Adwords Fiasco #2: Geotargeting Problems

In the midst of the $10 minimum bid fiasco, SEW Forum moderator Discovery discovered another problem: Geotargeting seems to be broken in Adwords. I had noticed this too, but hadn't had time to dig into it.

Well, now I have. And the news isn't good. All our campaigns are set to US only, since we can't sell outside the US. Prior to this month, we'd gotten virtually no foreign traffic from Adwords. However, as of early this morning, we've gotten over 1,000 clicks from non-US countries, and the percentage is rising. Yesterday, only 90% of our Adwords traffic was from the US - the rest was foreign, or "unknown." Hmm.

I've emailed my rep about this, and haven't heard back from her yet, so I don't know if we were actually charged for these clicks. However, this traffic throws off our analytics metrics - conversion rates look worse than they actually are. And we shouldn't be getting this traffic if we've asked not to - right? Cmon Google, you're wearing me out with all this stuff! How 'bout a little break?

I'll post an update once I hear what's up. In the meantime, Barry at SE Roundtable has a writeup on the issue.