A Google Ads campaign is set to Warsaw, and the phone rings from towns nobody on the crew ever drives to. That's usually not a broken campaign — it's a default location setting that deliberately shows the ad to a wider group than just people physically inside the city.
The situation: calls come in from towns nobody drives to
An air conditioning installation and service company operates in Warsaw and a few surrounding municipalities. The Google Ads campaign is configured for that same area — and yet, once in a while, someone calls from a town a hundred kilometres away that the crew will never visit.
The first instinct is to look for a mistake in the settings: a wrong radius, a mistyped city, something overlooked when the campaign was built. Usually the issue is somewhere else entirely — in one of two options that decide who Google shows a location-linked ad to in the first place, options easy to miss because they sit under advanced settings.
Two location targeting options in Google Ads
Google Ads distinguishes between two location targeting options. The default and recommended one — "Presence or Interest" — reaches people who are likely to be in or regularly present in the targeted location, as well as people who have shown interest in it, for example through search terms, a recent visit, or content they viewed. The other option, "Presence," reaches only people who are likely to be in or regularly present in the location (Google Ads Help, advanced location options).
That explains the call from a distant town: under the default setting, the ad also reaches someone who recently searched terms related to Warsaw or was recently there — not necessarily someone physically in the city at the moment they search.
When Google itself suggests considering Presence only
Google explicitly suggests considering "Presence" when you want to reach only people located in specific places (Google Ads Help, advanced location options) — which is exactly what describes a service business that can't physically serve a client outside its area, no matter how interested that person is. Switching from the default to "Presence" typically means fewer impressions — fewer people see the ad, but the ones who do are more likely to actually fall within the business's reach.
Where the "+5% conversions" figure comes from — and why it isn't proof for a service business
Two things are worth noting at once. First, this is data from the maker of the advertising tool, not an independent study — Google has a natural interest in more advertisers sticking with the broader default setting, since that typically means more impressions and more spend. Second, none of the three named verticals — travel, real estate, education — resembles a local service business with a physical service area. Someone interested in visiting Warsaw might genuinely become a hotel guest there while living elsewhere; someone interested in Warsaw but living a hundred kilometres away won't become a client of an AC service that doesn't drive there.
Location exclusion works the same way as "Presence" — and isn't airtight either
If you also want to exclude specific areas, it helps to know that location exclusion works on a "Presence" basis by default: Google excludes people likely to be located in your excluded locations (Google Ads Help, advanced location options). That means people outside the excluded area — even if merely interested in it — can still see the ad.
Why targeting isn't 100% accurate
In other words: even a well-configured campaign with exclusions will occasionally show up for someone outside the intended area — the question is how big that share is, not whether it can be reduced to zero.
How much this can cost: an example on assumed numbers
The calculation, step by step
This is still the same example on assumed numbers, just broken down step by step. Step one: share = out-of-area clicks ÷ total clicks = 60 ÷ 400 = 0.15.
Step three: estimated amount = monthly budget × share = 2,000 zł × 0.15 = 300 zł. The price of an individual click isn't needed here — only the share of budget landing on out-of-area clicks.
How to check this without guessing: a client's neighbourhood versus the service area
Instead of going on a general impression that "the ad is off," this can actually be checked: for every inquiry from the campaign, note the client's address or neighbourhood from your CRM and compare it with the area the business actually serves. If out-of-area inquiries show up rarely and one at a time, they probably fall within the normal margin of targeting imprecision. If they make up a noticeable, recurring share — as in the example above — that's a signal to review the location setting, not to ignore the numbers. The same mechanism, where contact costs money but leads nowhere, shows up clearly in an analysis of Warsaw company websites: why customers don't leave inquiries.
Service area in the Business Profile is a completely different setting
It's easy to confuse the location setting of a Google Ads campaign with the service area in a Business Profile — they're two different systems with different rules. A service-area business can set up to 20 service areas in its Business Profile based on cities or postal codes, not as a radius around its address (Google, managing your service areas) — a completely different configuration from campaign location targeting, and changing one has no effect on the other.
