Location groups make it easier to promote nearby business locations within your ads. You group together sets of business locations and create ads based on their location details in your campaigns or ad groups. Location groups also allow you to target your ads based on those business locations.
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Benefits
- Control which locations are used: Rather than using all your linked locations in all your campaigns, you can group locations together and then apply them to specific campaigns or ad groups. This is useful if you only want to promote certain stores in certain campaigns or ad groups.
- Manage account-level settings: Location groups help you override account-level automated location assets, ensuring only desired locations are shown. However, always ensure that if you link a location group to your account level, that location group must maintain locations.
- Use a single location: If you need to target ads to only one specific business location, you can create a location group containing just that single location and apply it to your campaign.
This article shows you how to use Location manager to build and manage a location group using custom locations from your Business Profile account, common chain businesses, or Google Maps locations.
Instructions
1. Create a location group
Below are instructions to create location groups and their availability based on what type of location source you have linked to your Google Ads account.
Manually select specific locations (Business Profile, Chains, or Maps)
- Go to Location Manager under Shared library drop-down in the Tools menu
.
- Select the Location groups tab.
- Select the plus button
.
- Provide a name for your location group.
- Select Pick your locations.
- Use the search bar to search locations and select the check box next to the locations you want to include in this location group.
- Optional: You can click the X button next to your picked locations to remove them from the list, or Clear all to empty the list.
- Select Save.
Select locations that match a label filter (Business Profile only)
To use this feature, you must first add labels to your locations (listings) in your Business Profile.
- Go to Location Manager under Shared library drop-down in the Tools menu
- Select the Location groups tab.
- Select the plus button
- Provide a name for your location group.
- Select Filter by label.
- Insert the name of your label next to “Label contains”.
- If your Business Profile doesn’t have any labels, learn more about labels in Business Profile.
- Optional: You can click the ADD LABEL button to add up to 3 labels to your filter criteria.
- All locations for the label are now included in this location group.
- If you add or remove labels from your Business Profile locations, these updates will sync to Google Ads and locations no longer containing the labels will be removed from your location group.
- Select Save.
Select locations that match an attribute filter (Chains only, not available for all chains)
- Go to Location Manager under Shared library drop-down in the Tools menu
- Select the Location groups tab.
- Select the plus button
- Provide a name for your location group.
- Click "Select by attributes". Note that this option is not available for all chains. It will populate in your view if it is available for the specific chain you have selected.
- Select one or more chains.
- Select one or more attributes.
- Note that as we are adding attributes to more chain locations, certain chains may not have any attributes. Review the matched locations under “Sample locations”. Additionally if you create a location group through the attributes filter, future locations added to your selected attributes will dynamically be part of this location group.
- Select Save.
2. Manage location groups
Steps to manage location groups
- Go to Location Manager under Shared library drop-down in the Tools menu
- Select the Location groups tab.
- Select the name of the location group to view it.
- Note: If any of your group’s locations have been disapproved, the location’s status will read “disapproved” and the reason for the disapproval will show under the status. You can click on either text to view why the location has been disapproved. You can then select Read the policy to learn more or Edit in Business Profile manager to fix the issue.
- You can now edit your locations list on the right either:
- Removing the locations by checking the box next to those locations and selecting Remove from the blue belt that appears. Note: You can also delete location groups entirely from your account, which will impact any campaigns using those groups.
- Add new locations by selecting the plus icon
- Select Save to apply your changes.
You can create location groups in bulk using a .CSV or .xlsx file. You can use these templates to format your files: CSV | Excel
Keep in mind: The format of the file must be in exactly the same formats as in the templates. It’s recommended to download templates and then add in locations.
The following are required fields if you’re using an address:
- Business name
- Address line
- City and country code
State, postal code, phone number are optional fields.
If you’re using an asset ID, only the asset ID is required.
Use the following steps to upload your file and create location groups in bulk:
- Go to Location Manager under Shared library drop-down in the Tools menu
- Select the Location groups tab.
- Select the plus button
- Select Upload locations in bulk.
Choose a name for your location group and click Select a file from your computer. The location group will be applied automatically.
