how to find where the clicks are coming from in google adwords

Google Adwords lets you use several different user attributes to target the ads better. You can use several different parameters such as time of the day, type of device, bid amount etc in addition to the keywords and specific match types. One of the major marketing strategy is to target users based on the geographic location.

Google Adwords gives you the ability to create location targeted campaigns. You can have very specific geographic locations for each of your campaigns. There are actually several advantages in having such geo targeted ads.

Visibility: You can decrease the visibility of the ads in certain geographic locations. Although, it might sound odd that anybody would want to decrease the visibility, it is sometimes a good cost cutting strategy for local business or to limit under-performing ads.

Ad Personalization: It provides the ability to personalize ads based on locations. For example, you might want to run special promotions only on your under-performing regions.

Budget: This is a good tool to limit your Google Adwords budget. You can completely cut off under-performing regions to cut cost. It is also possible to cut cost by just focusing on your under-performing regions.

Once you have set the locations that you want the ad to run in, you should verify that the majority of clicks are coming from those desired locations. This will allow you to further optimize your locations to get the most return on investment.

Even if you are not using the geo specific ads, you should still find out where the clicks are coming from. This will allow you to fine tune your campaigns based on the conversions generated from certain geographic locations.

There are a couple of different ways you can generate a location-based report in Google Adwords account. The first report will generate statistics based on the exact same criteria that you have specified in your campaign settings. The second one generates a much broader report based on the most specific and accurate location that is available to the tracker.

Report Based on Locations in Campaign Settings

  1. Login to your Google Adwords Account
  2. In the left hand side menu, select the Campaign you are interested in or All online campaigns
  3. Click on the Settings tab in the center panel
  4. In the sub menu in the Settings panel, Click on Locations
  5. View the report in the table
Google Adwords Report

You can further narrow down the report using custom filters. You have more options here, such as to adjust the bidding based on the location. Also look under the columns option to enable more columns that will give you more statistics that might be important.

Dimension Based Reports

These are reports that are generated based two specific Adwords dimensions: Geographic and User Location.

  1. Login to your Google Adwords account
  2. In the left hand side menu, Select a Campaign or All online Campaigns
  3. Click on the Dimensions tab in the center panel
  4. In the Sub menu in the panel, Click on the View drop-down and Select either Geographic or User Location option
  5. The report is shown in the table below
Dimension Report in Google Adwords

Again, as with the earlier report you can filter the values and enable more columns.

As mentioned earlier, there are two similar dimensions namely Geographic and User Location that can be used. In most cases, these two reports are mostly similar with minor differences. The difference occurs based on the what your Target Option in Advanced Location Option is set to. You can find this under Campaign Settings.

If you have it set to the default which is People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my targeted location, then the ads might be shown to users outside your target location. For example, these could be users who are physically in New York, but is searching for products or services in Boston. You can change this option to restrict the display of ads based on user location.

The Geographic reports displays the user’s physical location or the search location, which is the location that the user has expressed an interest in. The User Location report display data based only on the physical location of the user.

These three reports together should give you a fair bit of idea about where your Google Adwords customers are coming from. It should also provide you with enough information to identify your good customers based on location. This will allow you to fine tune your campaigns to get a better return on investment.