I live in New Zealand. I am running a campaing targetted for the US only. I am using the "Google search" and the "Search network". I was going through logs and saw I got a hit from websearch.cs.com/cs I went and checked it out, and to my surprise could see my ad. I emailed Google support asking wtf (nicely of course). Here are the 2 main responses: After this first reply I thought to myself, hmmm, maybe I'm not getting charged for the clicks, because when I specifically ask for US impressions only, I dont expect a publisher to be able to over-ride them! So I asked if I was being charged for any non-US clicks: WTF!? So even though I had my campaign setup for US only, and thought this is what was happening, Compuserve are able to over-ride my settings, and so I end up paying for example $1 for what I think is a quality United States click, when in fact it could be someone from TimBuckToo? Yes, I realise I could opt out of the Search network, but where in Adwords does it say that if you do run ads on the Search network, they will show your ads to everyone, even though you dont want them to be shown, and you will still be charged for them? Also, the Search Network is enabled by default. Does anyone else know this sort of thing happens?
I agree, that's wrong that websites can overide your settings. It's a shame there's not an option to add negative sites to the search network.
Thank you very much for pointing that out, I will take care of that as well, altough usually I just keep my ads running in Google Search but I guess I will take care never to put them on other sites. IT
Though, the answer I got from e-mail support was a little different from yours. The issue was blamed solely on the origin of the USER'S IP ADDRESS. The issue of the web site's preferences was not pointed out to me, as in your response from Google. Following, is an excerpt from the e-mail I received: "Thank you for your email. I understand you are concerned about your campaigns accruing clicks outside your targeted region. Also, you want to know if you are charged for clicks on content websites. I reviewed your account and found that all your campaigns are targeted to the United States. Please note that we show your ads based on the IP address of the user. Therefore, only users with an IP address of the United States will see your ads. Also, you set the cost of your ads on our content network with the daily budget and the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) of your campaigns. You may have received clicks from users outside the United States because some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) assign their users an IP address outside of their physical location. For example, a user is assigned an IP address of the United States but is physically located in Buenos Aires. In this case, your ad will be shown to the user because the IP address is read as located in the United States."
That makes sense though, they block the users IP of other countries from seeing your ad, but if a US user goes to a foreign site they are still able to see your ads. Technically though they are correct in that US visitors see your ads.