Istanbul · Local service

Google Ads in Istanbul

In Istanbul, a Google Ads budget easily drifts to the wrong side of the city, the wrong hour and the wrong language. We build your campaigns around districts, traffic and multilingual searches.

What does it mean?

We make sure you appear in front of people searching on Google; we control which searches you show up in and how much you pay.

A Google Ads account opened in Istanbul behaves differently from one set up with the same settings in a smaller city. There are more advertisers in the auction, the person searching may be on the other side of the city, and the same need is searched in English or Arabic as well as Turkish. This page does not explain what the service is; it explains what we set up differently for Istanbul accounts. For the full scope, see our Google Ads management page.

Where does the budget leak in Istanbul accounts?

Location option. By default, Google Ads can show your ad not only to people in Istanbul but also to people interested in Istanbul. The city's name is searched from other provinces and from abroad too. If you serve customers on site, this option should be limited to people in the target location; if you expect patients or buyers from abroad, it should be left open on purpose.

Balancing the two sides. When one campaign targets the whole city, the budget flows to the areas with the most searches, and your ads may stop by midday on the side where you actually work. To prevent this, we run the European and Asian sides as separate campaigns or separate budgets when needed, and we correct districts that bring no conversions in the location report with bid adjustments or exclusions.

Competitors in the same neighbourhood. Businesses offering the same service nearby often bid on the same keywords, and sometimes on your brand name. We watch the auction insights report to see who you meet, and we set up a separate campaign for searches of your brand name so those searches are not left to others.

How do we build the campaign for Istanbul?

District keywords: We group searches that include a district name such as Kadıköy or Şişli into separate ad groups and use the same district in the ad text and on the landing page. Districts you do not serve go on the negative keyword list.
Hours and days: We show the call asset only while your phone is answered, and adjust bids to the city's working rhythm based on conversions by hour and day.
Separate campaigns by language: Google Ads language targeting relies on users' language settings and signals. For tourists and foreigners in the city, we separate English, Arabic or Russian campaigns from the Turkish one and read the search terms report for each language on its own.
Location details on the landing page: Someone arriving from an ad first checks how far away you are. Stating clearly which districts you serve and, if relevant, the nearest metro station or ferry pier also stops people from the other side of the city from filling in a form they will abandon once they see the journey.
Performance Max checks: This campaign type tends to widen its reach. If your service area is limited to certain districts, we regularly check the location settings and the regional breakdown in reports.
Link with Maps: We link your Google Business Profile to the ad account and turn on the location asset. The profile itself is handled separately through Google Maps and local SEO in Istanbul.

Let's set up the account together at our Ataköy office

If you are in Istanbul, we can hold the first meeting at our office in Ataköy Nef22, sitting in front of the ad account. Opening the account in your name, granting us access and entering the payment details yourself are all done at the same table. If you already have a live account, we open the search terms report on screen and see together which searches your budget goes to.

Later reporting meetings can be in person or online. In reports, we show the district and side breakdown separately; seeing which area's clicks turn into calls or forms makes budget decisions concrete. You can find our other services in the city on our Istanbul page, or request a quote to get started.

Location targeting in Istanbul: the whole city, districts or a radius?

If you go to customers, targeting the districts your team can reach on the same day is more efficient in most Istanbul accounts; if customers come to you, a radius around your business works better. Selecting the whole city as a single location only makes sense if you can serve every part of Istanbul on the same terms.

When choosing target locations in Google Ads, you can add districts one by one or draw a radius around a point on the map. In Istanbul, radius targeting has an easily overlooked trap: the Bosphorus. A circle of a few kilometres drawn around a business on the Beşiktaş or Üsküdar shoreline also takes in the opposite side; for a customer coming from a neighbourhood that looks close on the map, the journey means a bridge or a ferry. In that case, we add the districts on the opposite side to excluded locations.

Targeting method	Suitable for	What we watch for
All of Istanbul	E-commerce shipping by courier, services that can go anywhere in the city	Budget flows to areas with heavy search volume
District list by side of the Bosphorus	Services that go to the customer, such as plumbing, removals or home cleaning	Districts that require a bridge crossing are kept in a separate campaign
One or a few districts	Businesses customers come to, such as hairdressers, dental clinics or vets	Neighbouring areas close to the district boundary may be left out
Radius	A shop in a shopping centre, a business at a metro exit	If the circle crosses the Bosphorus, the opposite side is excluded

How does traffic affect your ad schedule?

