Google Ads Location Targeting: City, Radius or ZIP?

Short answer: For a local service business, I’d start with a radius around the shop or service hub that reflects a realistic drive time, then switch the location setting to Presence. City targeting works well when you serve the whole city and its boundaries match your actual coverage.

Choosing a location target can feel like drawing a circle around your business and calling it a day. But the shape on the map is only part of the decision. The setting that determines whether ads reach people in the area or people merely interested in it can matter more.

I’d treat geographic targeting as a practical service-area decision: Where can you take a job, and which people are likely to be there when they need you? That helps narrow the choice between a city, a radius, and ZIP codes, while keeping a default Google Ads setting from quietly widening the audience. It’s the same kind of customer-fit question I consider when planning campaigns.

First, check who Google considers “in” your location

Google Ads defaults to “Presence or Interest.” That can include people likely to be in or regularly in your targeted locations, as well as people who have shown interest in them. A person researching a city from far away, or someone who used to live there, may fall into that second group.

That broader reach can make sense for a hotel, a travel business, or a real estate listing. For a plumber with a defined service radius, though, interest in a town doesn’t mean the searcher is a realistic customer. The person could be looking up a local contractor for someone else, researching a move, or simply reading about the area.

For a local service business that needs customers physically within its coverage, I’d usually choose “Presence.” Google describes this option as reaching people likely to be located or regularly located in the targeted areas. The default is Google’s recommended setting for many campaigns, and Google says that changing away from it may reduce impressions. That tradeoff is worth considering, but it can be sensible when leads from outside your coverage are unlikely to turn into booked jobs.

Google cites its own internal data showing that advertisers in Travel, Real Estate, and Education who switched from Presence to Presence or Interest found 5% more conversions on Search campaigns. That result is from those named verticals, based on Google’s global data from May 21, 2022 to June 1, 2022. It is not evidence that broad interest targeting is a better fit for a local contractor’s service radius. Google’s advanced location options documentation explains when each setting may make sense.

City, radius or ZIP: how I’d choose

Choose a city when the city boundary matches your service area

City targeting is straightforward when you accept work throughout the city and the city’s boundary is close to the area you can serve. It is also easy to understand when you review the campaign later: you chose the city because it reflects where you do business.

The mismatch is what to watch for. City limits may include neighborhoods or outlying areas you won’t drive to. Or your actual service area may cross into nearby towns that the city target leaves out. In either case, the city name is a convenient label, not a guarantee that the boundary reflects your day-to-day operations.

Before choosing a city, compare its border with the places where you’re willing to book jobs. If you serve the full city and a few neighboring towns, you may need additional targets or a different shape. Google notes that available targets can include areas within a country, such as cities or postal codes. Its geographic targeting guide describes the available location types.

Choose a radius when your coverage starts from a hub

Radius targeting is a useful starting point when jobs are served from a shop, office, or dispatch location. You set a center and distance rather than selecting a list of cities. Google requires a radius of at least 1 km (about 0.6 miles), and notes that very small targets may show ads intermittently or not at all.

I’d size the radius around realistic travel time, not an attractive-looking number of miles. A distance that feels manageable in a rural area may mean a very different trip in dense city traffic. Think about the roads, congestion, technician availability, and the types of jobs you actually accept.

The right area can also differ by service. Emergency work may call for a tighter service area if speed matters. A larger installation project may justify reaching farther if the job value and travel make sense. Those are campaign-planning considerations, not separate Google rules, so I’d base them on your own booking patterns and capacity.

Choose ZIP codes when you need more control over specific edges

ZIP targeting can be helpful in dense metro areas or when you want to include selected towns or neighborhoods near the edge of your normal coverage. It gives you a way to build a location plan around serviceable pockets instead of accepting a larger city boundary that includes areas you don’t want.

That precision comes with upkeep. A long list of ZIP codes can be tedious to maintain, and a patchwork of small areas can make it harder to see the overall shape of your coverage. Multiple targets may also divide a limited campaign budget across more locations than you intended. Use ZIP codes when the extra control solves a real coverage problem, not just because the list looks exact.

Don’t forget the places you need to exclude

A radius can include areas you don’t serve, even when it is centered on the right hub. Exclude those places if they fall inside the target area and you know you won’t take work there. You might also need to exclude a nearby region that gets included by a broader city or area target.

There’s a detail to keep in mind: Google’s default location exclusion setting excludes people likely to be located in the areas you exclude. People outside an excluded area may still see your ad. So a person outside the excluded town who has shown interest in it may still be eligible under your campaign’s broader targeting setting. Exclusions can refine your service coverage, but they don’t replace checking the positive location setting.

Google bases location targeting on signals such as user settings, devices, and behavior, and says that 100% accuracy is not guaranteed. I wouldn’t treat a boundary as a perfect fence. I’d use it as a targeting guide, then look at the locations producing clicks and customers.

Signs your targeting is off

A campaign map can look tidy and still bring in the wrong traffic. These are the signs I notice first:

• Calls from towns you don’t serve. Your team keeps telling callers that their area is outside your coverage.
• Leads that open with “do you come out to us?” When distance is the first question again and again, the radius or the location setting is probably wider than the area you work.
• Clicks from everywhere, jobs from a few places. Spend spreads across a wide area, but the booked work keeps coming from a handful of towns or ZIP codes.

Matching a campaign’s location data to where booked jobs actually come from is part of every Google Ads audit I run. You can also look through my case studies to see the kind of work I do.

The short version

For most local service businesses, a radius sized to real drive time with the Presence setting is the right place to start. Where it should end up depends on which towns and ZIP codes turn into booked jobs, and that shifts whenever your service area, staffing or job mix changes.

If you’d like me to check your location settings against the jobs you actually booked, request a free Google Ads audit. For ongoing help, see how I manage Google Ads.