A location exclusion tells Google Ads not to show your ads to people in a chosen place, such as a borough you do not cover or a part of the country you cannot deliver to. It is the opposite of location targeting and works alongside it in the same campaign settings.
How location exclusion works
You add excluded locations in a campaign’s location settings, using the same kinds of place you can target: countries, regions, counties, cities, postcode districts and radius areas. Exclusions beat targets. If you target Greater London and exclude Bexley, people in Bexley will not see your ads, even though Bexley sits inside Greater London.
There is also a choice about who counts as being in an excluded place. Under the advanced location options, an exclusion can apply only to people physically in that location, or to people in it or showing interest in it. The first is the sensible default for most businesses: it keeps ads away from people who are there, without blocking someone in your own area who happens to search about the excluded place. The way Google judges interest is explained under presence or interest targeting.
Exclusions are set campaign by campaign and work in Search, Performance Max and most other campaign types. Most exclusions start with the location report, which shows where the people who saw and clicked your ads actually were.
Why it matters
Location settings are one of the quickest places to waste money in a local account. A London plumber who only covers the inner boroughs does not want to pay for a click from Epping or Dartford, even if Google judges the searcher close enough to be relevant. An exclusion closes that gap precisely.
It matters at national level too. An online shop targeting the United Kingdom is already limited to the UK, but some sellers cannot ship to Northern Ireland or to remote Scottish islands at a sensible cost, and pay for clicks from customers who reach the checkout and leave when they see the delivery options. Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are Crown Dependencies rather than part of the UK, and Google lists them as separate locations, so check whether they are inside or outside your targeting.
Common mistakes
- Setting exclusions to cover people who show interest in the excluded place, which can block genuine local customers who mention that place in a search.
- Carving a long list of exclusions out of a broad target instead of targeting the right area to begin with. A long list is often a sign the target itself is wrong.
- Excluding areas on instinct. Check the location report first; an area that seems weak may simply have had few clicks so far.
- Expecting an exclusion to stop searches that name a place. If you do not work in Watford, a negative keyword for “watford” catches searches about it from people outside the excluded area.
- Updating exclusions in one campaign and forgetting the others. Google Ads Editor makes copying location settings across campaigns less error-prone.
How to act on it
Write down the area you can genuinely serve: the postcodes, boroughs or travel distance you would happily send a van or courier to. Target that, then after two to four weeks look at the location report for where people actually were. Add exclusions where you see spend from places you cannot serve or that repeatedly fail to convert, and back them up with negative keywords for place names you do not cover.
Review exclusions whenever your service area changes, such as a new branch or a courier contract that adds Northern Ireland. Checking location settings is a standard part of how I audit accounts in ongoing PPC management, and it works best paired with careful location targeting from the start.