As the ad buyer for websites dealing with travel one would assume that the least welcome clicks are those from local IP’s. But what happens, if excluding your local area would mean your ads will not show up for specific searches crucial to your ad campaign?

Excluding local areas would seem a great idea, but Google has confessed that should you purchase ads specifically for a targeted destination, for example: Tahiti Vacations, and exclude the country of Tahiti, any search for “Tahiti Vacations” from anywhere in the world will not display.

Here is an excerpt from an email sent directly from Google Adwords Support Team:

In this instance, the keywords in question all include the location ‘tahiti’ in them. Our system parses the keyword such that we interpret the user searching as if they were in Tahiti. At this time, you are not targeting Tahiti. I understand that you are not interested in targeting individuals in your country for your business, but you will need to include Tahiti in your geographical location targeting in order to run on keywords that include the term ‘tahiti.’

If you’re planning an ad campaign that is destination specific, and you are not a local business, I advise not to exclude that specific destination.