Presence vs Presence or Interest in Google Ads: The Location Setting Most Advertisers Get Wrong
If you have ever launched a Google Ads campaign and wondered why clicks were coming in from places you never targeted, the answer is probably hiding in one small, easy-to-miss setting: Location options.
It sits tucked under the location targeting section, collapsed by default, and Google picks the option for you unless you change it. Most advertisers never open it.
That single click is the difference between paying for the right people and paying for tourists, expats browsing from another country, or someone who once searched for "things to do in Dubai" three years ago.
I've audited campaigns where this one setting was burning through 30-40% of the monthly budget on geographically impossible clicks. The advertiser never spotted it because the dashboards looked healthy on the surface.
Let me break down what each option actually does, when to use which, and a real use case that shows why this matters.
The TL;DR: Google's default location setting (Presence or interest) targets anyone who has "shown interest" in your location, including people thousands of miles away. For most local campaigns, you want Presence instead.
The two options you have to choose between
When you set up locations in a Google Ads campaign and expand Location options, you get two choices under "Include":
- Presence or interest: People in, regularly in, or who've shown interest in your included locations (this is Google's default and what they recommend).
- Presence: People in or regularly in your included locations.
They sound similar. They are not. Google's own help docs describe the full definitions here.
Presence or interest: the wider net
This option targets three groups at once:
- People physically inside your targeted location.
- People who are regularly inside that location (think: someone who lives there but happens to be travelling).
- People who have shown interest in that location through their search behaviour, content viewed, or other Google signals.
That third group is where things get fuzzy.
"Shown interest" can mean someone in Manila reading a blog about London, someone in Mumbai watching YouTube videos about the London Eye, or someone in New York googling "best hotels in London" for a trip they may or may not take.
Google calls this the recommended option because it casts a wider net and brings more impressions. More impressions feel good in the dashboard. They do not always feel good on the credit card bill.
Presence: the tighter net
This option targets only:
- People physically inside your targeted location.
- People who are regularly inside that location (residents, frequent visitors).
That's it. No "shown interest" signal. No assumptions about someone halfway across the world who once watched a travel vlog.
If you sell tickets, run a local service, or have any kind of geographic dependency, this is usually the option you want.
Why the default setting is a trap for most advertisers
Google sets Presence or interest as the default because it benefits Google. More potential audience equals more impressions equals more clicks equals more spend. That is not a conspiracy, it is just how the incentive structure works.
For most advertisers, this default leads to:
- Clicks from people who cannot actually buy your product or attend your event.
- Inflated impression and click numbers that make campaigns look healthier than they are.
- A skewed audience profile in your remarketing lists.
- Wasted budget on traffic that will never convert.
The reach number you see in the location panel (37,400,000 for London in the setup screen) is also based on the wider definition. The number of people who can actually walk into your venue tomorrow is a tiny fraction of that.
Reality check: The "Reach" number Google shows you next to your location is calculated using Presence or interest. Your actual addressable audience is much smaller.
When "Presence or interest" actually makes sense
It's not always wrong to use it. There are real cases where it works:
- Tourism and travel brands targeting people planning a trip from abroad. If you sell London tour tickets and want to reach someone in Riyadh planning their summer trip, this is the right setting.
- Hotel bookings where the buyer is rarely in the destination at the time of booking.
- Visa, immigration, or relocation services where the customer is by definition not yet in the country.
- Brand awareness campaigns where you want to seed the name in people's heads before they travel.
In all of these, the buyer is researching from somewhere else. Targeting only physical presence would cut out your real audience.
When you should switch to "Presence"
Switch to Presence when:
- You run a local service (a dentist, a barber, a gym, a restaurant).
- You sell event tickets to a venue people have to physically attend on a fixed date.
- You target a city where most of your buyers are residents, not tourists.
- You've noticed weird geographic patterns in your search terms or analytics.
- Your conversion data shows a big gap between clicks from "people in your location" vs the rest.
The Google Ads reporting under Locations > User locations will tell you exactly where users actually were when they clicked, regardless of what they searched. Google explains how to read that report in its user locations help article. That report is the fastest way to spot if Presence or interest is bleeding your budget.
Use case: a London cinema selling Friday night tickets
This is a hypothetical example based on patterns I've seen across multiple local-business audits.
Let's say you run a small independent cinema in Shoreditch, London. You want to sell tickets for an exclusive Friday 8pm screening of a new release. The film is one night only. The audience has to physically be in London on Friday evening.
You set up a Google Search campaign:
- Location: London city
- Ad copy: "Friday 8pm exclusive screening, book now"
- Keywords: "film tickets london", "cinema shoreditch", "friday night cinema"
You leave location options on the default. Presence or interest.
What happens over the next two weeks
- A travel blogger in Saudi Arabia researching their London trip in September clicks your ad. They are not buying a ticket for Friday.
- A student in Manila who has been watching London vlogs clicks. They will not be in London this year.
- An expat in Dubai who used to live in London clicks out of curiosity. No ticket.
- A guy in Mumbai planning a holiday next March clicks. Wrong week. Wrong month. Wrong continent.
Every click costs you. None of them buy. Your cost per click is healthy on paper, but your cost per actual sale is brutal because most of the clicks were geographically impossible to convert.
Now you switch to Presence
- Only people physically in London or regularly in London see your ad.
- A finance worker on her lunch break in Liverpool Street searches "friday cinema near me" and clicks. She buys two tickets.
- A couple in Hackney looking for date-night plans searches "shoreditch cinema friday" and clicks. They buy.
- A tourist who is actually in London for the week sees the ad and books for that Friday.
The ad spend is lower. The conversion rate is higher. Your remarketing audience is now full of real Londoners, not curious browsers from across the world.
In the real client accounts where I've made this switch, ROAS typically doubles within two weeks without changing a single keyword or creative.
That is the entire difference. One radio button.
A quick note on the "exclude" side
The same logic applies to the second half of location options: Exclude.
By default, Google sets exclusions to Presence or interest too, which means if you exclude a country, you also block people in other countries who have shown interest in that country. That can quietly cut out legitimate buyers.
Always check both sides. Include and exclude. Default settings on both can fight each other in ways nobody at Google explains in the setup flow.
How to audit your campaigns right now
If you have campaigns running, go do this in the next ten minutes:
- Open Google Ads.
- Pick any campaign.
- Go to Settings > Locations > Location options.
- Check which option is selected.
- Then go to Locations > User locations in the reports.
- Compare clicks from your targeted location vs everywhere else.
Rule of thumb: In the audits I've done, when more than 20-30% of clicks come from outside the targeted location, the campaign is almost always on Presence or interest and almost always losing money on it.
The bottom line
Location targeting in Google Ads is not just "pick a city." It's "pick a city, then tell Google what you actually mean by that city."
- Presence or interest = anyone Google thinks cares about that place.
- Presence = people actually in that place.
For most direct-response campaigns, ticket sales, local services, and small businesses, Presence is the better default. Switch it once and check back on your conversion rate in a week. The number usually moves.
It's one of those settings where doing nothing costs real money, and changing it costs nothing.
Make the click.
Sources and further reading: