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Google Ads doesn't know how far your trucks drive. Draw the map yourself.

The default setting also reaches people who are merely interested in your area, a radius is a circle when rush hour isn't, and a lower bid for the far towns isn't supported under Smart Bidding.

By Lonta AIPublished Updated 10 min readHow we write

TL;DR

  • For a contractor who drives to the customer, set Google Ads location targeting to "Presence" and draw the area by drive time from the shop, not from the list of cities on your website. The default, "Presence or interest", also shows your ads to people outside the area who have shown interest in it.
  • Google calls the default "recommended". The evidence it cites comes from travel, real estate and education advertisers.
  • Google Ads targets cities, zip codes and a radius. It doesn't target drive time, so you work the drive times out on a map and enter the result as zip codes.
  • Under Maximize conversions or Target CPA, a lower bid for the far towns is not used. To spend less there, exclude them or give them a campaign of their own.
  • Cutting the far part of the map costs calls. In the Tampa account below, a twelve-week rebuild that began with the map ended with fewer calls and a lower cost per sold job; the figures cover the whole rebuild, not the map alone.

What Google Ads location targeting does by default

Open a Search campaign, go to the Settings tab and expand Locations → Location options. Unless someone changed it, it reads "People in, regularly in, or who've shown interest in your included locations (recommended)". The other choice reads "Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations" (Google Ads Help).

"Shown interest" covers a lot. Google's page on targeting geographic locations lists location terms in the search, past searches, "A person's past physical locations", searches on Google Maps, and a custom location someone set for their search results. It adds that location of interest "isn't restricted to a person's country": someone in Paris searching for a Los Angeles taxi can count as interested in Los Angeles.

The same page names two more ways an ad leaves the map you drew. Google may show ads in "nearby, closely related areas" that can't be targeted on their own, and its example is the suburbs around a targeted city. And location targeting is "Google's best effort", with "100% accuracy" not guaranteed.

Google's advanced location options page calls "Presence or Interest" the "default and recommended option". The one piece of evidence it gives comes from advertisers in travel, real estate and education who switched to it. Our reading is that those are businesses where the customer is often somewhere else when they search: planning a trip, a move, a school in another state.

A furnace repair or a slab leak happens at one address, and a tech has to drive there. Google's page gives a condition that fits it. Consider "Presence", it says, when "You only want to target users in specific locations and not users who may be in other locations but are still interested in your product or service".

There is a real exception to check before switching: the grown child in Ohio booking an AC repair for a parent's condo in Tampa, the landlord who lives out of state, the snowbird who wants the system checked before flying down. Under "Presence" those searches stop reaching you. If that is a real share of your work, keep a separate campaign for it so you can see what it costs.

Expect fewer impressions after switching. Google says "Most campaigns will notice a decrease in impressions when switching away from the default targeting option."

Why a radius or a city list doesn't match your service area

Most service areas get into Google Ads one of two ways: a radius around the shop, or the cities from the service area page. Google supports both. For a radius you enter an address, a distance and a unit, and Google doesn't allow "radius targeting under 1 km" (Target ads to geographic locations). Cities and postal codes are both target types (Location target types by country).

Neither one knows how long the drive is. Take a Tampa air conditioning and plumbing company with forty-seven cities on its service area page, all dispatched from one shop on North Nebraska Avenue. From that address, the far end of the list is over an hour each way in season, across the Howard Frankland. That is two hours of a tech's day before any work starts.

The ad account didn't know that. It bought a click in Clearwater Beach at the same price as a click in Temple Terrace, ten minutes up the road, and reported both as a lead. The report stops at the call, so nothing in it separated the two.

How to draw your service area by drive time

  1. Start from the address the trucks leave from. If the office is somewhere else, the office doesn't matter.
  2. Time the drive at the hour you dispatch. In Google Maps, get directions from the shop to each town or zip code, click "Leave now" and choose "Depart at" a weekday at the hour your trucks are actually on the road (for example 4pm if your afternoon calls run into rush hour). Maps then picks the route using estimated traffic, which is what a distance in miles leaves out.
  3. Sort the list into bands. The Tampa account below reports spend in three: under 15 minutes, 15 to 35, and over 35. Those are that account's bands, not a rule. Your cutoff is the longest drive you would send a tech on for a service call in July.
  4. Enter what you keep as zip codes. Google takes "a bulk list of up to 1000 location targets at a time" (Target ads to geographic locations). Zip codes on the edge will be partly in and partly out; decide those one at a time. Google warns that if you target "a small radius or very small location, your ads might only show intermittently or not at all" (Target ads to geographic locations). If a zip code shows no impressions after two weeks while its neighbors do, cover it with a radius wider than the zip code itself. A map drawn around septic tanks needs the same fallback. Then set Location options to "Presence".
  5. Don't price the outer band with a bid adjustment under Smart Bidding. Google's page on bid adjustments says: "If you make a manual bid adjustment to your automated Smart Bidding strategy, it won't be supported." That covers location adjustments under Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value. If you want the outer band at a lower cost, give it a campaign of its own, which is Google's own suggestion for areas that perform differently (Refine your location targeting). Exclusions still apply: Google says Smart Bidding strategies "will still consider targeting and exclusions" (About bid adjustments).
  6. Look at where the money went after 30 days. Campaigns → Insights & reports → When and where your ads showed → Matched locations. Google says these "could be users' physical locations or locations of interest" (View matched locations).

