Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords) provides marketers with an easy and affordable way to reach potential customers in the United States, but that’s not all it does. You can extend your reach to other countries worldwide with just a few simple steps.
Can You Exclude Countries in Google Ads?
Yes, to start, you need to figure out which countries you don’t want to target.
Use Location Targeting Settings in Google Ads
One of the easiest ways to control which countries see your ads is by using location targeting settings. You can use these settings to ensure that ads are only shown in specific countries or regions. Use these settings if you want only people in certain geographic areas to be able to click on your ads.
By default, Google sets ads can show to people in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your targeted locations. But you need to exclude countries, not in your location target area.
It’s a good idea to exclude countries you don’t want to target so that you don’t pay for clicks that come from those locations—and that should help cut down your cost per click (CPC).
When people outside your target location area are using up your clicks and bouncing off your page, it can hurt your Quality Score.
Pro Tip: Google recommends using the default option, but I use “People in or regularly in your targeted locations” in my local campaign for more control over who sees my ads since I don’t want people outside my coverage areas clicking on my ads.
Exclude Countries From Google Ads
When you create your ads, you can choose which regions to target. Excluding certain regions is important if you don’t want to waste clicks.
Excluding is easy–select Exclude in Google Ads and choose all areas where you don’t want your ads shown. When excluding areas, remember that you can change your targeting later by adding them back into your campaign.
Use Location Exclusions to Prevent Clicks from Outside Your Geo-Targeting Area
Running Google Ads, you’ll eventually start seeing cases of click fraud, and you’ll likely see clicks from countries outside of the United States even though you’re running a national campaign. You can’t avoid all of it, but you can minimize it. I highly recommend using click fraud software such as Clixtell, ClickCease or ClickGuard to help you identify fraudulent clicks.
To do that, add location exclusions in Google Ads when setting up your campaign. It’s quick and easy, with no additional setup needed after that point. This will ensure that some traffic doesn’t come from an area where they aren’t intended to generate traffic.
Pro Tip: You can either exclude locations one by one for more control or exclude a list of locations all at once by targeting multiple locations in bulk. Google Ads allows you to add a bulk list of up to 1000 location targets using its tools for bulk editing.
Here’s a List Of All Countries For Use in the Exclusion List
Note: Google excludes sanctioned countries imposed by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Therefore, Google Ads doesn’t show ads in the following countries or territories:
- Crimea
- Cuba
- Iran
- North Korea
- Sevastopol city
- Syria
Pro Tip: Enter Hong Kong and Taiwan separately from China for those to show up as exclusions.
You can copy the updated list of countries below (select all, copy and paste it into your exclusion list)
- Afghanistan
- Albania
- Algeria
- American Samoa
- Andorra
- Angola
- Anguilla
- Antarctica
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Argentina
- Australia
- Austria
- Azerbaijan
- Bahamas
- Bahrain
- Bangladesh
- Barbados
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Belize
- Benin
- Bhutan
- Bolivia
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Botswana
- Brazil
- British Virgin Islands
- Brunei Darussalam
- Bulgaria
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cambodia
- Cameroon
- Canada
- Cape Verde
- Central African Republic
- Chad
- Chile
- China
- Hong Kong
- Taiwan
- Christmas Island
- Cocos Islands
- Colombia
- Comoros
- Congo-Brazzaville
- Congo-Kinshasa
- Cook Islands
- Costa Rica
- Cote d’Ivoire
- Croatia
- Cuba
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Djibouti
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- El Salvador
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Estonia
- Ethiopia
- Falkland Islands
- Federated States of Micronesia
- Fiji
- Finland
- France
- French Guiana
- French Polynesia
- Gabon
- Gambia
- Georgia
- Germany
- Ghana
- Greece
- Greenland
- Grenada
- Guadeloupe
- Guam
- Guatemala
- Guinea
- Guinea Bissau
- Guyana
- Haiti
- Honduras
- Hungary
- Iceland
- India
- Indonesia
- Iraq
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Jamaica
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kenya
- Kiribati
- Kosovo
- Kuwait
- Kyrgyzstan
- Laos
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Libya
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mali
- Malta
- Martinique
- Mauritania
