Why do I get calls from other cities?

Interest counts, and it is the option you never chose

The default includes interest. That is the whole answer, and Google states it plainly.

"By default, you'll be able to reach people who are likely to be in or regularly present in your targeted areas, as well as those who show interest in your targeted geographic areas."

Interest is not a box anybody ticked. Google describes how it decides: "People can show interest through terms used in their searches, if they were recently in a location, or through content they view related to the location (such as pages or sites)."

So a person two states away types your city into a search. That counts as interest. They are now inside your targeting.

Google's own example shows the reach. Someone in Paris searches for a Los Angeles taxi on the French version of Google. Google may still identify Los Angeles as a location that person is interested in.

For some businesses this is a useful feature. A hotel wants it. So does a law firm whose clients hire from out of state. For a business that answers the phone and sends a van, it is the quiet source of calls you cannot serve.

You cannot exclude your way out of it

This is the part that traps people who have already tried to fix it. The two defaults are not symmetrical.

Targeting includes interest by default. Exclusion does not. Google describes the exclusion default as presence only: "By default, you'll exclude people likely to be located in your excluded locations." Then it adds the line that explains your call log: "People who are located outside these areas may still receive your ads."

Think about what that means. Interest can arrive from anywhere, because anywhere is a place somebody can search from. Exclusions are a list you write by hand. One is unbounded and the other is finite. A blocklist can never catch up.

That is why the usual advice to exclude the neighboring counties disappoints people. It stops the neighbors. It does nothing about the person three states over who typed your city name. That person was never in a place you thought to exclude.

The fix is a different setting, not a longer list. Google offers a targeting option it calls Presence: "This option lets you show your ads to people who are likely to be located, or regularly located in the locations you've targeted."

The second reason has nothing to do with your settings

Even on presence targeting, ads reach past the line you drew. Google publishes two reasons for it.

The first is spillover by design: "When you target an area, we may also show your ad to customers in nearby, closely related areas that normally couldn't be targeted because of low population, insufficient data about the geographic area, or because that level of targeting isn't available." Its example is targeting the city of Portland and also reaching nearby suburbs.

The second is that location is a guess. Google says as much: "Location targeting is based on a variety of signals, including users' settings, devices, and behavior on our platform, and is Google's best effort to serve ads to users who meet your location settings. Because these signals vary, 100% accuracy is not guaranteed in every situation."

There is also a floor on how tightly you can draw the circle. Radius targeting "requires setting a radius of at least 1 km around any given location". Google will not allow a smaller one, for privacy reasons.

So a little leakage is the system working as documented. A steady stream of calls from three states away is not. The two have different fixes, and the report further down tells you which one you have.

Microsoft names the same choice, and deleted one of the options

Worth knowing if you advertise in both places. The setting exists there too, under a different name.

Microsoft Advertising defines its location intent options in plain terms. PeopleIn means "Show ads to people in your targeted location." PeopleInOrSearchingForOrViewingPages means "Show ads to people in, searching for, or viewing pages about your targeted location."

The interesting part is what Microsoft removed. A third option once targeted interest on its own, and Microsoft retired it: "PeopleSearchingForOrViewingPages is deprecated as of April 2024." Campaigns using it were not moved to the narrow setting. Microsoft states they were converted the other way, to the option that includes physical presence.

On both platforms, then, the broad option is the path of least resistance. The narrow one is a choice somebody has to make on purpose.

What to check, in order

Five checks, and the first three are free.

• Open the Locations report and switch from the Targeted locations view to Matched locations. Google defines the difference. Targeted shows the locations you picked. Matched "Shows your performance based on the locations where your ads appeared. These locations could be users' physical locations or locations of interest." The second view is where other cities appear.
• Read it at the level that answers the question. Google says that if you were targeting the United States, "you could view location data down to the postal code, university, airport, or congressional district level." A list of states tells you little. A list of postal codes tells you whether to act.
• Look at the Distance report, which "Reports the distance between the location that triggered your ad and your closest business location." Leakage into the next suburb and demand from four hundred miles away are different problems.
• Check the advanced location option on every campaign, not on the account. It is set per campaign. A campaign added later may not match the one somebody fixed last year.
• Check the exclusion setting separately. It has its own default, and changing the targeting option does not touch it.

Then decide whether to narrow, because Google is candid that narrowing costs reach: "Most campaigns will notice a decrease in impressions when switching away from the default targeting option."

Do that arithmetic on your own report rather than a rule of thumb. Suppose Matched locations shows 1,000 clicks in a month, and 180 of them matched to places you do not serve. That is 18 percent. At an average of 14 dollars a click, it is about 2,520 dollars. Weigh that against the reach you would give up. The numbers are an illustration, but the method is the point, because the out of area share is measurable rather than a matter of instinct.

One honest counterweight. Google reports that "Advertisers who switched location targeting from 'Presence' to 'Presence or Interest' in the Travel, Real Estate, and Education verticals find +5% more conversions on Search campaigns." Note the limits before leaning on it. It is Google's own internal data. It covers three verticals over a date range in 2022. And travel and real estate are precisely the industries whose customers buy from somewhere else. It is a real argument for the broad setting in those businesses, and weak evidence for a plumber.

The report above is where this work starts. Matching location settings to the area a business actually serves is part of what we do on paid search.

Terms used on this page

• Cost per click
• Conversion

Sources

• About targeting geographic locations (Google Ads Help)
• About advanced location options (Google Ads Help)
• Target ads to geographic locations (Google Ads Help)
• About measuring geographic performance (Google Ads Help)
• View matched locations and distance reports (Google Ads Help)
• IntentOption Value Set (Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft Learn)

Last reviewed 2026-09-11.