Most Google Ads accounts target a location and never look at it again. The campaign runs, the budget spends, and the advertiser assumes the geographic targeting is working as intended. Often it isn't, and the geographic report is where that becomes visible.
Location analysis is one of the most underused optimisation levers in Google Ads. Done properly, it tells you where your budget is actually going, which locations are converting, and where you should stop spending entirely. The data is already there in your account. Most people just don't look at it.
I pulled the geographic report for a kitchen fitter in Gwynedd recently and found that around £200 of their monthly budget, out of £600 total, was going to clicks from people in Birmingham, Bristol, and London. They'd set "North Wales" as their target location and assumed that was enough. It wasn't. The "presence or interest" default was pulling in anyone who'd recently searched for North Wales, whether they were planning a visit, researching the area, or had no intention of getting a kitchen fitted there.
The common assumption is that once you've entered your target location in campaign settings, you're done. In practice, the location settings are just the starting point. The geographic report is where you find out what's actually happening.
Why location performance varies more than you'd expect
Setting "North Wales" as your target location doesn't mean all of North Wales performs equally. Conversion rates vary by city, district, and sometimes by postcode. A solicitor targeting North Wales might find that enquiries cluster around Llandudno and Wrexham and are nearly absent from rural areas where searches happen but the audience isn't in a position to travel or engage. A national retailer running ads across the UK will find enormous variation in CPA between cities.
There are several reasons for this. Population density affects search volume and competition. Local economic conditions affect conversion intent. Proximity to your physical location, if you have one, affects whether people actually act on what they see. Device usage patterns differ too, and mobile-heavy areas may convert differently from desktop-heavy ones.
The only way to know what's true for your account is to look at your own data.
How to access the geographic report
In Google Ads, go to Campaigns > Insights & reports > Geographic report. This report shows performance (impressions, clicks, spend, conversions, cost-per-conversion) broken down by the actual location of the person who saw your ad.
There are two views worth knowing: "Geographic" shows where users were physically located; "User location" shows the same data filtered by the location Google determined based on the user's device and search history. For most local campaigns, the Geographic view is what matters.
Filter the date range to at least 90 days to get statistically meaningful data. Shorter date ranges produce volatile numbers that can lead to wrong decisions. If your campaigns are running on a tight budget and the geographic report is revealing significant waste, the targeting fixes in 3 Targeting Tweaks to Optimise Limited Google Ads Budgets cover the practical steps to implement what you find here.
What to look for
Start with locations spending without converting. Sort by spend, then scan for locations with meaningful spend and zero or near-zero conversions. These aren't necessarily bad prospects. They may be areas where your ads are showing to people who aren't your real audience. Exclude them to redirect that budget to higher-performing locations.
Look also for locations converting at a significantly higher rate than average. If a particular city or district consistently converts at two or three times your account average, it may be worth creating a separate campaign targeting that area, with more tailored ad copy, a higher bid, and a landing page that references that location specifically.
Also check for unexpected locations appearing at all. Sometimes the geographic report reveals spend in locations you didn't intend to target. This is often caused by the default "Presence or interest" targeting setting, which includes people who have shown interest in a location even if they're elsewhere. If you haven't checked this setting recently, your ads could be showing to people well outside your intended service area. Switching to "Presence only" fixes this, but you still need to check the data, because even with Presence only, some geographic bleed can occur. This is one of the 20 common mistakes that quietly drain Google Ads performance and one of the quickest to fix once you know to look for it.
Making changes based on what you find
To exclude poor-performing locations, go to the Locations tab in the relevant campaign, click the blue + button, search for the location you want to exclude, and set it to "Exclude." This stops spend in that area immediately.
Creating separate campaigns for high-value locations gives you control over budget, bids, and ad copy for that area independently. If Llandudno converts at twice the rate of the broader campaign, it's worth having its own campaign where you can set a higher Target CPA and write ad copy that speaks directly to that audience.
Applying bid adjustments is a middle ground. If you don't want to restructure your campaigns, you can increase or decrease bids for specific locations within an existing campaign. In the Locations tab, click "Bid adj." and enter a percentage increase or decrease. Quick to implement but less precise than separate campaigns.
How often to review
Location performance doesn't change dramatically week to week, but it does shift over time. A quarterly review of the geographic report is a reasonable minimum for most accounts. For campaigns with significant budget or tightly defined service areas, monthly is better.
The goal isn't to endlessly refine location targeting. It's to make sure you're not systematically wasting money in areas that don't convert, and that you're putting enough behind the areas that do.
Google Ads management in North Wales. If you'd like a free audit, I'll pull your geographic data and show you exactly where your budget is going.