The full account check, with this as step one, is in the 30-minute Google Ads checklist. For an HVAC company, how the ad area follows the techs actually on the schedule is on the HVAC marketing page.

Two shops: the middle has to belong to one of them

When two shops share one set of campaigns, the targeting is drawn around two points at once, and the ground between them gets bought whether anyone drives there or not. Assign every contested zip code to one shop by drive time, write the assignment down, and give each shop its own campaign. The full setup for two shops is in two locations, one Google Ads account.

1st Choice Plumbing, Air & Insulation · Phoenix, AZRead the case
−48%
Spend outside either service area
Window
Two quarters against the two before
Source
Google Ads

1st Choice Plumbing, Air & Insulation, Phoenix and Prescott. Two shops about a hundred miles apart. The combined targeting covered a good part of the I-17 between them, including Black Canyon City and Cordes Lakes, nearly an hour from either shop. After every contested area was assigned to one shop by drive time, spend outside either service area: −48%. Window: two quarters against the two before. Source: Google Ads.

Limit: cutting the corridor between the shops improved the cost per booked visit and also removed customers. We have not shown that the corridor is unprofitable at every budget, only that it was the worst use of this one.

What happened when the Tampa company cut its map

The company is The Comfort Authority. Cutting two thirds of a map in May, in Tampa, means taking the risk in the weeks that carry the year. So nothing was cut until a call could be followed from the ad to a sold job in the client's CRM. That took the first two weeks. The radius was rebuilt on drive time in week three, and the same twelve weeks also cleared out the search terms, gave plumbing its own budget (why that matters) and moved spend onto the hours someone answers the phone. Read the figures as the result of that whole rebuild, with the map as its first step.

The Comfort Authority · Tampa, FLRead the case
−22%
Calls from ads
Window
90 days against the 90 before
Source
Call tracking

The Comfort Authority, Tampa. Air conditioning and plumbing from one shop, with the ad area cut from forty-seven listed cities to what a truck can reach. Calls from ads: −22%. Window: 90 days against the 90 before. Source: call tracking.

Limit: the two windows are not weather-matched. Two Tampa quarters are never identical, and some of this movement belongs to the season rather than to us.

In that account, the calls that remained were closer, and the closer calls booked and closed at a higher rate.

The Comfort Authority · Tampa, FLRead the case
−30 to −35%
Cost per sold job
Window
90 days against the 90 before
Source
Call tracking

The Comfort Authority, Tampa. Same account, same window. Cost per sold job: −30 to −35%. Window: 90 days against the 90 before. Source: call tracking.

Limit: nothing here separates the effect of the radius change from the effect of the search term cleanup. They shipped three weeks apart in the same account and we did not hold one back to prove the other.

What this doesn't cover

  • How much of your work comes from people who aren't there. Snowbirds, landlords, family members booking for a parent. We haven't measured that share anywhere; your call log can.
  • Whether the far towns lose money at every budget. The Tampa figures cover the whole rebuild, so they don't isolate the far towns, and they come from one budget and one crew size. A company with more trucks or a second shop may reach a different answer; we haven't tested that.
  • Performance Max and Local Services Ads. This is written for Search campaigns. We haven't covered how each setting above behaves in the other two.

Do this in your account

  1. Settings → Locations → Location options. Switch Search campaigns to "Presence", unless out-of-town customers are a real part of your work.
  2. Time the drives. Google Maps, from the shop, "Depart at" a weekday at your busiest dispatch hour, for every town you target now.
  3. Replace the city list or radius with the zip codes inside your cutoff, pasted in bulk. Cover any that get no impressions with a radius (step 4 above).
  4. Check the bid strategy. If the campaign uses a Smart Bidding strategy (see step 5 above), move the outer band to its own campaign or exclude it.
  5. Two shops: assign every contested zip code to one shop and split the campaigns.
  6. After 30 days, open Matched locations and look for spend outside the map.

FAQ

What is the difference between "Presence" and "Presence or interest" in Google Ads? "Presence" shows ads to people who are in or regularly in the area you target. "Presence or interest", the default, also shows them to people elsewhere who have shown interest in that area through their searches, past locations or Maps activity. For a business that drives to the customer, "Presence" matches how the work is done.

Should I target a radius or zip codes? Zip codes, if your drive times are uneven. A radius is a circle around the shop, and bridges, rivers and rush hour don't follow circles. Build the list from drive times at the hour you dispatch and paste the zip codes in bulk. A very small zip code may not show ads at all, so cover any that stay at zero impressions with a radius.

Why am I getting clicks from outside my service area? Google's help pages give three reasons that matter for a local business: the default option includes people who have shown interest in your area, Google may serve nearby related areas, and location detection is Google's "best effort". Switching to "Presence" deals with the first. The Matched locations report shows where clicks came from.

Can I bid less for towns farther from the shop? Not with a location bid adjustment under Smart Bidding; Google says manual adjustments "won't be supported". Put the far towns in their own campaign or exclude them.

Will switching to "Presence" lower my impressions? Usually. Google says "Most campaigns will notice a decrease in impressions when switching away from the default targeting option." Our reading: the ones you lose come from people Google doesn't place inside your area.

Sources

All read in full on September 24, 2026. Every quotation above is from these pages.

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