To launch Google Ads in the United States, target the country or individual states, then write one campaign or ad group per language, in English and in Spanish. There is no federal VAT: sales taxes depend on the states. Gambling, pharmacies and health insurance require certification. The facts table below is sourced.
Key takeaway: In the United States, plan one campaign per language, state targeting when a rule requires it, sales taxes with no federal VAT, certification for regulated sectors and schedules adapted to the time zones, then check each keyword on American Google before you bid.
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Official languages | English: a presidential executive order of March 1, 2025 designates English as the official language of the United States. The text covers federal agencies and does not require any of them to change their services or to remove documents written in other languages | Federal Register, Executive Order 14224 (Government Publishing Office) |
| Languages Google Ads supports | English and Spanish: Google Ads supports both languages | Google Ads API, language codes |
| Currency | U.S. dollar (USD): the United States Code expresses the money of the country in dollars and subdivisions of the dollar (31 U.S.C. § 5101) | United States Code, title 31, section 5101 (Government Publishing Office) |
| Search engines (share of searches) | Google 85.19%, Bing 9.89%, Yahoo! 2.64%, DuckDuckGo 1.75% (September 2026) | StatCounter Global Stats |
| Mobile vs desktop | Mobile 49.1%, desktop 48.47%, tablet 2.42% of page views (September 2026) | StatCounter Global Stats |
| Google Ads billing entity | Google LLC: the company Google names, with its taxpayer identification number, to North American advertisers who claim business income from Google Ads (section shared by the United States and Puerto Rico) | Google Ads Help, “Taxes in your country” |
| VAT on Google Ads | Since January 1, 2026, Google collects Washington state sales tax on purchases of digital advertising services (a valid exemption certificate, for example a Direct Pay Permit, can be provided); states also have local municipal taxes that apply based on the customer's billing address, charged at the end of each month on applicable services. Google notes that it cannot provide tax advice | Google Ads Help, “Taxes in your country” |
| Country VAT rate | No federal VAT, so no national rate: the United States is an exception among countries that have a VAT, and individual states generally impose a retail sales tax | Congressional Research Service, “Value-Added Taxes (VATs) and Tariffs” |
| Country-specific Google surcharge | No United States surcharge in Google's list: eight jurisdictions appear in it (Canada, France, Spain, Austria, United Kingdom, Turkey, Italy, India), not the United States | Google Ads Help, “Jurisdiction-specific surcharges” |
| Online gambling (state by state) | Lotteries, horse racing, sports betting and online casinos are allowed with Google certification. Lotteries must be run by state entities; horse racing, sports betting and online casinos require a license from the state entity, in states where legal. Advertisers must not target users under 21 or users outside the state or states where they are licensed; a warning against compulsive gambling, with help information, must appear on the landing page or in the ad | Google Advertising Policies, “Gambling and games” |
| Online pharmacies and telemedicine | Allowed with limitations. An online pharmacy must be accredited by LegitScript (Internet pharmacy certification) or by the NABP (Digital Pharmacy accreditation or .Pharmacy domain); a telemedicine provider must be accredited by LegitScript. In both cases, Google certification is required | Google Advertising Policies, “Healthcare and medicines” |
| Health insurance | Google certification (through G2RS) is required to advertise health and medical insurance coverage. Advertisers registered with the U.S. government to promote and sell Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliant health plans must obtain an additional certificate to promote and bid on ACA-related keywords. Ads exclusively for dental, vision or travel health insurance are not restricted | Google Advertising Policies, “Healthcare and medicines” |
| Thanksgiving (federal holiday) | Thursday, November 26, 2026. Federal law (5 U.S.C. § 6103) establishes this public holiday for federal employees | U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), federal holidays |
| Independence Day, July 4 (federal holiday) | Last edition: July 4, 2026 fell on a Saturday, so Friday, July 3, 2026 was the observed federal holiday (observance rule of 5 U.S.C. § 6103(b)) | U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), federal holidays |
| Time zones | Nine standard time zones set by federal regulation: Atlantic, eastern, central, mountain, Pacific, Alaska, Hawaii-Aleutian, Samoa and Chamorro | Code of Federal Regulations, title 49, part 71, section 71.1 (eCFR) |
Data verified on . Each value was read on its source on the date shown. It may have changed since: the source prevails.
