How to Stop Your Ads From Showing in Towns You Don't Serve

Published September 17, 2026 · Curbside Websites

You're a plumber in Medford. Your truck goes 20 minutes in any direction, tops. So why did you just pay $18 for a click from someone two states away, and why does your phone ring for jobs in towns you've never worked in?

Because Google Ads has two completely separate ways of deciding where you show up, and most accounts only have one of them set correctly.

Why do my ads show in towns I don't serve?

There are two levers, and they work independently:

1. Where the searcher physically is. That's your location targeting.
2. What the searcher typed. If someone in your town types "electrician in Springfield," your location targeting says yes and your keyword says yes. Ad shows. Money gone.

Contractors almost always fix lever one and forget lever two. Then they're confused when the leads keep coming from the wrong side of the county.

What's the first setting to change?

Go to your campaign, then Settings > Locations > Location options. Google's recommended default includes people who are in, regularly in, or have shown interest in your targeted area.

"Shown interest" is the part that burns money. It means someone in Arizona planning a move can trigger your ad for a water heater install in Massachusetts.

Switch it to the option that means presence only: people in or regularly in your targeted locations. That single change cleans up a surprising amount of junk, especially in seasonal and vacation areas.

Why doesn't excluding a town actually stop it?

This is the part nobody explains. Excluded locations work on presence. If you exclude the city 40 miles away, you stop showing to people who are physically standing in that city.

You do not stop showing to someone sitting in your own living room who types that city's name into Google. Your targeting says they're in your service area, because they are. The exclusion never gets a chance to fire.

That's the gap location negative keywords fill.

What are location negative keywords?

They're just negative keywords that happen to be place names. You add the town, city, county, or neighborhood you won't drive to, and Google stops matching your ads to any search containing that word.

Add them at the account level as a shared negative keyword list, not buried in one ad group. You want them applied everywhere, forever.

Use them as phrase match negatives in most cases. A broad match negative on a single word like Boston will block "Boston" anywhere in the query, which is usually what you want for a city you flat-out don't serve. But for words that do double duty (more on that below), phrase or exact keeps you out of trouble.

Which town names should I actually add?

Open a map. Draw your real service area, the one your crew agrees on, not the optimistic one. Then list:

• Every town that touches your border that you won't cross into. These are your biggest leaks because the search volume is close by and relevant-looking.
• The big metro name, if you don't work downtown. A landscaper in the suburbs has no business paying for "landscaping Philadelphia."
• Neighboring counties and regions people use as search terms. "Cape Cod," "North Shore," "Inland Empire."
• Other states and far-off cities that share your business name or your town's name. If you're in Portland, Maine, you want "Oregon" and "OR" handled.
• Common misspellings of the big ones. People type fast.

Fifty to a hundred entries is normal. It's a one-afternoon job that pays for itself in a week.

How do I find the towns already eating my budget?

Two reports. Ten minutes.

1. Search terms report. Sort by cost. Scan for place names. Anything you wouldn't drive to goes on the list right then.
2. Locations report (Reports > Predefined > Locations, or the Locations tab). Look at the column showing where users actually were, not just what you targeted. If you see clicks from cities you never targeted, your presence setting is wrong.

Do this monthly. New leaks show up as your keywords pick up new match variations.

Can I block too much?

Yes, and here's where people overcorrect.

• Place names that are also street names. Blocking "Lexington" might kill searches from Lexington Avenue in your own town. Check your local street grid first.
• Place names that are also neighborhoods, schools, or businesses. "Riverside Plumbing" is a competitor search you may want. "Riverside" the city 60 miles out, you don't.
• Landlords and property managers. Somebody living in the city can own the duplex in your town. This is real, and it's the one honest downside. Weigh it: if 90% of city-name searches are the wrong job, block it. If your area is full of absentee owners, watch that term for a month before killing it.

When in doubt, block the far ones hard and watch the close ones for 30 days.

What's the fastest cleanup order?

1. Switch location options to presence only.
2. Swap a wide radius for a list of specific cities or ZIP codes. A 25-mile radius from your shop is a circle. Your service area isn't a circle.
3. Add excluded locations for anything inside that radius you won't touch.
4. Build the account-level negative list of town names.
5. Check the search terms report in two weeks and add what slipped through.

Steps one through three control where they are. Step four controls what they typed. You need all of it.

One last thing worth knowing: none of this touches your Google Business Profile or your organic rankings. Those use a separate service area setting. If you're showing up in map results for towns you don't serve, that's a different fix, and it's usually your profile's service area list, not your ads.

Tighten the geography and the same budget starts buying you jobs you'd actually drive to. That's the whole point.

Common Questions

Should I use a radius or a list of cities for location targeting?

A list of cities or ZIP codes is almost always better for trades. A radius draws a perfect circle around your shop, and your real service area is never a circle. It ignores highways, rivers, bridges, and the town you refuse to work in because parking is impossible.

Do location negative keywords hurt my Quality Score?

No. Negative keywords don't have Quality Scores, and blocking irrelevant searches usually improves your click-through rate, which helps Quality Score on the keywords you keep. Fewer wasted impressions is a win across the board.

Where should I add location negative keywords, campaign or account level?

Account level, using a shared negative keyword list. Towns you don't serve are towns you don't serve for every campaign you'll ever run, so set it once and apply it everywhere instead of rebuilding it each time you launch something new.

Why am I still getting calls from far away after fixing my targeting?

Check whether those calls came from ads at all. A lot of long-distance calls come from your Google Business Profile, your website ranking organically, or lead sites you signed up for years ago. Ask every caller how they found you for two weeks and you'll know where to aim.

Does this apply to Local Services Ads too?

Not the same way. Local Services Ads use job types and a service area you set in the profile, not keywords, so there's no negative keyword list to build. You control the geography there by shrinking the ZIP codes you've selected.