The short answer
In 30 seconds
Run one campaign per language, each with its own keywords, ads, budget and landing page. Combine language with location: people searching in English inside Portugal are usually tourists or residents; people searching in English from the UK are planning ahead. Write each language natively; translated ads miss the words people actually search with.
When it pays
A second language is worth it when a meaningful share of your customers do not search in Portuguese. In practice:
- Tourism and experiences: surf, tours, boat trips, restaurants in tourist areas.
- Real estate: foreign buyers, especially in the Algarve, Lisbon, Porto and Madeira.
- Health and wellbeing: clinics that serve the expat community.
- Services for residents: lawyers, accountants, relocation, schools, home services in areas with many foreign residents.
If your customers are almost all Portuguese, a second language just splits your budget. Check first: ask where your last fifty customers came from.
How Google decides who sees which ad
Two settings work together, and both are often misunderstood:
- Language targeting tells Google which language your customers understand. Google uses signals such as the language of the search and the user's settings. It does not translate your ads; an English campaign must have English ads.
- Location targeting tells Google where those customers are. Choose "presence: people in or regularly in your targeted locations" unless you specifically want people elsewhere who are interested in a place.
The power is in combining them: the same language in two different places is two different customers.
The structure we use
| Campaign | Language | Location | Who it reaches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local PT | Portuguese | Your area | Residents |
| Visitors | English (+ others) | Your area | Tourists and expats already here |
| Planners | English, French, German | Their home countries | People planning a trip or a move |
Each campaign gets its own budget, so a cheap, busy one does not starve the others, and you can see which audience brings the customers.
A real example
A surf school we manage runs two English-language search campaigns with exactly this split. Between April and September 2026:
- Surf lessons for foreigners within 30 km of the school: about €6.40 per booking request.
- Surf and accommodation packages, targeting other European countries: about €4 per booking request.
Two very different customers: one is already on holiday nearby and wants a lesson tomorrow; the other is planning next summer. Same language, different place, different ads and offers.
Write, do not translate
A translated ad keeps the meaning and loses the words. A French holidaymaker searches "cours de surf Portugal", not a literal translation of your Portuguese keyword. A British buyer searches "villa for sale near Lagos", not "moradia à venda Lagos". Build each keyword list in its own language, write ads that a native speaker would write, and give each language its own landing page. Machine-translated pages read as foreign within one sentence, and they convert like it.
Mistakes to avoid
- One campaign with "all languages" selected and Portuguese ads.
- English ads sending people to a Portuguese page.
- Shared budgets across languages, so the busiest one takes everything.
- "Presence or interest" left on, paying for clicks from people who will never come.
- Nobody reading the search terms in each language, so the waste stays hidden.
- Replying to a French lead in Portuguese, or the next day.
Selling to customers who speak more than one language? We write and run campaigns in Portuguese, English and French, and report to you in English. Talk to us →