It drives SEM’s crazy. You know what I’m talking about different serps/ads depending on where you are.
Example: If you are running an ad for a client’s flower shop in Miami but you live in New York you won’t be able to see it in Google if the ad isn’t targeted to that region.
So what’s the solution: Google has a tool.
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=44886
With the Adwords preview tool you are able to check your targeted ads through a number of different ways including: County, Region, City, Latitude and Longitude, Postal Code, and DMA. You are also able to add more then one parameter at a time using ‘&’ character in the URL string.
You will also notice that the preview tool doesn’t let you click on the ads. Because of the way its setup you won’t have to worry about raising your impression rate when you are just checking to see if the ad is active.
This is a great tool for advertisers but I do have one small suggestion on how it could be better. Currently with the way that it is setup all of the parameters have to be placed in manually. What would be nice to see in the future would be to have it setup with a series of drop down menus to make choosing your geographic location a little easier. With all of the money Google is making from the Adwords program I don’t think that this is asking a lot.
