If visits to your physical locations like retail shops, restaurants, auto dealerships and grocery shops are important to your business, you can use shop visits conversion tracking to help you learn how your ads influence shop visits.
Many customers conduct research online before purchasing in shop, and Google Ads can impact those online research decisions that lead to shop visits. Shop visits help measure the full value of your online ads by accounting for the additional conversions that happen offline. Using shop visits, you can optimise your campaigns for omnichannel performance and maximise total return on ad spend (ROAS) across online and offline channels.
In this article
- Explore how to use shop visits
- Find out how shop visits works
- Understand eligibility
- Discover how to track shop visit conversions with a Google Ads manager account
- Learn about the 'Diagnostics' page for shop visits reporting
- Review shop visits measurement availability by country
- Determine how to optimise for shop visit conversions
- Learn how to edit your conversion action settings for shop visits
How to use shop visits
- Report: Understand which campaigns, keywords and devices drive the most shop visits to your business.
- Value: Set a shop visit conversion value to understand your full return on investment (ROI) and make more informed decisions about your ad creatives, spend and bid strategies.
- Optimise: Include shop visit conversions in your Smart Bidding strategies to optimise to omnichannel customers and prioritise foot traffic.
How it works
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A customer is signed in to their Google account and opts into location history in their account settings. The customer finds an ad for your shop and interacts with it. |
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The customer then visits your shop’s physical location. |
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Google connects the customer's visit to the shop to engagements with your ad in a privacy-safe way. Shop visits use anonymous, aggregated statistics which are then extrapolated to represent the broader population of your customers. You may notice an added layer of survey verification when potential visits are detected. In these instances, Google Surveys select users from a panel of over 10 million Google Opinion Rewards volunteers about their shop visits. Based on their responses, Google can find out which locations they’ve visited and determine how these visits compare to predicted visits. This data is used to fine-tune Google AI. |
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Google Ads creates modelled numbers by using current and past data on the number of customers who click or view your ads and later visit your shop. You can then understand these results in your Google Ads reports for shop visits. |
Eligibility
If you have a physical shop location or sell your products in a physical shop and meet certain criteria, you may be eligible for shop visit conversions. The following criteria are in place so that Google has enough data to report for your account while still maintaining privacy for our users.
- Your shops must be located in eligible countries where shop visit reporting is offered.
- Shop locations must not be considered sensitive. For example, locations related to healthcare, religion, sexual content and children would be considered sensitive and ineligible for shop visit conversions.
- Your ads should use location assets or affiliate location assets so that we know which shops you care about. The more locations that you have, the higher the likelihood your account will have enough data to be eligible for shop visits.
- Make sure your location assets or affiliate location assets are active and not turned off at the campaign level or ad group level in Google Ads. You should also opt in campaigns to show assets. If you don’t opt in campaigns, shop visits won’t be reported, and your Google Ads account may not receive enough data to be eligible for shop visits.
- Your ads must have enough ad clicks or impressions, and your business must have enough foot traffic, to pass our privacy thresholds. Since shop visit reporting utilises Google AI, we need sufficient data to accurately report shop visits. Because every advertiser is different, these numbers vary by advertiser.
- If you’re using location assets with a Business Profile, make sure that your shop locations are set up in your Business Profile and all of your shop locations are verified in your Business Profile.
If you meet the above requirements:
- Your account will automatically begin reporting shop visits.
- Conversions from shop visits will be added to the 'All conversions' and 'View-through conversions' (YouTube and Display only) columns in your campaign reports.
- A new conversion action called 'Shop visits' will be created for you in your Google Ads account. If you don’t find the 'Shop visits' conversion action, you can add a column in your reports for it.
If you don't find shop visits data in your account and believe that you qualify, contact your Google sales representative.
Tracking shop visit conversions with a Google Ads manager account
If you have a Google Ads manager account, shop visits can always be viewed at the manager or client account level. However, if conversion tracking is set up at the manager account level, shop visits will be deduped across child accounts.
