Google Ads Country Exclusion List

Last updated: December 2024

Google Ads Country Exclusion List:

There are many ways to indicate location within Google Ads, and other digital and social media advertising platforms. The default on Google Ads for instance is "People in or interested in" as a location. You may even want to go as far as excluding states in your Google Ads campaign. If that geography just happened to be Seattle Washington, then people within Seattle would see the ads, but so would someone from Pittsburgh researching Seattle, as would someone in Russia or India researching about that area. If your business is unable to generate revenue from these far-off areas, you'll need to do better with targeting. There is the ability to target based on "People who are in or regularly in" the targeted geography which would help cut down on a lot of that. The only problem becomes, what if that person from Pittsburgh researching Seattle was a legitimate prospective buyer but those international visitors were not - using the second location targeting won't work. Rather, you'll have to go with the default location targeting and then exclude other countries around the world. Please see the Google Ads Country Exclusion list below that makes it easy to copy/paste these countries and exclude them from targeting. Nearly all international locations are included except Syria, Iran, Sudan, and North Korea. Additionally, Hong Kong and Taiwan must be entered independently of China for those to show up as exclusions.

Why is Important to Exclude Certain Countries:

One of the biggest reasons to exclude certain countries, besides serving ads to people who aren't in your target audience, is it's more cost-effective. By using exclusions you are less likely to waste budget if your ad is shown in areas where people are not going to convert to customers. For example, someone in Russia is not going to be a customer for someone selling services in Pittsburgh, so we would exclude Russia so that Google doesn't waste ad spend showing an ad to someone there.  Someone from Russia might happen to search for a keyword that would naturally trigger our ad showing, but using exclusion prevents Google from wasting resources on someone who will never convert. Note: As of March 2024, Google limits 120 locations to the exclusion list.

Here is a list of all countries outside of the US for a quick Google Ads country exclusion list:

You can copy the list below, or download the Location Exclusion Doc file (just simply select all, copy and paste then) 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   Bu