Presence or interest? The Google Ads location setting that wastes local budgets

If you run Google Ads for a local business, check one setting today: the location option inside your campaign's location settings. By default, Google Ads targets people who are in, regularly in, or who have shown interest in your chosen locations ("Presence or interest"). That last part means someone 200 miles away who searches for something mentioning your town can see and click your ad. For a plumber, cleaner or mobile mechanic who can only serve people nearby, those clicks are usually wasted money. Switching to "Presence: People in or regularly in your included locations" stops most of them.

Below I explain what the two options mean, when "interest" is actually useful, how to change the setting and how to check whether it has been costing you.

The two location options

When you set up a campaign, you choose the places you want to target, for example a radius around your postcode or a list of towns. Hidden under the location section is a smaller link for location options. Inside it, under the targeting heading, you have two choices. At the time of writing (October 2026) they read roughly as follows, although Google sometimes tweaks the wording:

Option	Who it includes	Good for
Presence or interest (the default, marked as recommended)	People in your locations, people regularly in them, and people elsewhere who have shown interest in them	Tourism, hotels, wedding venues, removals into an area, property sales
Presence	People in, or regularly in, your locations	Most local service businesses that travel to customers or need them to visit

There is a matching option for exclusions. If you exclude locations, make sure the exclusion is set to cover people in the excluded area, not just people interested in it, otherwise the exclusion is weaker than you think.

Why the default wastes local budgets

Google decides someone has "shown interest" in a location based on signals such as the places they mention in searches, places they have looked at on Google Maps, and the content they view. Google does not publish exactly how it decides, but the effect is the same: your ads can appear for people who are nowhere near your area.

Some typical ways this wastes money for a local service business:

• Someone in Scotland searches for a business in your town for a relative, or out of curiosity, and clicks your ad.
• People researching a town before visiting or moving there see adverts for trades they will never book from that distance.
• Searches that mention a place name that also exists elsewhere (there are several towns in the UK and abroad that share names) bring in irrelevant clicks.
• Job seekers and people researching competitors in your area click your ads.

On a large budget a few stray clicks barely matter. On a local campaign spending a modest amount per day, even a handful of irrelevant clicks can be a real share of your spend.

When "Presence or interest" is the right choice

It is not always wrong. The interest part is valuable when your customer is somewhere else at the moment they search, but wants to buy something in your area. Good examples:

• Hotels, holiday lets and attractions, where people plan from home.
• Wedding and event venues, where couples may live elsewhere.
• Removal firms and estate agents serving people who are moving into the area.
• Businesses that ship products nationwide but target content around a place.

For a trade or service business that works only within a radius of its base, "Presence" is almost always the better starting point.

How to change the setting

The Google Ads interface changes from time to time, but the steps are usually close to this:

1. Sign in to Google Ads and open the campaign you want to change.
2. Go to the campaign's Settings.
3. Open the Locations section.
4. Click Location options (it may be a small expandable link under your list of locations).
5. Under Include, choose Presence: People in or regularly in your included locations.
6. Under Exclude, choose the option that excludes people in your excluded locations.
7. Save, then repeat for every campaign. The setting is per campaign, not account-wide.

Some newer and more automated campaign types handle location options differently, and not every option is available in every campaign type. If you cannot find the setting, check Google's help page on advanced location options for the campaign type you are using.

How to check whether it has been costing you

Google Ads has a locations report that shows where your ads were shown and clicked. Look for the report about where your users were physically located (not just which of your targeted locations they matched).

1. Open the campaign and find the locations report under the reporting or insights section (it is often labelled along the lines of "when and where ads showed").
2. Switch to the view that shows user location rather than matched location.
3. Set a date range of at least the last 30 days, ideally 90.
4. Sort by cost and look for cities, regions or countries outside your service area.

If you find spend from places you cannot serve, that is your evidence. In my client work I check this report on every local account I take over, because the default setting is so rarely changed.

Other location mistakes that waste local budgets

While you are in the location settings, check these too:

• Targeting the whole UK by accident. New campaigns can default to a whole country.
• A radius that is too large. Draw it around where you genuinely want work, not where you would grudgingly travel.
• Not excluding areas inside a radius that you do not cover, such as across an estuary or a city centre with no parking.
• Ignoring location bid adjustments. If one town converts far better, you can bid more there, but only once you have enough data. Note that adjustments behave differently with some automated bidding strategies.
• Forgetting negative keywords for other place names. If people search "electrician Newcastle" and you are not near any Newcastle, add it as a negative.

What to expect after the change

Switching to "Presence" usually means fewer impressions and fewer clicks. That can look worrying in the dashboard, but the clicks you lose are the ones least likely to turn into customers. What you want to watch is cost per lead and the quality of the enquiries over the following few weeks.

A few practical tips:

• Make a note of the date you changed the setting, so you can compare before and after fairly.
• Give it at least two to four weeks before judging, especially on smaller budgets.
• Keep conversion tracking accurate, otherwise you cannot tell whether results improved.
• Review the user location report again after a month to confirm the stray spend has gone.

The quick takeaway

If you can only serve people in your area, set your campaigns to target people who are in or regularly in your locations, tighten your exclusions and check the user location report. It is a two-minute change that stops a slow leak in many local budgets. Our Google Ads for local businesses course goes deeper into location targeting, negative keywords and tracking enquiries properly.

Questions people ask

What is the default location option in Google Ads?

The default is Presence or interest, which includes people in or regularly in your locations plus people elsewhere who have shown interest in them. Local service businesses usually do better switching to Presence.

Will switching to Presence reduce my clicks?

Usually yes, but the clicks you lose tend to come from people outside your service area who are unlikely to become customers. Judge the change on cost per lead and enquiry quality, not click volume.

Do I need to change the location option in every campaign?

Yes. Location options are set per campaign, so check each one, including any new campaigns you create later.