Starting this month, Google removed the campaign level language setting from Search campaigns and from the Search Network part of Performance Max. Ads will now match based on the language they are written in, not on a setting you toggle in the campaign.
If you only run ads in English, nothing changes. But if you run more than one language, or if you deliberately excluded a language to avoid wasting budget, the work that setting used to do now needs to happen somewhere else. Google says you need do nothing. I’d check anyway.
What actually changed
Before September, you could tell Google which languages a campaign should show for. You’d set it once, at campaign level, and your ads would only show to people Google thought spoke that language.
Now that control is gone. The language your ad shows for is the language your ad is written in. If you kept languages apart with the campaign setting, you now keep them apart with ad copy, landing pages and ad group structure.
If you kept languages apart with the campaign setting, you now keep them apart with ad copy, landing pages and ad group structure.
Why it matters for local businesses
Most Brisbane trades and hospitality businesses run one language. English. For them, this is invisible. Your ads are in English, they show to English speakers, done.
But if you deliberately set your campaigns to English only because you were worried about budget leaking to other languages, that safety rail is gone. And if you run a multilingual business, or you serve a community where people search in more than one language, the thing keeping your Mandarin ads separate from your English landing pages was that campaign setting. It’s not there anymore.
What to check right now
The change Google didn’t make
This change applies to Search campaigns and the Search Network portion of Performance Max. It does not apply to Display, YouTube, or Demand Gen. Those campaign types still have the language targeting setting.
If you run ads on multiple networks, check which campaigns are affected. Don’t change something that didn’t break.
Prompted by Digital Applied.