Google Ads in Girona: for people who are here, in their language

Monday, a quarter to eight in the morning. The kitchen drain in a flat in Santa Eugènia is blocked, and the owner, who has to leave for work, types «desembussos Girona» on her phone, the Catalan for drain unblocking. Three ads come up. The first is from a Barcelona company that can't come until Wednesday. The second is in Spanish and says «Servicio profesional de calidad», and nothing else. The third is in Catalan, reads «Desembussos a Girona, avui mateix» (same day) and has a call button. She calls the third one. All three were paying to appear for the same search. What was different was how each campaign had been set up, and that is what this article on Google Ads in Girona is about.

Google Ads in Girona: first, decide who sees the ad

Before a single word of the ad is written, the campaign needs to know who it is shown to. The location settings have two options that hardly anyone looks at, and the one ticked by default is not always the right one for a local business.

Google explains it in its help page on advanced location options. The default, and the one it recommends, is called “Presence or interest”: it shows the ad to people who are likely to be in the area or regularly there, and also to people who have shown interest in it, for example because they mention it in their searches or were there recently. The other one, “Presence”, keeps only the people who are likely to be in the area or who regularly go there.

“Presence” or “Presence or interest”: which one suits your business

Two businesses make the difference clear. A hotel or a restaurant in the Barri Vell wants to be seen by someone in Barcelona planning a weekend in Girona: there, interest helps. A plumber, a physio or a driving school can do nothing with a click from someone who lives in Seville and searched “Girona” out of curiosity. For cases like these, Google itself suggests considering Presence when you only want to reach people in specific locations, and not people elsewhere who happen to be interested.

The area: Girona, the Gironès or a radius

The second thing is the area. You can choose the municipality, the comarca or a radius around a point. Girona has 108,352 residents according to Idescat, the Catalan statistics institute, but the Gironès comarca adds up to 208,967, and Salt and Sarrià de Ter sit right next to the city. If you work in those towns, include them. If you don't, don't pay for their clicks. And bear in mind that Google always talks about where people “are likely” to be: location is not 100% accurate, so the odd click from outside will get through.

In Catalan and in Spanish: the ad has to speak the way people search

In the Girona area, 45.0% of people aged 15 and over use Catalan as their only habitual language. That figure comes from the 2023 survey on language use of the population, whose results by territory Idescat published in November 2025. Many of those people search in Catalan. Another large group searches in Spanish.

Since September 2026 this matters more in Google Ads. In its help page on language targeting, Google explains that Search campaigns lose the campaign-level language setting: ads are matched on the language they are written in and, when a search has a clear language, ads that match it are given priority. In practice, if you only have ads in Spanish, you fall behind for a Catalan search against anyone who has Catalan ads.

Keywords and ads for Google Ads in Girona, in both languages

What to do with ads in Catalan and Spanish:

• Keywords in both languages, worked out separately. Translating the list is not enough: in Catalan people search for «desembussos» or «lampista», in Spanish for «desatascos» or «fontanero», and each language has its own way of putting things. Look at how people actually write it in each one.
• Ads in both languages, each with its own copy, not one translated word for word.
• A landing page in the same language as the ad. If the ad is in Catalan and the website is only in Spanish, the switch is obvious in the first second. How to build the site in both languages is covered in a website in Catalan and Spanish.

Searches that include “Girona” and searches that don't

Some people type the city, “dentista Girona” or “gestoria a Girona”, and some don't, because they assume Google knows where they are. With the location set properly, the campaign covers both: the keyword “dentista” reaches people in the area whether they type the city or not. It is still worth having the versions with “Girona”, “a Girona” or “Salt” as keywords of their own, because they tend to be the clearest searches.

What you do need to watch is what slips in next to the city's name. “Girona” appears in plenty of searches that have nothing to do with hiring anyone: the football club, job offers, public exams, the weather. That is why every campaign needs its list of negative keywords and someone who checks it every week, as we explain in Google Ads spends and doesn't sell.

Let the ad say where you are

An ad for a Girona business can show the address, a map and how far away the person seeing it is. Google calls this a location asset: on mobile it shows the distance, on a computer the address. It can also carry a call button. That information comes from Google Maps and the Business Profile, so if your listing has old opening hours or a phone number you no longer use, the ad will repeat it. Before spending a euro, check your Google Business Profile.