If conversion tracking is set up at the manager account level, the count of shop visits at the manager account level should always be equal to the sum of shop visits for all the client accounts that are tracking shop visit conversions under the manager account.
Although shop visits can be reported at the manager account level, eligibility requirements must be met at the sub-account level, not the manager account level. Each sub-account must meet the eligibility requirements on its own in order to report shop visits.
Additionally, just because shop visits are reported at the manager account level, it doesn't mean that every sub-account is eligible to report shop visits. Even two accounts which seem similar may not meet the eligibility requirements at the same time. Learn more About shop visit conversions.
Using the 'Diagnostics' page for shop visits
If you have questions about shop visits reporting in your account, use the 'Diagnostics' page to get the overall status of shop visits reporting. On this page, you can view detailed information about specific issues in your account that can affect shop visits reporting. The 'Diagnostics' page will also show if your account is currently optimised for bidding to shop visits conversions.
How to access the 'Diagnostics' page
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In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon
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- Click the Conversions drop-down in the section menu.
- Click on the active shop visits conversion action name to open the 'Shop visits' page, then click Diagnostics.
How to review the 'Diagnostics' page
- Current status: Indicates the shop visits reporting status.
- Locations: Indicates whether the account has locations linked (affiliate location assets or location assets).
- Campaigns running location assets: Indicates how many of the account’s campaigns are running location assets. Shop visits data is only reported for campaigns that are actively running location assets.
- Location verification: Indicates the percentage of the account’s locations which are verified in the Business Profile, as locations must be verified to report shop visits. If Location assets or affiliate location assets are enabled through linking to Google chains, these locations are already verified.
- Data thresholds: Indicates whether the account has enough data to meet the privacy thresholds and report shop visit conversions.
- Conversion tracking set-up: Indicates that the conversion tracking for the account is set at the manager account level. This will only show if conversion tracking is set up at the manager account level.
- Conversion value: Indicates whether the account has added a custom conversion value for shop visits (for example, to be used with conversion value reporting and Smart Bidding).
Shop visit measurement availability by country
Shop visit measurement is available in the following countries:
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Optimise for shop visit conversions
If increasing visits to physical shop locations is your goal, you may want to set up your Google Ads account to optimise for shop visits:
Performance Max for shop goals
If you want to grow shop traffic, consider setting up a Performance Max campaign for shop goals. Ads in Performance Max campaigns for shop goals will be eligible to appear across Google's properties. This includes the Google Search Network, Google Display Network, Google Maps and YouTube. When you create a Performance Max campaign, you'll just need to define the shop locations that you want to promote. You can set this by linking your Business Profile account or selecting affiliate locations. Learn more About Performance Max for shop goals.
Local Campaigns (Account Optimization)
Smart Bidding
If you’re looking to maximise your ROAS, consider using Smart Bidding for shop visits. Smart Bidding for shop visits allows you to find customers interested in visiting your shop and maximise both online and offline impact for your existing Search and Shopping campaigns. Set a value for shop visits, and include shop visits in your biddable conversions across your account or in select campaigns. Learn more About Smart Bidding for shop visits.
Smart Bidding for shop visits is supported in the following campaign types and bid strategies:
| Campaign type | Bid strategies |
| Performance Max campaigns |
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| Search campaigns |
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| Shopping campaigns |
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| Video campaigns |
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Edit your conversion action settings for shop visits
After your Google Ads account becomes eligible to report shop visits, you may want to make some adjustments to your conversion action settings. Just like other conversion actions, you can edit the conversion window for shop visits, the conversion value, the attribution model and other settings.
- In your Google Ads account, click the Goals icon
- Click the Conversions drop-down in the section menu.
- Click Summary.
- Find the shop visits conversion action that you’d like to edit from the list, and click its name. You’ll find the settings for the conversion action.
- Click Edit settings.
- Click on a setting, make your changes and click Save. Repeat this step for all the remaining settings that you need to edit.
- Click Done.
