Google AdWords Learning Center - Language and Country/Territory Targeting

Objective: Learn how to reach a broad audience by targeting one or more languages and countries. Find out how to tailor your campaigns to reach an international audience.

Language targeting lets you reach an audience that speaks one or multiple languages. Because people speak many different languages in many different locations, language targeting gives you a good way to reach your users even if they're physically located in non-native areas.

For example, if you sell Spanish books, you can choose to target your ads to the Spanish language. When we detect that a user speaks Spanish by one of the methods listed in the topic above (How AdWords Targets Users), we'll display your ad.

We recommend that you target the language in which your ad is written. For example, if your ad is written in English, target English-speaking users. Remember that Google won't translate your ad for you.

You should choose this location targeting option if you have a large audience and offer services or products to users in one or more countries or territories. If you have a global business, it would make sense to target all countries and territories, ensuring that your campaigns get exposure across the world.

It's common for new advertisers to target all countries and territories in the hope of widening their reach. However, by doing this, you may target people who can't read the language of your ad or website, which creates low-quality clicks.

To help assess where and who you should target, answer these questions:

Where does your business sell or provide?
Who is your intended audience?

For example, if you sell maps of the United States and only ship within the United States, you should target your campaign to the United States. However, if you sell DVDs worldwide, you should target your campaign to all countries and territories.

International targeting means that you target more than one language or location. If you decide to target an international audience, organize your campaigns and ad groups logically.

A good strategy is to organize and name your campaigns by country (such as Germany) and your ad groups by product lines (such as coffee products and tea products). Then, tailor your keywords and ad text to the intended audience.

Make sure that your keyword list and ad text for each ad group is in one language. This ensures that the ad appears in the same language in which the keyword was entered. For example, if a user enters a keyword in Japanese, the ad will appear in Japanese.

With AdWords you can create ad text using double-byte characters, such as those used in many East Asian languages. However, be aware that double-byte characters have special requirements.

Double-byte characters need nearly twice the display space as single-byte characters. For example, the title line of an English ad has a 25 character limit. However, the limit for that same title line is 12 characters for a double-byte language. The second and third lines of English ad text are limited to 35 characters, while the limit for double-byte characters is 17.

Two other rules to follow when creating ads with double-byte characters:

- Use single-byte characters for symbols, such as punctuation marks and currency symbols.

- Use single-byte characters for alphanumeric characters.

When creating a double-byte character ad in the English interface, the character limit on the screen is wrong. To avoid receiving an error message, enter only the correct character length.

Figure: Japanese ad in U.S. AdWords interface

Figure: Single-byte characters and numbers inside of a double-byte ad