How Do Google Ads Pay-per-Click Ads Work Locally?

Local Google Advertising can be described as “Geo-Targeted Search Engine Marketing." That’s a fancy sounding phrase for what is a fairly simple concept. Geo-targeting really just means that Google knows where your computer is geographically (not exactly, but pretty close) and local businesses can buy advertisements that display on Google’s pages on computers located in that area.

From a technology standpoint, the newer internet connections assign each computer a unique IP address that is registered with the internet provider and they assign a location identifier (like your city or zip code) to that computer (or tablet or smart phone). Whenever that computer loads an internet page, that computer’s IP address and location information is passed to the website being loaded. For smart phones using a cell signal, the cell towers pass the location information to the website.

So why not advertise on Google?

For example, if you were a small pizza restaurant in the suburbs of a major city, your customers probably live with in 10 miles of your location. But the phone book usually covers a huge metropolitan area – including dozens of suburbs that would never drive to your pizza shop. However, you are buying advertising for the entire metropolitan area. Up to 90% of your advertising money has been wasted by advertising in areas that would never drive to your location. By contrast, with Geo-Targeting Pay per Click Ads on Google, you can advertise in much smaller areas, which puts your advertising money to work where you need it – in front of potential customers.