Questionable clicks in my first adwords campaign

[#1]

I'm into day 2 of my first campaign.  I've looked at the reports and noticed that my ad has been served 363 times so far, with 6 clicks.

I use the STATCOUNTER plugin for WordPress so I can see the IP addresses that arrive at my site, and can see where they have come from.  At the moment, 95% of my traffic is coming from a link posted on a friend's facebook page.  However, I did see a cluster of five "clicks" within less than a minute.

Unfortunately, according to STATCOUNTER, those clicks originated from GOOGLE in Mountainview.  Is it their policy to perform searches based on the keywords I've purchased so they can "test" the response of the search engine?  If so, that's great - provided they don't intend to bill me for those "hits".  I can't seem to find more than one "organic" hit - i.e. a hit coming from inside the VERY SPECIFIC GEOGRAPHIC AREA that I targeted in my campaign.  Visitors from Mountainview should not be served my ad at all!

Can someone please comment.

Thank you!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Google will indeed visit your landing page to check that things are working and to ensure that your site meets with policy and these will be bots ion the first instance - and, no, they will not charge you for these visits.

As for the geo targeting - if you only want to serve people in a specific geo area, make sure that in the Advanced location targeting settings you have the first option checked - i.e. people in my targeted location - otherwise Google will target anyone in, or with an interest in, the area...

This second option is the default option - and I have bemoaned this in the past.... it widens the audience for Google but most advertisers rightly expect the default to be what it implies - i.e. I want to target people in London.... not people in Brazil who may be interested in London...

[#3]

Once the campaign is active, can this advanced geo targeting be modified?

[#4]

Hi Tony C,

Unless that Facebook link used manual tagging with utm_* parameters, those visits will report as organic (not paid) with a referrer of facebook.com.

Visits from AdWords will show as paid traffic, not organic.

Best of Luck,

Pete

[#5]

Yes - you can adjust your settings at any time

[#6]

@stickleback

Thanks for the information about changes to settings being possible at any time, and for your original answer.

I'm new to adwords and to this forum, but I'm not new to help forums in general.  I'm surprised that anyone other than me (as the original poster) has the ability to accept an answer as "Best Answer".  Not that I disagree, I just think it would have been nice if it were left up to me to make that award.

Anyway, let me put my "+1" on the award.

[#7]

@petebardo

I am aware that the hits from Facebook are reported as organic, and they didn't even go through a search process - those visits were direct links referred through Facebook.  What I was referring to in my post was that of the 6 times that Google "found" my ad, only one of those searches was done by a "legitimate" local prospect, while the other 5 came from Google in Mountainview.

[#8]

No problem... as for the marking of an answer as the best answer - there are three peoples who can do this - you, the original poster;  any fo the Google people and any of the Top Contributors (of which MosheTLV is one).

We're able to do that because, as you might have experienced on other forums, the OP often gets their answer and disappears. We can often then see other - less helpful - answers appearing which can be misleading at best and harmful at worst. Our being able to mark and answer as best helps this process and allows other people looking for the information on the same problem to go directly to, well, the best answer.

It also gives the thread a resolved feel which discourages further discussion. If someone reaching this post, for example, feels that it doesn't answer their question then they would probably be better off starting a new thread - and this practice helps to encourage that.

Trust you understand... and thanks for the +1 ;-)