Last week I showed how you can use the Wayback Machine to explore how websites looked in the past. Today, following in the same vein (must be to do with Lent!), I want to share how you can explore what ads from other countries look like in Google AdWords.
Yesterday, I was doing some AdWords consultancy with a client and we were looking for some inspiration for ad copy. If you wanted to find out what the results looked like in the USA, you may be tempted to go to http://www.google.com and think that that would give you the results for the USA. However, because it detects that you are in the UK (or other country) you will more than likely be served up with search results based on your geolocation, which can be guessed from your IP address. You will probably end up with Google ads which are very similar or local (as below).
So, how do we get around this? Well, one answer is to play around with the variables in the search query below:
google.com/search?q=garden+furniture&gl=us
Change “q” for the search query you wish and “gl” is the country.
You can also checkout Google’s very useful Ad Preview Tool, which allows you to specify regions/states and even co-ordinates.
**UPDATE**
This is what the Ad Preview Tool from AdWords looks like now (September 2016). Here are the search options:
and the results:
Related Links
How To See Google Results of Another Country or City from Your Location (Digital Inspiration)
Announcing an improved ad preview tool (Inside AdWords)
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