You ship to the United States and Canada. Your campaign targets the United States and Canada. Yet your Google Ads reports show clicks from places you've never heard from, and now and then an order attempt from a country your checkout doesn't serve.
Google Ads showing in the wrong country is one of the most common surprises for store owners running their own campaigns, and it usually isn't a bug. It comes from one setting most people never open.
The short answer: By default, Google Ads shows your ads to people who are in your target countries and to people who have shown interest in them, wherever they are. That default is called "Presence or interest". If you only sell to certain countries, the "interest" part can mean paying for clicks from people who can't buy. You can see whether it's happening in the Locations report, and change it in your campaign's location options.
Why your ads show outside the countries you chose
When you pick target locations in a campaign, there's a second setting underneath, under Location options. Google offers two choices for who counts as being "in" your locations:
- Presence or interest: Google's help page calls this the "default and recommended option". It reaches people who are likely to be in, or regularly in, your targeted locations, as well as people who have shown interest in them.
- Presence: shows your ads to people who are "likely to be located, or regularly located" in the places you've targeted.
How does someone "show interest" in a location? Google lists three ways: "terms used in their searches, if they were recently in a location, or through content they view related to the location".
So a person in another country who searches for a product along with "USA", reads a page about the United States, or recently visited could see an ad from a campaign that targets only the United States. For a hotel or a tour company, that's exactly who they want: people planning a trip. For a store that can only deliver to a few countries, many of those people can't become customers.
Google also notes that it identifies interest "regardless of the Google search domain the person searches on", so using google.com versus another country's Google doesn't settle it either way.
Is it actually costing you?
Don't change the setting on suspicion. Check first, because sometimes the "interest" traffic is small or even profitable (people abroad buying gifts for someone in your country, for example).
Google reports where your ads appeared in the Locations report: go to Campaigns → Insights & reports → When and where your ads showed, then choose the Matched locations view. Google explains that these locations "could be users' physical locations or locations of interest".
What to look at:
- Set the date range to the last 30 days (or 90 if your volume is low).
- Sort by cost. Look for countries or regions you don't ship to.
- Compare cost with conversions. Spend from a country you don't serve, with no sales, is the clearest kind of wasted spend there is.
- Expect an "Unspecified" row. Google says some impressions can't be tied to a location, for example when it can't determine one from the IP address. That row isn't necessarily a problem.
Then check your store side: does Shopify show abandoned checkouts or orders from countries outside your shipping zones? That's a sign the clicks are reaching people who wanted to buy and couldn't, which is frustrating for them and expensive for you.
A worked example
These numbers are made up but typical. A store ships to the United States and Canada. Its Shopping and Search campaigns spent $2,000 last month. The Locations report, matched view, sorted by cost:
| Location | Cost | Clicks | Purchases |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $1,620 | 1,410 | 52 |
| Canada | $210 | 180 | 6 |
| United Kingdom | $74 | 66 | 0 |
| Philippines | $41 | 120 | 0 |
| Other (12 countries) | $55 | 98 | 0 |
That's $170 a month, 8.5% of spend, on countries the store can't ship to, with no sales at all. Not dramatic in a single month, but it adds up to about $2,000 a year, and it's one of the easier leaks to close.
How to fix it: three options
There's no single right answer. Pick the one that fits how your store sells.
Option 1: Switch to "Presence"
In the campaign's settings, open Locations → Location options and choose Presence. Ads will then target people who are likely to be in, or regularly in, your countries.
This suits most stores that ship to a fixed list of countries. The trade-off: you'll lose people abroad who buy for someone in your country (gift buyers, expats ordering home). If your Locations report shows those people buying, consider option 3 instead.
Option 2: Keep "Presence or interest" and exclude countries
You can keep the default and add the countries you don't serve as excluded locations in the same Locations section (how to target and exclude locations). This blocks the countries that show up in your report while keeping interest-based reach in the ones you serve.
The downside is maintenance: new countries can appear later, so you'll need to check the report from time to time.
Option 3: Test before you switch
If you're not sure, change one campaign first and compare a few weeks of results with the others. Watch cost per sale, not just clicks: a drop in clicks after switching to Presence is expected and fine if sales hold.
Whatever you choose, check every campaign. Location options are set per campaign, so fixing one doesn't fix the rest. Campaigns created at different times, or by different people, often have different settings.
Other reasons ads show in the wrong place
If your setting is already Presence and you still see clicks from elsewhere, a few other explanations are worth knowing:
- Travelers and commuters. "Regularly located" includes people who are often in your target area, even if they're abroad today.
- VPNs and privacy tools. Location is estimated from signals like IP address, and some people's signals point somewhere they aren't. You can't fully prevent this.
- Shipping settings vs. ad settings. Your Shopify shipping zones and your Google Ads locations are separate. If you add or drop a country in Shopify, change your campaigns to match, and the other way round.
- Product feed countries. For Shopping and Performance Max, the countries your products are approved for in Merchant Center also matter. If your feed targets a country you no longer serve, fix it there too.
Why this is easy to miss
The setting sits one click below the location list, it's pre-selected, and Google recommends it. Nothing about it looks wrong. Most store owners set up their first campaign once, see their country in the list, and move on. That's why it's worth checking even if you're confident your targeting is right: the question isn't which countries you chose, but who counts as being in them.
Check this and the rest of your account
Locations are one of several settings that quietly widen who sees your ads. Our guide to where Shopify stores lose Google Ads budget covers the others, and the guide to checking a new Google Ads setup helps if your account is less than a few months old.
If you'd like it measured for you, Advizify runs a read-only audit of your Google Ads account for Shopify stores. It measures wasted spend over the last 30 days, including spend in places your store doesn't serve, ranks what to fix first, and never changes your campaigns. Your first audit is free, and later audits are $19 each.
FAQ
Why are my Google Ads showing in other countries? Most often because the campaign uses "Presence or interest", Google's default location option, which also reaches people outside your target countries who have shown interest in them. VPNs and travelers explain the rest.
Should I use "Presence" or "Presence or interest"? If you only ship to certain countries and your Locations report shows spend elsewhere with no sales, Presence is usually the better fit. If people abroad buy for someone in your country, keep the default and exclude the countries that never convert.
Does changing the location option reset my campaign's learning? Any targeting change can affect how a campaign performs for a while. Make the change, then judge it over a few weeks by cost per sale rather than day-to-day swings.
Where do I see which countries my ads showed in? In Campaigns → Insights & reports → When and where your ads showed, under the Matched locations view.