First decide where you really sell. If you serve the whole country, target the United States as a whole. If your offer only works in some areas, target states or cities, or target the country and exclude what does not concern you. Google generally recommends the broad “Presence or interest” option on Search, and keeps “Presence” for sensitive sectors.
Google has removed the language setting from Search campaigns: there is no language to pick in the campaign anymore. Ads are matched by their language, and Google gives priority to the ones that match the language of the search term. So plan one campaign, or at least one ad group, for English, and another for Spanish if your offer serves that audience.
Start from Keyword Planner set to the United States and to the chosen language, then open the matching Google results page. Do not translate word for word: keep the searches that show buying intent, and prepare your negative keywords from the start. Have someone who lives in the United States proofread the list.
Run your list through Should I Bid by choosing the United States, then the language. The intent analysis reads the Google results page of that market and returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict. Run it once in English and once in Spanish for the keywords that serve both audiences: the pages and the advertisers shown are not the same.
A Spanish ad that leads to an English page loses the visitor at the first click. Write the ad, the landing page and the form in the same language, with prices in dollars. If you have no Spanish-speaking customer service, it is better not to open that campaign than to promise what you cannot deliver.
Check the billing address of the account: according to Google, local state taxes depend on it. For the Washington state sales tax on digital advertising, Google collects it and accepts a valid exemption certificate. Do not plan for a country surcharge. If you sell into the United States from abroad, also have an accountant review your own sales tax position.
Gambling, online pharmacies, telemedicine, health insurance: each requires Google certification and specific proof (state license, accreditation, certificate). Read the Google advertising policies before launch, and leave some margin in your schedule: a certification is requested before launch, not after.
Delivery windows follow the time zone of your account, while your customers live in several time zones. Start without restricting hours, read the day and hour report, then tighten. Launch a reasonable test budget on the keywords with a Bid verdict, and check the seasonality of your product in Google Trends set to the United States.
In the United States, English is now designated the official language by executive order, but that text does not dictate the language of your ads. The Federal Register publishes the presidential order that designates English as the official language of the country. Its text covers federal agencies: it contains no rule for advertising or for private companies, and it states that it does not require any agency to change its services or to remove documents written in other languages. For an advertiser, the useful question is elsewhere: in which language your customers search, and which text Google can show them. The facts table at the top of the page gives the official language and the languages Google Ads recognizes.
Spanish is the most spoken language at home after English, which often justifies a separate campaign. The Census Bureau, the American statistics office, publishes the languages spoken at home from its American Community Survey: Spanish comes first among the languages other than English, far ahead of the next ones. Google Ads recognizes English and Spanish, as the table shows. What remains is a question of offer: a product sold only in English, with English-only customer service, gains nothing from a Spanish ad that leads to an English page.
Google has removed the language setting from Search campaigns: language now comes from what you write. According to Google Ads Help on language, ads are matched by their language, and Google gives priority to the ones that match the language of the search term. The example Google picked speaks to the United States: a user understands English and Spanish, and depending on the query, she can be shown an ad in either language. So build one campaign, or at least one ad group, per language, with ads, keywords and landing page in that language. To reach an audience, the geographic area does the job, not the language.
The country is not a single block: taxes, gambling and health insurance are settled state by state or by body. The rest of the page follows that thread. You will see that the geographic area decides your rules as much as your audience, and that American Google reads as a market of its own. Our guide to choosing Google Ads keywords gives the general method to repeat in each language.
Google Ads accepts targeting areas within a country, and it is a key lever in the United States. According to the help page on location targeting, you can target, depending on the country, regions, cities or postal codes. The help page even cites the case of an advertiser who wants to reach almost the whole country except one state: it then suggests targeting the whole country and excluding the areas to leave out. In your account, type the name of a state or a city and see what Google offers.
