Adword San Francisco Reach number

[SirMax]

Hello,

I have noticed in Adwords, when I select San Francisco or San Francisco county as a location for the campaign, it shows the reach as 7,220,000

Now I know that reach may be different from census data and depends largely on number of google signed-in users. But this number is waaay of. According to census there are only about 850,000 people in SF county, lets add as much that commute to SF for work, then we still have only 1,700,000 - not even close to 7,220,000 google is reporting.

Also note that for the rest of the Bay Area counties the Adwords reach numbers match very closely census data.

Any ideas?

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Max,

What kind of targeting are we talking about here next to the data on San Francisco? Because I get a feeling that some of the data can be mixed up here + also represent that the keywords you're looking for might be searched multiple times in a month. Reach usually is not the unique amount of people but the number of times you can reach certain individuals.

[SirMax]

When you add a location to an Adword campaign, if you go for a specific location it would show you the reach statistics. Reach statistics suppose to give you an idea of how many potential customers(from this geographic area) may potentially see your ad. This reach data is suppose to just show an approximate number of regularly  logged-in google users. Again this is shown before you add any keywords to the campaign and for the rest of the Bay Area counties the Adwords reach numbers match very closely census data.

[TrentonGreener]

Hey SirMax,

AdWords reach numbers have been known to be a little wonky, for another good example of this look no further than Central Park, NY (Zip code 10024, AdWords Criteria ID #9004077) which says the reach is 10MM, but we need to realize that there is much more than just census data factoring into this number. Google also uses:

• Number of accounts used per person
• Number of temporary visitors to a geographic location.
• Length of time each person spends on a website.
• Number of signed-in users.

(Full Documentation)

So using the above + census data is how Google came to the 7,220,000 number.

It's also important to realize & remember that positive location targeting has 3 options:

• People in my targeted location
• People searching for or viewing pages about my location
• People in, searching for, or viewing pages about my targeted location (Default)

Remember these and use them to more accurately target your campaigns.

TL;DR: I wouldn't sweat the size of your 'reach' number. Monitor the campaign, specifically on the Campaign>Settings>Locations>View location reports>Where your users were (user locations). This will give you a feel for whether your targeting settings are where they need to be.

Hope that helps, let me know if you need any additional information on this one.

Trenton