Google Ads location targeting in Bangalore: why the default setting shows your ads to people who aren't here

Google Ads sets every new campaign's location targeting to "Presence or interest" by default, which serves ads both to people physically in your chosen area and to anyone anywhere who searches with intent tied to that area. For a Bangalore business with a physical location or a defined service radius, that second group can burn through budget without ever being able to walk through the door or book a service. Switching to "Presence only" under advanced location options limits spend to people who are in, or regularly in, the area targeted.

What is the difference between presence and presence or interest?

"Presence" means Google Ads shows a campaign's ads only to people it determines are located in, or regularly located in, the targeted area, based on signals like device location and IP address. "Presence or interest," the setting every new campaign starts with, adds a second group on top of that: anyone searching Google from anywhere in the world who uses terms tied to that location, someone in Chennai searching "salon near HSR Layout Bangalore," or someone abroad typing "spine clinic Whitefield Bangalore" while researching a trip home. Google's own advanced location options documentation confirms both groups receive the ad by default and that standard reporting does not separate the two, so an account owner scrolling through impressions has no easy way to see how much of that traffic was ever local to begin with.

Why the default setting costs a Bangalore business money

Interest-based traffic is not automatically bad. A business that ships nationally or serves people researching services back home benefits from it. A neighbourhood service business does not: a salon, a clinic, or a repair shop with no online ordering or remote service option gets billed for every one of those out-of-area clicks with zero possible return, since the person searching from Chennai or abroad was never going to walk through the door that month. The setting does not flag this cost anywhere on the campaign overview. It has to be found by opening the Locations report and comparing clicks attributed to actual presence against total clicks, a step most small accounts never take because nothing prompts them to.

How to check and change the setting on an existing account

Inside a campaign, open Settings, then Locations, then click "Location options" to expand the advanced controls. The setting reads "People in, regularly in, or who've shown interest in your targeted locations" when left on default. Changing it to "People in or regularly in your targeted locations" restricts the campaign to the presence-only group. This setting lives at the campaign level, not the account level, so a business running separate Search and Performance Max campaigns needs to check and set it on each one individually. Leaving even one campaign on the default quietly reopens the leak the others just closed. Google Ads also documents a further step for accounts that still see stray out-of-area clicks after the change: location exclusions let a campaign explicitly rule out a broader region, useful when presence-only alone does not catch every edge case, such as clicks from just across a city boundary.

When presence or interest is the right choice

A wedding venue or a destination clinic that regularly serves people travelling into Bangalore for the service benefits from leaving interest-based targeting on, since some of that "interest" traffic is a real customer still planning the trip. The same applies to a business selling a physical product with pan-India shipping, where a search from Mumbai is a legitimate lead rather than noise. The setting is a fit question, not a universal fix: it comes down to whether the business's actual customer ever needs to travel to reach it, not which option feels safer to leave switched on.

Frequently asked questions

Does changing location targeting to presence only affect Quality Score?

No. Quality Score is tied to ad relevance, expected click-through rate, and landing page experience, not to which location-matching option a campaign uses. Restricting to presence only can improve conversion rate by removing irrelevant clicks, which helps performance indirectly, but it does not touch Quality Score directly.

Can I set different location targeting for each campaign?

Yes. Location options are set at the campaign level, so a single account can run one campaign on presence only for local service pages and another on presence or interest for a page meant to reach people planning a visit to the city.

How do I know if this setting is wasting my budget?

Open the Locations report inside a campaign and compare clicks attributed to "location of presence" against total clicks. A large gap between the two is the signal that interest-based traffic makes up a meaningful share of spend.

Getting this one setting right during account setup matters as much as the campaign structure sitting on top of it. Our walkthrough on the nine default settings that drain a new Bangalore account covers the others worth checking before the first rupee is spent, and Studio Happens sets up new Google Ads accounts for Bangalore businesses with location targeting matched to how the business serves customers, not left on whatever Google defaults to. The scope of that setup work is on our performance marketing service page. Studio Happens, Bangalore's go-to affordable digital marketing partner, can help you get started today.