Hi - I will try to answer as many of these points as I can succinctly!

Google will not allow the same keywords to trigger ads in multiple campaigns run by the same account and targetting the same territory. Are your ads all run under the same account? I would expect an experienced ad manager to be aware of this, and even if they were not, the system will flag when keywords have been disabled and why. My expectation is that if you have the same account running different campaigns with the same keywords then only one of the campaigns will be allowed to run by Google unless the campaigns have no geographical overlap in which case there's no problem.

Google is able to target users based on IP address, their own Google preferences set-up (for this purpose language preference i.e. when a Google user sets a language preference, Google will only display ads that are targeted to the chosen language), and the Google domain which they use.

It seems that Google can show ads to anyone whom they can identify as meeting some of these targetting parameters but with the Google search property being very much the primary driver for which ads to show where. For example if you select to target the UK then Google will show ads to any users of google.co.uk, but also any users of google.com whose IP address is in the UK.

If you want to target users of say, google.fr, while in the UK however you will need to target France as a country because the google.fr property is not targetted at the UK. So even though the IP address could be identified as in the UK Google will give precedence to the fact the google.fr is for French and not UK users.

So in answer to your questions;

1. Could your campaigns be fighting against each other - not exactly, but if they overlap geographically with the same keywords only one will be running.

2. Is country related to the Google portal the ad shows in - yes, that seems to be the primary driver although there are some wrinkles that mean ads will be shown on other properties within a target country (e.g. google.com) if the IP address is within the targetted country.

3. Are all campaigns dispalyed on google.com regardless - I don't think so. You'd need to select North America if you want ads to appear there.

Hope this helps,

Iain

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Hi Sean - if I am asked to do this kind of campaign (global coverage for an international business) I have never had any problems in setting things up pretty much as it sounds you are doing now i.e. same keywords and ads but each ad group targetted geographically to avoid overlap. As an aside I have sometimes found, usually in US v. UK, that the effective keywords will vary for the same product/service between locations and therefore although things are initially set up the same in-depth research often reveals some differences.

It sounds as if the main ongoing issue is a measurement one. Do you use different landing pages for each geographical campaign? If so it should be fairly easy to track regional campaign effectiveness along with Googles own tracking and analytics services. You seem to be on the right lines for your German campaign.

Finally, my own experience of having key phrases made inactive for reason of duplication has been when the key phrase in question has appeared in multiple ad groups within the same campaign each of which trigger different ads. I suppose that if the key phrase appears in various ad groups but only ever triggers the same ad that's not much of a problem for Google.

Iain