For Search, Google generally recommends the broad “Presence or interest” option, and keeps “Presence” for sensitive sectors. The broad option also reaches people who are interested in the area without being there. The help page gives two cases where “Presence” makes sense: a sensitive sector with strict targeting limits, or the wish to reach only the people who are in the area. In the United States, gambling is one example: it may only target the states where the advertiser holds a license.
Splitting the country only makes sense if your results, your taxes or your rules differ from one area to another. Start with one campaign per language across your whole sales area, then split when your search terms, your reports by area or a state rule justify it. A Should I Bid analysis can also target a large city of the country, as an optional setting: useful when the Google page changes from one city to another, not for every keyword. Finally, Google’s help page reminds you that targeting is a best effort without guaranteed accuracy: read your reports by area.
Google dominates search in the United States, but Bing and other engines carry enough weight to deserve a look. The facts table at the top of the page gives the share of each engine for the most recent month published by StatCounter: Google, Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo. To reach the audience of these other engines, you generally have to go through their own advertising tools. Start with Google, measure your results, then decide whether a second channel is worth the effort.
Mobile and desktop split American page views almost evenly, according to the facts table. That says nothing about your own customers: a work tool is often consulted from a fixed workstation, an impulse purchase from a phone. Check your landing pages on both formats, in each language, then read the device reports after the first weeks of delivery before pushing one format over another.
Should I Bid can analyze a keyword on American Google, in English or in Spanish. The intent analysis reads the results page of the chosen country and language, ads included, then compares it with what your business sells. Our guide to search intent in Google Ads explains how to read that page by hand. To know your rivals on a keyword, see also who bids on your keywords.
The United States has no federal VAT: states generally impose a retail sales tax. The Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress, writes that the country is an exception among those that have a VAT, and that states generally impose a sales tax. The facts table therefore gives no national rate: a rate depends on the state and on the municipality.
On the Google side, the American section of the help page names Google LLC and deals with the Washington state sales tax. According to Google Ads Help on taxes, Google now collects Washington sales tax on purchases of digital advertising services, with an exemption certificate possible. The same page says that states have local taxes, set according to the customer’s billing address and charged at the end of the month on applicable services. Google states that it cannot provide tax advice. The Washington Department of Revenue, for its part, publishes a guidance note on advertising and sales tax: have your accountant read both.
Google’s surcharge list does not name the United States. Google’s page on jurisdiction-specific surcharges lists the countries where fees are added to ads served there: the United States is not in it, as the facts table says. If an older source or a provider announces a markup, compare it with Google’s official page before you inflate your test budget.
If you sell into the United States from abroad, sales tax can concern you as a seller, not only as an advertiser. The Government Accountability Office recalls that after a Supreme Court decision, the Wayfair case, states can require sellers without a physical presence to collect their sales tax, and that the rules vary from one state to another: thresholds, small-business exemptions, effective dates. This question does not touch Google Ads itself, it is a matter for your company’s accounting. Have an accountant or a lawyer examine it before you scale up.
For online gambling, Google requires a state license, certification and targeting limited to the authorized states. According to its advertising policies, lotteries must be run by state entities, and horse racing, sports betting and online casinos require the license of the state concerned, where legal. The advertiser must not target audiences that are too young, nor people outside the states where it holds a license, and the landing page or the ad must carry a warning against compulsive gambling, with help information. The facts table summarizes the rule.
An online pharmacy or a telemedicine service must be accredited before it serves ads. For pharmacies, Google accepts a LegitScript or NABP accreditation, the American association of pharmacy boards; for telemedicine, LegitScript. In both cases, Google certification comes on top. Plan time to gather the proof, and do not launch the campaign before you have Google’s answer.
Health insurance requires a Google certification specific to the United States. It goes through a body named G2RS. Advertisers registered with the federal government to sell plans compliant with the Affordable Care Act, the ACA, must also obtain a certificate to promote and bid on ACA-related keywords. Ads exclusively for dental, vision or travel insurance are not restricted, according to Google’s page.
For other sectors, read Google’s advertising policies before launch, because some rules are specific to a country. Health, finance, alcohol: do not assume that what passes in your home country passes as is in the United States, and check whether the sector requires certification. A keyword can look excellent on paper and be unusable in your sector. Our advice on whether to bid on a keyword still holds, but it comes after compliance. This paragraph is not legal advice: a lawyer must validate your case.
