You’re workin’. You’re cruisin’. You’ve set up the product feed in the merchant center. Now you’ve moved on to creating some ads in Google Shopping campaigns. You’ve heard all the benefits of setting up Google Shopping and you’re excited to get started! Does this sound about right so far? Okay, good, we’re on the same page. Now, here comes the question, when setting up your campaign, you will have to choose the Merchant Center... and right after that, the country of sale.

But what does country of sale mean? Suddenly things seem a bit weird? While you can sell to pretty much anywhere from your site, can you only sell to one country in Google Shopping?

Well, yes and no. There are some rules! 

Just like the name suggests, it is the country where the products from your feed are sold and will be shipped to. The items uploaded to a selected country of sale must align with the country’s feed specifications and policies, such as language and currency requirements. Also, remember that shopping campaigns are in beta for some countries, so make sure to do a little research to see if the country you want to sell to is even eligible for Google Shopping!

Unfortunately, you’re not quite out of the woods yet. So your country of sale is set, now you can also specify the locations you want to deliver your ads too. So, whereas the country of sale refers to the country you physically deliver your products, the location targeting refers to the country you want to deliver your ads. Although this seems like not a very important distinction, it is, and certainly something that you will need to fine-tune before launching your campaign.

You can find location targeting in locations when creating the campaign. 

You will see that, by default, Google will target all countries and territories and “People in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations (recommended)” and exclude “People in, or who show interest in, your excluded locations (recommended)”. This can be good, for instance, if you are a store looking for clients all around the world, but you are an online shop, with limited possibilities for delivery you should target the country you can deliver to and “People in or regularly in your targeted locations” and exclude “People in your excluded locations”. So it all depends on your business model.

Even if the cost for those clicks is not too significant, you still want to spend your budget wisely, don’t you? Only spend money on delivering the ad to a place that you can deliver to… seems like an obvious idea, but something people overlook constantly in an effort to achieve growth.

Also keep in mind that Google might show your offers to users from a country even if you have excluded this country from your targeting options in Google Ads with the goal of providing a good user experience to this user interested in products sold outside their country. If you are not targeting a country in Google Ads, clicks from that country will be free! Celebrate it! There are few things that Google gives you for free! 

Hopefully, this cleared up some of your confusion as far as location based questions you might have about your Google Shopping campaign. Now it’s time to get back on your excitement train and finish what you started and launch your soon to be successful Google Shopping campaign!