Radius targeting is an advertising setting that shows your ads only to people within a set distance of a point on the map, usually your business address, such as everyone within five miles of a shop in Guildford. It is a form of location targeting that draws a circle rather than selecting named towns, counties or postcodes.
How radius targeting works
In Google Ads you add a location by address or by dropping a pin, choose a distance, and the platform targets the people it believes are inside the circle. UK advertisers can set the distance in miles or kilometres. Meta’s ads tools work the same way for Facebook and Instagram, and Microsoft Advertising offers a similar option. At the time of writing (October 2026) each platform sets its own minimum and maximum radius, and some campaign types have larger minimums, so check the limits in the campaign you are building.
Platforms decide who is inside using signals such as device location, Wi-Fi and IP address, and, on Google, the places someone has searched about. Google Ads also asks whether to reach people who are in or regularly in the area, or people who have also shown interest in it. For a local service the first option is usually right. The second can show your ads to someone in Manchester planning a holiday in Cornwall, which suits a holiday let but wastes money for a Cornish electrician.
You can add several circles to one campaign, exclude areas inside them, and adjust bids so nearer areas get more of the budget. A very small circle drawn around a single building or site is usually called geofencing.
Why it matters
For a business that serves a limited area, every click from outside it is money spent on someone you cannot help. Radius targeting is the quickest way to match spend to the area you really cover, which is why it is one of the first settings I check in a local account.
It also lets you think in travel time rather than lines on a map. A ten-mile circle in central London covers millions of people and areas you may not want to drive into at rush hour, while the same circle around Hereford covers mostly farmland. Setting the radius from real journey times and job values gives a better result than picking a round number.
Common mistakes
- Leaving the “presence or interest” option on for a local service campaign, so ads reach people who only searched about the area.
- Drawing one large circle when the business really serves a few separate towns, which pays for clicks in the gaps.
- Choosing a radius so small that the campaign has too few people to learn from, then judging the channel on a handful of clicks.
- Forgetting that circles cross natural barriers. A radius around a business on one bank of the Thames or the Severn takes in people who will never cross it for you.
- Never opening the location report to see where clicks and conversions actually came from.
How to act on it
Start by writing down where your profitable customers really are, using past invoices or enquiry records. Draw the radius to fit them, or use several smaller circles or named postcode districts if the shape is irregular. Set the location option to people in or regularly in your area, run the campaign for a few weeks, then read the locations report in Google Ads or the regional breakdown in Meta.
Compare the cost per lead from each area, raise bids where it is healthy and exclude places that bring only clicks. On Facebook and Instagram, keep the circle large enough for the delivery system to have an audience to work with; my Facebook ads for local businesses service starts from exactly that trade-off. Radius settings have no effect on organic results, where Google’s local ranking depends on proximity and the other local factors instead.