Federal law sets the holidays of federal employees, and Thanksgiving and Independence Day are among them. The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, publishes the list year by year. When Independence Day falls on a weekend, the observed holiday moves: the facts table shows the last edition, with the observed day. The date of Thanksgiving is in it too.
These holidays concern federal employees, not necessarily the demand of your buyers. The OPM page says it: the law establishes these days for federal employees. Shopping events such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday are not in that list. So do not infer the seasonality of your product from an official calendar: measure it in Google Trends set to the United States, then prepare your campaigns before demand rises.
When demand rises, also check what Google shows. As a busy period approaches, more advertisers may bid, and the results page may change. Run an intent analysis again on your main keywords before you raise the budget, to see whether a Test verdict has turned into Skip or the other way round.
Federal regulation defines several standard time zones, including the eastern, central, mountain and Pacific ones. The Code of Federal Regulations, in the Department of Transportation part on time zone boundaries, gives the full list, which the facts table repeats. For an advertiser, it means that the same hour on the clock does not match the same moment of the day for all your customers.
Google schedules ads in the time zone of your account, and you must correct the gap yourself. The help page on ad schedules says so: windows are set according to the account’s time zone, so it is up to you to adjust them to the one of your customers. Start without restricting hours, read the day and hour report, then tighten the windows where clicks do not convert. A campaign that targets the whole country benefits from reading that report by area before cutting hours.
The first pitfall is to treat the United States as a single regime. Local taxes follow the billing address, Google collects the Washington sales tax on advertising, gambling is settled state by state, and health insurance goes through a separate body. Before you launch, write down the list of states you target and what each one requires.
The second pitfall is to confuse a language with an audience. Opening a Spanish campaign because many people speak Spanish is not enough: you need an offer, a service and a landing page in that language. Conversely, assuming that everyone searches in English misses an audience that Google already serves, since it recognizes both languages.
The third pitfall is the time difference. An account set to a single time zone schedules its ads at that hour, while your customers are spread out. A schedule designed for your office can cut delivery at the best moment of another area.
The fourth pitfall is to pay for clicks that had no buying intent. The cost of a click varies from one keyword to another, and a word that looks good can attract job seekers, students or the merely curious. Read the Google page before you bid, or let Should I Bid read it for you, keyword by keyword, in the language of the audience.
Target the whole United States or specific states, then create one campaign, or at least one ad group, per language: English, and Spanish if your offer serves that audience. Rebuild the keywords in each language, write ads and landing pages in that language, check the rules of your sector, then plan for taxes and time zones. The detailed steps are higher up on this page, and the facts table gives the rules.
Only if your offer serves that audience. The Census Bureau puts Spanish first among the languages spoken at home after English, and Google Ads recognizes that language. But a Spanish ad must lead to a page, and a service, in Spanish. Open a separate campaign or ad group and read the results: you will quickly learn whether that audience converts.
No: the country has no federal VAT, and states generally impose a retail sales tax. According to Google, it collects the Washington state sales tax on digital advertising, and local taxes depend on the billing address. Google’s surcharge list does not name the United States. Have an accountant validate your case: Google does not provide tax advice.
Yes. Google Ads location targeting accepts areas within a country, regions, cities or postal codes depending on the country, and Google suggests targeting the country and then excluding what you want to leave out when you aim at almost the whole territory. For gambling, state targeting is even a rule: the advertiser may only target the states where it holds a license.
Online gambling, with a state license; online pharmacies and telemedicine, accredited by LegitScript or the NABP; and health insurance, certified through G2RS. Each also requires Google certification. Read the Google advertising policies for your sector before launch, and have a lawyer validate your case: this text is not legal advice.
Yes. Should I Bid reads the Google results page of the country and language you choose, among 50 countries. For the United States, pick English or Spanish: the analysis reads the ads and the ranking pages, compares them with your offer and returns a Bid, Test or Skip verdict. It gives neither search volume nor cost per click: see pricing for how credits work.