- Mauritius
- Mexico
- Micronesia
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Mongolia
- Montenegro
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Myanmar
- Namibia
- Nauru
- Nepal
- Netherlands
- New Caledonia
- New Zealand
- Nicaragua
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Niue
- Norfolk Island
- Norway
- Oman
- Pakistan
- Palau
- Palestine
- Panama
- Papua New Guinea
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Philippines
- Poland
- Portugal
- Qatar
- Romania
- Russia
- Rwanda
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Samoa
- San Marino
- São Tomé and Príncipe
- Saudi Arabia
- Senegal
- Serbia
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Singapore
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Solomon Islands
- Somalia
- South Africa
- South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
- South Korea
- Sudan
- Spain
- Sri Lanka
- St. Vincent and the Grenadines
- Suriname
- Svalbard and Jan Mayen
- Swaziland
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Tajikistan
- Tanzania
- Thailand
- UAE
- Togo
- Tonga
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Turkmenistan
- Tuvalu
- Uganda
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- Uruguay
- Uzbekistan
- Vanuatu
- Vatican City
- Venezuela
- Vietnam
- Wallis and Futuna Islands
- Western Sahara
- Yemen
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Pro Tip: You can apply the same strategy for states if you’re running a local campaign and need to exclude your ads from showing to people outside your local targeting.
Here’s a List of All States For Use in the Exclusion List
Pro Tip: Don’t use the state name for Georgia as a single word because it will show up for the country. Thus, I have added Georgia, United States, to the list.
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia, United States
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Use Negative Keywords as Another Option
If you want to prevent specific states from showing your ads, add state names as negative keywords. By using negative keywords, you can control which states your ads appear in and boost performance by preventing irrelevant clicks.
List of All States for Use as Negative Keywords
You can also specify a list of states where you don’t want to show your ads. For example, if you don’t want to show your ads in New York, add them as negative keywords.
Pro Tip: Be careful; you only want to exclude searches that contain state’s names and if a state has two words in its name, then use double quotations as a “phrase match” negative.
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- “New Hampshire”
- “New Jersey”
- “New Mexico”
- “New York”
- “North Carolina”
- “North Dakota”
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- “Rhode Island”
- “South Carolina”
- “South Dakota”
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- “West Virginia”
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
List of State Abbreviations for Use in a Negative Keywords List
The United States includes 50 states, and each of them has abbreviations. But you don’t have to include them all in your Google Ads campaign if you aren’t targeting all 50 of them. You can set up an ad campaign to only serve ads in specific states. However, you may want to prevent out-of-state clicks if you have a local campaign. To do so, enter any of these two character combinations into your negative keywords list:
Pro Tip: You don’t want to use the state abbreviations “IN” and “OR” because they’re common words, so it is removed from the list. Having “IN” or “OR” will block your ads from showing up for phrases like SEO Services “IN” Jacksonville.
- AL
- AK
- AZ
- AR
- CA
- CO
- CT
- DE
- FL
- GA
- HI
- ID
- IL
- IA
- KS
- KY
- LA
- ME
- MD
- MA
- MI
- MN
- MS
- MO
- MT
- NE
- NV
- NH
- NJ
- NM
- NY
- NC
- ND
- OH
- PA
- RI
- SC
- SD
- TN
- TX
- UT
- VT
- VA
- WA
- WV
- WI
- WY
Conclusion
You can block clicks from specific countries or states if they are causing too much fraud using location exclusion and adding negative keywords. Please keep in mind that although setting up exclusion lists is an effective way to get rid of fraudulent traffic but it isn’t perfect—there are still many ways for hackers and spammers to get around these filters.
Thank you for these lists! Great information. Question, I saw a YouTube Tutorial where the guy targeted all of the 50 states individually, instead of just selecting “United States” as the target. Is this a necessary strategy among advanced users, and if so what is the benefit?
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post! I do have an advanced strategy to target all 50 states that involves adjusting the bidding increase or decrease for each state to improve performance based on the results. This allows for more control over the bidding process and can ultimately lead to better results.
Great list, and must on every Google ads campaign. Have this bookmarked. Thanks!