Pay Per Click Update – Google Goes Local in the UK

There has been a very important development over the last year for UK businesses and businesses that sell in the UK.

Google now has an option on its pay per click advertising to just have your ad showing in your area or in towns and cities that you specify.

(If you’re new to Pay per Click and why this form of advertising is the most important Marketing breakthrough so far this century, go and listen to Part One of my Pay Per Click Seminars.)

This is great news. Until this development, huge numbers of local or regional businesses were left out of the Google mix, because the only way they could advertise with Pay per Click was to have their ads show nationally – and that meant huge wastage.

Now you can pick an area to advertise in, in the same way that you might select local newspapers to advertise in.

So, if you own a sofa shop in Dover, instead of advertising nationally on Google using keywords such as ‘sofa’ you can just have those ads appear either in the Dover area or within a certain distance of Dover.

How does Google know where visitors are located? By tracking your IP address, they can work out the region you’re in. It’s not 100% accurate. They don’t know what street you’re in, but they can track visitors well enough to make the local advertising work.

Stop and think of the implications of this for a moment. We all thought that the internet was a global medium. It is – but it’s also becoming very local too.

Just so you’re clear on how important this is, an ad campaign across the country on Google which was either unprofitable or perhaps broke even, could suddenly become highly profitable on a local basis. Why? Because the traffic you’re paying for is going to be so much more highly qualified if you’re a local business and you’re only attracting visitors from your local area.

In addition, you may well be able to pay a much higher rate per click on a local basis and still be profitable – because your conversion rates will be so much higher.


Here’s a brief explanation of how to set up local ads on your Google campaign.

Go into your account and go into your campaign or pick one of your campaigns if you've got several.

Click on Edit Campaign Settings

In the Locations section on the right hand side, click the Edit button.

You’ll come to a page called Location Targeting Options

Click on the Change Option link

This then shows you the three main options that you have for targeting your ads on Google.

The first option is Global or Nationwide. That’s probably what you’re using at the moment. This allows you to select where your ad will appear by country.

The second option is Regions and Cities. This allows you to select the specific areas where you would like your ads to appear. 

On this page select the country you’re in or want to advertise in, then in the box below type in the cities you want to appear in, click Add, then click Continue

And you’re done!

Now, if you’re not in or near a big city or you want to be even more specific, you can pick the third locations option.

Go back to the Locations Option, click the third one which is called Customised then press Continue.

What this option lets you do is give Google an address and tell it that you want your ads to appear within a certain radius of that address …30 miles, or 50 miles, whatever you want. So it’s like drawing a circle around your business location and specifying this as your target area.

If you look at the screen where it says Where is Your Target Area Located you can either select your location by typing in your address or by latitude or longitude.

At the moment we’ve found that even if you type in an address, Google still wants your latitude and longitude. But don’t panic. It’s very easy to get.

Go to www.multimap.com and do a search for your postcode, by filling in the postcode box top left. When your map comes up, you’ll find the longitude and latitude underneath, under the Map Information heading.

Back on Google, just enter than information and choose the radius you want your ad to appear in and you’re sorted.

Finally, if you want to get really sophisticated, Google offers an Advanced Option where you can enter non-circular co-ordinates and you can pick more than more area in the country.

All of this means that you can take advantage of the amazing benefits of pay per click advertising and have it tailor made for your business.

We really do love Google!