Geotargeting in search

by i-level

In search, geotargeting is the ability to target content by an individual’s actual physical location and is key to any campaign where the location is important.

For instance, a person based in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire searching for “restaurants” could be shown links to restaurants only in or around their local area. This could be done by the person using the a graphic term like ‘Aylesbury’ in the search query, or by the technology itself actually knowing where the device used by the person is located. Sites from the local pizza shop to a major national retail chain cannot afford to ignore this targeting option as the link between online research and offline purchase becomes more and more evident. Research conducted by Yahoo! and comScore in July 2007 pointed to 89% of in-store buyers first researching their purchases online.

How it works

The major search engines are able to track the location of searchers via the IP address that users search from, usually a unique number associated with a user’s computer or network. This data is provided by several centres that collect and analyse geo-location data and thereafter identify the location of the IP addresses via various Number Resource Organisations (every country has an organisation like this who are responsible for allocating IP addresses to providers – think of them as the Land Registry of the internet). Other methods include tracing users coming through servers that are not their own as well as tracing network and router locations.

The search engines

Each of the major search engines have geotargeting as a standard feature when setting up a campaign. Google offers the range of features including: Language, country, region, city and custom. Microsoft adCenter can provide country, region and city, whilst Yahoo! focuses on country and region features. Below we discuss each of the methods of geotargeting:

Language and country: this allows you to select a country with a target audience of either a local or foreign language. For example, this would allow targeting of Spanish speakers in the USA.

Region and city targeting: allows you to target ads to small geographic areas by region or city (not available in all countries). An example would be targeting only people in London, or in only in Scotland

Customised targeting: this allows you to target in 3 different ways:

1) Specifying a radius around a physical address of your company.

2) Longitude and latitude of an area you wish to target.

3) By selecting multiple points or points on a polygon within a 400 kilometre radius. Outside of the PPC platform one is able to upload their locations onto Google Maps via Google Base. This is free and involves building an XML feed to upload the locations.

A word of caution

Search marketers should approach geotargeting with caution. Whilst it can be integral to a campaign there are common issues that affect accuracy. Britain’s current antiquated copper wiring infrastructure does not currently support widespread use of accurate geotargeting capabilities from search engines. The UK government has committed to a high-speed Britain, which will significantly improve geotargeting options for advertisers; countries with a more advanced fibre optic infrastructure can enjoy geotargeting down to city block level, increasing the engagement and relevancy of local searchers.

These result in ads displaying outside the specified areas in the geotargeting settings. This can also be due to internet service providers blocking their users IP addresses (AOL does this) or IP address blocks changing over time so that if the IP database is not updated the old address is reported on.
As the internet goes mobile, geotargeting will get easier as mobile phones can be tracked within a few metres of their actual location – Google have introduced the ability to target to platform (e.g. differentiating between mobile internet devices and home computers) to allow advertisers to take advantage of different browsing habits.

IFA Promotion case study

IFA Promotion promotes the benefits of independent financial advice to UK consumers and businesses. Through their website unbiased.co.uk they seek to direct consumers to contact details of their local IFA’s office. Search is one of the channels used to raise awareness of this service and geographical targeting is key to the campaign. i-level uses both paid and natural search to promote the IFA service. For paid search separate geographical campaigns were created. Within these campaigns a series of categories (known as adgroups) were set-up for every relevant location – this allowed creative to be tailored by location, ensuring it was as relevant as possible to the user. Core campaign keywords were then matched up with the specific location to ensure that IFA Promotion were visible for every relevant geographical search made. Geographical keywords currently provide 10% of overall paid search volume.

Natural search is also an important part of the strategy which, from a geographical perspective has been approached in two ways. Firstly on-page site optimisation has helped to increase rankings for relevant geographical terms. Secondly a feed of the locations of over 9,000 of IFA Promotion’s members was uploaded to Google maps. Once indexed, this meant that users of Google maps found IFA Promotion’s members when searching for relevant keyterms.