It's also worth distinguishing this from visibility in free local results, which depends mainly on relevance, distance, and prominence of the profile (Google, Business Profile help) — a third, again separate mechanism. An out-of-area inquiry from a paid campaign says nothing about how the business ranks in free results, and vice versa.
A common mistake: changing the setting without checking real inquiries
A common scenario: the owner hears about the call from a distant town, immediately switches the campaign to "Presence," and considers the matter closed — without checking how many such inquiries there even were, or whether they cost any real budget versus just one misdirected phone call. Changing the setting without measuring the scale of the problem is often a shot in the dark: sometimes narrowing targeting is genuinely worth it, and sometimes a single call from far away is a statistical margin that costs more impressions than it's worth to eliminate.
The same mechanism — paying for contact that never turns into a client — shows up in other industries too: cost per restaurant booking, channel by channel shows that the cost of reaching someone says little on its own, without counting how many of those contacts actually close.
Do it yourself: match your service area to the campaign setting
- List the business's real service area — the cities and municipalities the crew actually drives to.
- Check the campaign settings to see which location option is active: "Presence" or "Presence or Interest."
- For a month, log each inquiry's neighbourhood or town from your CRM.
- Calculate the share of out-of-area inquiries using the same method as in the example above.
- If the share is noticeable and recurring, test switching to "Presence" and compare the following month.
- Record the result of the test before committing to a permanent change — one month-to-month comparison says more than the impression left by a single phone call.
The same habit — measuring ad return on an actual outcome, not just clicks — shows up in another industry too: restaurant marketing ROI, measured on margin.
What it looks like when a system keeps track of this
Instead of manually cross-referencing the CRM against campaign settings every so often, this can be automated:
- 01inquiry
- →02client neighbourhood on record
- →03weekly report by campaign
- →04a human decision about the setting
The same one-queue logic — turning scattered manual checks into a single automated flow — is covered in query handling automation, one queue instead of many.
Google Ads runs campaigns billed by inquiries and orders, not by clicks alone, so the service-area question is part of the measurement, not an add-on to it. Analytics and BI pulls data from several channels into one place and turns it into numbers you can compare month to month — including the share of out-of-area inquiries. Where a campaign points to a dedicated page for a single offer, Landing page keeps the message consistent with who the campaign is actually meant to attract. CRM and automations keep a client's neighbourhood attached to the inquiry record instead of a separate note, and Remarketing can be limited to people within the real service area instead of also chasing people who will never become clients.
Whether to narrow the location setting is always a decision a person makes based on the numbers — the system's role is just to deliver them every week, instead of waiting for someone to notice the next misdirected phone call.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between "Presence" and "Presence or Interest" in Google Ads?
"Presence or Interest" is the default and recommended option, covering people who are or regularly present in a location plus people interested in it. "Presence" covers only the first group — people actually located in or regularly present in the place.
Will switching to "Presence" increase the number of inquiries from the right area?
Google notes that moving away from the default option typically means fewer impressions for most campaigns — fewer people see the ad, but those who do are more likely to fall within the intended area. Whether that's worth it for a specific campaign is worth checking by measuring the share of out-of-area inquiries before and after the change.
Does Google's "+5% conversions" figure apply to every industry?
No. It's Google's internal data from the Travel, Real Estate, and Education verticals in 2022, not an independent study covering local service businesses. It's not worth carrying that figure over to another industry without your own measurement.
Does excluding a location in Google Ads guarantee the ad won't appear outside the excluded area?
Not 100%. Exclusion works on a "Presence" basis — it excludes people likely to be located in that place — but people outside the excluded area can still see the ad, because targeting relies on signals that don't guarantee full accuracy.
What's the difference between a service area in a Business Profile and location targeting in a Google Ads campaign?
They're two independent settings in different systems. A Business Profile service area is a list of up to 20 cities or postal codes set separately, and it has no effect on location targeting in an ad campaign.
How do I check for myself how many inquiries come from outside my service area?
Log each inquiry's neighbourhood or town in your CRM, and after a month, calculate what percentage of inquiries come from outside the business's actual service area. That gives you a real number instead of an impression based on a handful of phone calls.