Google Ads Being Delivered Outside Target Location(s)
Published June 22, 2026 - Kirstyn M. Yancy
2 min. read.
So here you are, Mr./Mrs. Business Owner of North Carolina. You decided to start your own Google Ads campaign. Or maybe you even hired someone to manage an ads campaign for you. It was working well for a little bit. You were getting the calls you wanted, from the consumers you wanted to get the calls from. Then something weird started happening. People outside your service area started calling you... Not just outside your normal service area, but outside the state. What the what??
Not only are your impressions now inflated, but you've just been charged for a job you are definitely not booking.
You're not alone. We've seen a surge of businesses' Ads campaigns see this location [lack of] performance. ...one of the many reasons we say SEO outperforms paid placement. But hey, who are we to know what we're talking about? HA!
What next? Well, if you're hell-bent on continuing with the paid placement, login to your ads campaign asap and fix your locations!! I recently viewed a hyper-local tree service's campaign set to the United States - the whole United States. His service area is 20mi of his shop. And, you know how Meta has that whole AI-enhanced performance thing? Well, guess what? Google has something similar; disable optimized targeting, and turn off audience & network expansion. You can also fine tune further by adding exclusions which is tedious, but can prove worthy.
Finally, you can pour your investment into SEO versus paid placement. Where you'll see real results.
2 min. read.
So here you are, Mr./Mrs. Business Owner of North Carolina. You decided to start your own Google Ads campaign. Or maybe you even hired someone to manage an ads campaign for you. It was working well for a little bit. You were getting the calls you wanted, from the consumers you wanted to get the calls from. Then something weird started happening. People outside your service area started calling you... Not just outside your normal service area, but outside the state. What the what??
Not only are your impressions now inflated, but you've just been charged for a job you are definitely not booking.
You're not alone. We've seen a surge of businesses' Ads campaigns see this location [lack of] performance. ...one of the many reasons we say SEO outperforms paid placement. But hey, who are we to know what we're talking about? HA!
What next? Well, if you're hell-bent on continuing with the paid placement, login to your ads campaign asap and fix your locations!! I recently viewed a hyper-local tree service's campaign set to the United States - the whole United States. His service area is 20mi of his shop. And, you know how Meta has that whole AI-enhanced performance thing? Well, guess what? Google has something similar; disable optimized targeting, and turn off audience & network expansion. You can also fine tune further by adding exclusions which is tedious, but can prove worthy.
Finally, you can pour your investment into SEO versus paid placement. Where you'll see real results.