Google Adwords Geo Targeting For Northern Ireland Continued…

Since the somewhat less than helpful reply from Google Adwords support on how accurate geo targeting for the Northern Ireland region is. I decided to so a small (very unscientific) test using the Google Adwords Traffic Estimator.

I typed in a number of keywords which I reckoned would get a relatively high search volume all over the UK (did I mention that this was very ‘unscientific’?)

Then I asked for traffic estimates solely for the ‘Northern Ireland’ region.  Here are the results:-

adwords-traffic-estimator-northern-ireland

I then asked for the results from ‘England’, ‘Wales’, ‘Scotland’ :-

adwords-traffic-estimator-england-scotland-wales

Which means that if Google Geo Targeting is to be believed, the number of Google users in Northern Ireland is approx 0.66% that of Great Britain, or that the population of Great Britain is approx 152 times that of Northern Ireland!

Here is the mid 2008 UK population statistics taken from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=6

That is a BIG margin of error…

How do you get round this when setting up a Google Adwords Campaign that targets only Northern Ireland?

There is no perfect way of doing it *as far as I know*.

Adwords regional targeting now allows users that Google knows are physically located outside of your region to see your advert *if* they type in specific keywords that you are targeting in that campaign (provided you are specifying your geographic area using ‘Regions’ rather than ‘Custom’).

So, if I have a company that sells blue widgets, but only ships to Northern Ireland, I could set up a campaign that targets ‘Northern Ireland’, and has the following keywords (in summary):-

[blue widgets]

[blue widgets northern ireland]

[northern ireland blue widgets]

[n.i. blue widgets]

[blue widgets belfast]

etc. etc….

My Blue Widget advert will now show if someone with a Northern Ireland IP address types in “blue widgets” in Google.  It will also show if someone who has an IP Address located in Great Britain types in “blue widgets northern ireland” or “blue widgets belfast” etc..

*Update*
To Summarise, if you are targeting Northern Ireland, and the AdWords Traffic Estimator tool keeps saying ‘Not enough data to give estimates’, then try targeting England, Wales and Scotland, then divide that result by 150 to get your Northern Ireland Estimates!

*Disclaimer* – Again, this is only a very rough estimate, and hopefully, with time Google will get better at targeting Northern Ireland as a region…

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