Google’s Distance to Store Reporting & Bid Enhancements

As we move closer to the holiday season (or are already in it – eek!), our efforts triple in finding efficient ways to maximize performance and the user experience as these next few months play a major role in our retail client’s demand forecasts. Before sorting through the new, cool ideas, we want to make sure our bases are covered within our core AdWords campaigns. Seasoned marketers are all aware of geo-bidding, day parting, time of day parting, etc. – but have you ventured into Google’s Radius Targeting yet?

Google recently launched another bid modification which allows brands to utilize location listings from their Google My Business account (GMB) to then bid adjusted by how close a user is to a store. We’ve seen initial reporting show users closer to a store location have higher CTRs and lower CPCs, and vice versa for those further away from the store. These bid modifications allow you to adjust bids when a user is within 0.4 to 40+ miles of a store location – think about how this applies to mobile usage as well!

Below is a quick “How-to” on setting up this Distance-to-Store reporting within AdWords:

Connect your Google AdWords account with your Google My Business (GMB) account by selecting “+ Extension” on the Ad Extensions tab within the Locations Extension drop-down.



 Note that if you are using this for your Shopping account, you will need to setup a “dummy” Search campaign as a workaround in order to link GMB. Google’s system does not show Location Extensions for Shopping campaigns, so therefore will not give you the option to pull in GMB within an account where only Shopping campaigns are present.

Patience… it may take up to 24 hours for your Locations to source from GMB.

Once your locations have pulled in, visit the Settings tab, and then select Locations. From here you can hit “+Locations” which will prompt you to select the specific campaign for which you’d like to apply the settings. Unfortunately, this is a very manual process at this time, and you’ll need to apply these radiuses separately for each campaign within the account.



Reviewing the above screenshot, you’ll notice the “Advanced Settings” option. Click here to apply your radiuses.

From this next pop-up, you’ll want to select the “Location groups” tab and do the following:

Select “My Locations” from the drop down.

Enter the radiuses you’d like to track from 0.4 to 40 miles distance to your store locations. We’ve started with 0.4, 0.7, 1 and then 5-mile increments up to 40.

Save the radiuses added and apply to remaining campaigns within your accounts. Note that this can be applied and utilized across Search, Shopping, GSP and Display campaigns.



Unfortunately, the data will not backfill, so you’ll need to wait a few days/weeks depending on how large your campaigns are. At that point, you can gather data to generate distance to store reporting and perform bidding optimizations.

You can pull reporting from the same place within AdWords (Locations within the Settings tab). Here you can also apply your bid modifications. As you’ll notice in the screenshot below, we’ve applied a bid increase to take place when users are within 1 mile of a store location (0.4, 0.7 and 1) as this is where we saw the highest CTR. On the other hand, we’ve applied a bid decrease for those who are 40+ miles from a store location.

A few highlights/reminders:

Data will only pull through for distances you’ve applied to the campaign (i.e. if you want reporting on every mile to store, you’ll need to add additional mile radiuses to your Locations).

There is currently not a way to bulk upload these radiuses into AdWords. Therefore, you will need to manually create them for each campaign.

Reporting/Bid modifications can be applied across Paid Search, Shopping Campaigns, GSPs and Display within AdWords. However, if your account does not include a Search campaign you will need to create a ‘dummy’ Search campaign in order to connect with your GMB account.