is placed on your computer for 30 days.
November 2nd, 2009 on 12:54 pm
Other variant is possible also