What time to show the ads

A campaign runs all day unless you change it. With ad scheduling you choose the days and the hours. It makes most sense when the ad asks people to call: a tap on “Call” at eleven at night, if nobody picks up, is money down the drain and a customer who goes elsewhere. If you want to keep showing outside opening hours, use ads that lead to a WhatsApp message and say when you will reply.

Where the click lands

The most wasted click is the one that goes to the home page. Someone who searched «fisioteràpia esportiva a Girona» should land on the page for that service, in Catalan, with the price or at least an idea of it, the neighbourhood you are in and the WhatsApp button in sight. If they have to search again inside your website, some of them go back to Google and tap the next ad.

That page is also the one that keeps working when you stop paying. What works in ads usually works for SEO in Girona, and the other way round: the searches that bring enquiries in Google Ads tell you which pages are worth writing.

Measure what brings you customers: calls, WhatsApp and forms

Clicks are not customers. What a campaign should count is enquiries: calls from the ad, taps on the WhatsApp button and forms sent. Google Ads lets you mark each of those actions as a conversion, and from then on the account stops showing just clicks and starts telling you what each enquiry costs.

Two details make the difference:

• Count one per click. If someone arrives from an ad and taps WhatsApp three times, that is one enquiry, not three. For a service business, the conversion is set to count one per ad click.
• The cookie notice. In Europe, for Google to link the ad click to the WhatsApp message that follows, the visitor has to accept advertising cookies. If they don't, Google does not see it directly and at most estimates it with models. So the notice should be clear, easy to understand and not off-putting.

Once that is in place, the account starts saying useful things: which keywords bring enquiries, at what times and in which language. That is what lets you decide where the money goes.

How much to spend on Google Ads in Girona

There is no figure that works for everyone. It depends on what a click costs in your sector, how many people search for what you do in the area and how much each customer is worth to you. What does work is a rule: start with an amount you can keep up for at least a full month without getting nervous, with conversions set up from day one.

At the end of that month you will have the number that matters. With round figures: if each enquiry costs you 15 euros and you close one in four, each customer has cost you 60 euros of advertising. If that is little compared with what a customer brings in, you can spend more. If it is a lot, you fix the campaign before putting more money in.

You pay that money directly to Google, with your card and in your name. What the person running the campaign charges is something else, and it is worth keeping the two apart so you always know which part is advertising and which part is work.

Five things we see in Girona businesses' campaigns

1. The default location left as it is. With “Presence or interest”, a business that only serves the city ends up paying for clicks from people who will never come.
2. Everything in Spanish. Keywords, ads and website in one language, in an area where 45% of people use Catalan as their only habitual language.
3. Clicks that land on the home page. The ad talks about one service and the landing page about everything else.
4. Call ads at the wrong hours. The ad keeps showing at eleven at night and the phone rings in an empty shop.
5. No conversions set up. The account counts clicks, nobody knows how many turned into customers and the budget is set by guesswork.

What it costs to have us run Google Ads in Girona

In our pricing, Google Ads in Girona is managed together with Meta Ads inside the presence plans, because a campaign without a decent website and listing behind it brings clicks, not customers. They are published on our pricing page:

• Mid Presence, €750 a month: Google Ads and Meta Ads campaign management, high-performance hosting, site and email migration, fifteen mailboxes, five articles a month on your website and five on your Google listing, replies to every review and GEO positioning.
• Advanced Presence, €1,500 a month: the same with seven articles a month on the website and seven on the listing, twenty-five mailboxes and two posts a month on your social media.

All plus VAT, with no setup fee and no lock-in: billed month by month, and you can stop with thirty days' notice. Ad spend is separate, paid straight to Google on your card, and we add no margin to it. What we do on each channel is on our digital marketing page.

Google Ads in Girona, from the Palau Firal

We are three partners working at the same table, in the Palau Firal in Sant Antoni de Calonge, next to Palamós and half an hour from Girona. We run campaigns for businesses across the province, and we measure our own the same way as our clients': by the enquiries that come in, not by clicks.

Send us a WhatsApp telling us what you advertise and where, and we'll tell you what we would check first in the location, language and conversions. If you don't have a campaign yet, we'll tell you how we would approach one for your business. No commitment. You can also write to us through the contact form.