⏱ 12 min read
Updated June 2026
If you’re running US-only Google Ads campaigns and still seeing clicks from Vietnam, India, or Brazil eating your budget, the fix takes about ten minutes. This guide gives you the complete list of countries to exclude from Google Ads — plus all 50 US states and state abbreviations — formatted so you can copy, paste, and bulk-upload the whole thing in one shot.
Here’s the part most advertisers miss: pasting in a list of countries to exclude from Google Ads only treats the symptom. The actual disease is a default targeting setting Google quietly applies to every new campaign — one that lets people outside your targeted locations see and click your ads as long as Google thinks they’ve “shown interest” in your area. We’ll fix that setting first, then lock everything down with exclusion lists.
Everything below works for Search, Display, and Shopping campaigns. We’ll also cover the one campaign type where location exclusions get slippery — Performance Max — and how to audit exactly where your wasted clicks are coming from.
Why Your US-Only Campaign Gets Clicks from Overseas
Google Ads shows your ads to people outside your targeted locations by default, because the standard location setting includes anyone who has “shown interest” in your targeted area — not just people physically located there. That means someone in Manila researching “plumber in Phoenix” can see and click your Phoenix plumbing ad, and you pay full price for it.
Three things happen when out-of-area traffic hits your campaigns:
- Wasted spend. Every irrelevant click is budget that should have gone to a real prospect in your service area.
- Polluted data. Out-of-market clicks tank your conversion rate, which feeds Smart Bidding bad signals and degrades the whole account over time.
- Click fraud exposure. A disproportionate share of invalid and bot traffic originates from regions you were never targeting in the first place. Exclusions shrink the attack surface.
Open your Locations report (Campaigns → Audiences, keywords, and content → Locations → “Where your users were”). This shows the actual geographic origin of your clicks. If you see countries you never targeted, the setting in the next section is the reason — and the lists further down are your cleanup crew.
Step 1: Fix Your Google Ads Location Targeting Setting First
Google Ads location targeting has two presence options, and the default option is the one that leaks. You’ll find them under your campaign’s Settings → Locations → Location options:
For exclusions, the matching setting works the opposite way: excluding by “Presence” (people in your excluded locations) is the stricter, safer choice. Set targeting to Presence, exclusions to Presence, and your geographic perimeter is as tight as Google allows.
“Presence” targeting relies on Google’s location detection — IP addresses, device signals, VPN-obscured traffic. It’s good, not perfect. Explicit exclusions act as a second wall: even if Google misreads a visitor’s location signals, an excluded country is an excluded country. Belt, then suspenders.
How to Add Your List of Countries to Exclude from Google Ads in Bulk
Google Ads lets you add up to 1,000 locations at once using the bulk location tool, so you never have to exclude countries one at a time. Here’s the exact workflow:
Exclusions are set per campaign, not per account. If you run several campaigns, build the exclusion once in Google Ads Editor, then copy the location set across campaigns in a couple of clicks instead of re-pasting the list each time.
The Complete List of Countries to Exclude from Google Ads (Copy & Paste)
This list covers every country and major territory a US-focused advertiser would exclude. Select the entire block, copy it, and paste it into the bulk location tool from the previous section.
Two formatting notes before you paste: enter Hong Kong and Taiwan as separate lines (excluding “China” alone won’t catch them), and note that a handful of countries don’t need excluding at all — Google automatically blocks ad serving in territories sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC):
Iran
North Korea
Syria
Crimea
Sevastopol
Taiwan
(Not covered by excluding China)
Puerto Rico & US territories
(if you serve them)
“Georgia” in this list will match the country in the Caucasus. When you exclude the US state later, you must enter it as “Georgia, United States” or you’ll accidentally block the country (or worse, an Atlanta service business will block its own state). Google’s bulk tool will show you exactly which Georgia it matched — read before you click Exclude.
List of US States to Exclude (Bulk Location Exclusion)
State-level exclusions follow the same bulk-upload process as countries. They matter most for local campaigns — an HVAC company in Phoenix has zero use for a click from Tampa. If you run geo-targeted campaigns alongside local SEO packages, tight state exclusions keep your paid data as clean as your organic targeting.
Paste this list into the bulk tool and remove your own state before excluding:
Backup Layer: State Names as Negative Keywords
Negative keywords block your ads from showing on searches that contain specific words, regardless of where the searcher is located. This catches a leak that location exclusions can’t: someone physically in your city searching for a service somewhere else — “roof repair Dallas” typed from a Scottsdale coffee shop. Location targeting says yes; the negative keyword “Dallas” says no.
Add the states you don’t serve as negative keywords at the campaign level. Two rules keep this from backfiring:
| Rule | Why | Priority |
| Use phrase match (quotes) for two-word states: “New York”, “North Carolina”, “West Virginia” | Broad-adding “new” or “north” as standalone negatives would block searches like “new water heater” | High |
| Never add “IN” or “OR” from the abbreviations list | They’re common English words — “plumber IN Phoenix” and “repair OR replace” would both get blocked | High |
| Skip “Washington” as a negative if you’re anywhere near DC, and “Georgia” if you serve the state | Ambiguous geo terms block more than you intend | Medium |
State Names — Negative Keyword Format
State Abbreviations — Negative Keyword Format
Searchers often use abbreviations (“roofing co TX”). This list already has IN (Indiana) and OR (Oregon) removed for the reason in the table above — if you don’t serve those two states, rely on the full state names and location exclusions to cover them instead:
The Performance Max Problem (And What Still Works)
Performance Max campaigns honor location targeting and exclusions, but they give you far less visibility into where impressions actually serve across Google’s networks. PMax spans Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Maps — and its reporting won’t show you a clean placement-by-geography breakdown the way a Search campaign’s Locations report does.
Three things keep PMax geographically honest:
- Set location options to “Presence” at the campaign level — PMax respects it, and it’s even more important here because you can’t add negative keywords as freely as in Search.
- Apply the same country and state exclusion lists from this guide — exclusions carry over to all PMax surfaces.
- Check the user location report monthly. If conversions are coming from places you don’t serve, your feed, assets, or audience signals are pulling the algorithm off-geo.
One more honest note: exclusion lists reduce fraud exposure, but they don’t eliminate it. Sophisticated bot traffic routes through US residential proxies that look exactly like your target market. If invalid clicks persist after geographic lockdown, dedicated click-fraud protection software is the next layer — and at that point it’s also worth asking whether some of that budget belongs in channels that don’t bill per click. We’ve broken down the math in our guide to how much SEO costs compared to perpetual ad spend.
How to Verify Your Exclusions Are Actually Working
The user location report in Google Ads shows where people were physically located when they clicked your ads, which makes it the definitive audit tool for location exclusions. Run this check two weeks after applying your lists:
While you’re auditing, look at what those wasted clicks were landing on. A fast, conversion-focused landing page is the other half of paid traffic ROI — if your site loads slowly or buries the call-to-action, even perfectly-targeted clicks leak money. That’s a web design problem wearing a PPC costume.