In Istanbul, the hours when searches peak are not always the hours when you can do the work; your ad schedule should take both into account. Searches from phones may increase during evening rush hour, but if you cannot send a team to the other side of the city at that time, the click will not turn into a job.

Say you run a boiler repair service in Bahçelievler. In the morning you can reach both sides of the city, but once evening bridge traffic starts you can only take jobs on the European side. In that case, we set up an ad schedule that pauses the Asian side campaign in the afternoon and keeps the European side campaign running until the evening. If you book appointments for the next day, a separate evening campaign highlighting “appointment tomorrow morning” can also be tested.

Bidding strategy is decisive here too. With manual bidding, we can raise or lower bids by time of day. With Smart Bidding strategies such as Target CPA or Maximise conversions, however, Google ignores time-based bid adjustments; only the hours when ads are switched off entirely apply. That is why, in accounts using Smart Bidding, we control timing through campaign separation and the ad schedule.

Campaign structure for expensive Istanbul searches

For searches combining the city name with a service name, cost per click is often high, because many businesses in the city bid on the same keyword. The way to protect the budget is not to put everything into one campaign but to use a layered structure that separates searches by intent.

High-intent searches first: we group searches with clear intent such as “emergency”, “appointment” or “price” into a separate campaign using exact and phrase match, and make sure the daily budget covers this campaign first.
Generic city searches with a limited budget: we open broad searches following the “Istanbul + service” pattern in a separate campaign in a controlled way. We add job listing, internship or training searches that appear in the search terms report to the negative keyword list.
Brand exclusions in Performance Max: with brand exclusions, we stop Performance Max from claiming brand searches as its own and see clearly which campaign new customers come from.
Counting conversions correctly: when clicks are expensive, miscounted conversions cost even more. Phone calls, WhatsApp clicks and forms are defined as separate conversions; only those that reflect genuine enquiries are made primary conversions, and the bidding strategy works towards them.

what do we do in Istanbul’da?

Arama, Görüntülü, YouTube ve Alışveriş kampanyaları
Anahtar kelime ve negatif kelime yönetimi
Performance Max ve akıllı teklif stratejileri
Dönüşüm izleme ve Google Analytics 4 kurulumu
Haftalık optimizasyon, aylık rapor

Frequently asked questions

Why is my ad shown to people outside Istanbul?

By default, the Google Ads location setting also includes people interested in the target area. If you only serve customers in the city, we limit this option to people in Istanbul and then check the result in the location report.

Do we need separate campaigns for the European and Asian sides?

Not in every account. If your service depends on one side, or one side uses up the budget early in the day, separating the sides gives clearer control over spending.

A competitor in our neighbourhood is bidding on our brand name. What can we do?

A separate campaign for searches of your brand name keeps you visible in those searches. We also use the auction insights report to track how often that competitor appears against you.

Can we show ads to tourists and foreigners in Istanbul in their own language?

Yes. We build separate campaigns that combine Istanbul location targeting with language targeting such as English, Arabic or Russian. Separate ad text and a landing page in that language are recommended for each.

Why can Google Ads be more expensive in Istanbul than in other cities?

In Google Ads, cost per click is set in an auction; the more businesses bid on the same keyword, the more the cost tends to rise. Because almost every industry in Istanbul has many advertisers, searches containing the city name can become expensive. That is why we allocate budget first to high-intent searches focused on neighbourhoods and services, and test generic searches with a limited budget.

Can we show our ads only within a few kilometres of our business?

Yes. In Google Ads, you can target by selecting a point on the map and drawing a radius around it. In Istanbul, the thing to watch is the Bosphorus: a circle drawn around a business near the shore can also cover the opposite side. In that case, we exclude the districts on the opposite side and then check the location report to see where clicks are coming from.

Should we pause our ads during evening rush hour?

It depends on your business. If customers come to you, or you book appointments for the next day, evening searches can be valuable. For a service where you send a team, if you cannot reach the other side of the city at that time, pausing that side’s campaign with the ad schedule reduces wasted clicks. We make the decision by looking at conversions in the time-of-day and day-of-week report, not by guesswork.

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