The announcement of Google’s geographic reporting for your campaign is good news for international search advertisers, the ability to accurately (?) measure where your paid search clicks are coming from by city and region should make for a far more efficient and accurate pay per click campaign. Not to mention the ramifications for businesses in knowing where their products work best online allowing them to focus their whole model on a particular region if necessary.
But the problem with this sort of technology had always been that although it works well in the large open spaces of the US, it is simply not accurate enough in the relatively confined spaces of the UK. Case in point below, I tested this theory using the Google gears demo application that tells you where Google thinks you are. I ran the application whilst at work in Warrington and low and behold, Google was out, picking me up as being in Lambeth, Greater London, a full 204 miles away!
Which brings me to my question, is geographic targeting ever going to be accurate enough to make it useful in the UK? I am yet to see an example where it works effectively and consistently in this country, or are we just too small fry for it?
