[BrandonBass]

Running into a weird Google Ads issue where the campaign is targeting one specific country, but impressions are somehow showing up in other countries too.

The location targeting looks correct at first glance, so it’s confusing to see traffic coming from places that weren’t selected.

Could there be another location setting affecting this, or is Google Ads simply interpreting the targeting differently? Anyone who has dealt with this before, feel free to share what fixed it.

 

[Anu Pacheco]

I’ve seen this happen. Check whether the campaign is using the “presence or interest” location option. If you only want people physically in the target country, the location setting needs to be restricted to presence.

 

[jriley312]

I saw this after copying an old campaign. Everything looked normal, but one of the old location settings came along with it. Now I always check location settings again after copying a campaign.

 

[jgarcia]

We had a campaign where the sales team complained about leads from outside the target market. The ads themselves weren't the issue. We checked the geographic data, changed the location behavior, and started monitoring the leads separately. That combination gave us a much clearer picture.

 

[AnthonyJackson]

I remember seeing traffic from a neighboring country and getting worried. After checking the actual number of impressions, it was only a tiny percentage. I still reviewed the settings, but it wasn't a major campaign problem.

 

[Menuga Buchanan]

I once spent an entire morning checking whether the keywords were causing the problem. Eventually I discovered that the campaign location setting was broader than I realized. Now whenever I create a new campaign, location settings are one of the first things I check.

 

[Kelly Simmons]

I had this problem after duplicating an older campaign. The new campaign looked correct at first glance, but one of the location-related settings had carried over from the original campaign. Since then, I always review the entire location configuration after copying a campaign.

 

[MaryPalmer6]

I remember seeing this and getting pretty confused because the campaign dashboard showed the correct country. Then I checked the geographic report and noticed that the “location” wasn't always the user's actual physical location. Once I understood how Google was interpreting the location signal, the numbers made much more sense.