Google Adwords Postcode Areas Don’t Work Properly

London

Greater London, England, United Kingdom. This is the dark blue highlighted area in Fig 1. The Reach is 34,800,000

Split into individual Postcode Areas. This is the light blue highlighted area in Fig 1 and actually covers a larger area than the pre-selected Greater London area. The Reach is 28,000,000, lower than Greater London but we’d expect that. Some postcodes are not included and we’ve used Radius to cover these gaps, which do not include a Reach. For example, SW1 to SW4 are listed as postcodes, SW5 is missing and listed as “Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, England, United Kingdom (municipality)”.  SW6 to SW11 are then back to being listed as postcodes.

Fig 1. Areas

Fig 1. Areas

Reach seems to be reporting incorrectly. London – city is a smaller area than Greater London but has 5 million more Reach (see London Reach below), but that is not the problem and wouldn’t have an effect on the results.

London Reach

Where this is affecting us is the impressions, which filters down to the conversions. With Greater London we receive between 1300 and 2500 impressions per day (see Fig 2), with 75% to 85% impression share. However with a larger area covered with the combination of Postcodes and Radius the daily impression share drops to under 500 and that’s with an increased impression share, over 90%.

Fig 2. Impressions

Fig 2. Impressions

3 Comments

  1. Bryan Casson on 14th July 2017 at 8:31 am

    Hi Ryan,

    Postal code “N1, England, United Kingdom” gets a massive amount of impressions with usually no clicks. I always add this postal code to the excludes

  2. Ryan on 8th August 2017 at 2:21 pm

    This is an old post and Google’s postcodes are better than they were. Good tip regarding the N1, thanks Bryan

  3. Chris Agostini on 1st May 2018 at 1:53 pm

    I can’t find EC1 postcode in the map. It doesn’t select it. Do you know by chance if it is listed? Areas Barbican old Street clerkenwell farringdon.
    Please I need some help

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