As of 10/31/2022, Store Visits reporting has been discontinued. New Store Visits reporting will no longer be generated. Historical Store Visits reporting will remain available. Please reach out to your account manager if you have any questions.
Store Visits in Google Analytics helps you see how visits to your website influence visits to your physical location—such as a hotel, auto dealership, restaurant, or retail store.
Store visits are estimates based on data from users who have turned on Location History. Only aggregated and anonymized data is reported to advertisers, and they aren’t able to see any store visits from individual website sessions, ad clicks, viewable impressions, or people.
Store visit reports are only available to advertisers that have multiple physical store locations in eligible countries that generate a large number of website visits and store-visit traffic. In addition, they are not available to advertisers with sensitive location categories related to healthcare, religion, adult content, and children. Due to the variability of many factors that affect store-visit behavior, we are not able to guarantee store-visit reports for any advertiser. If you think you’re eligible for store-visits reports and have an account representative, you may contact them regarding any questions about the requirements.
In this article:Benefits
- See the number of visits to your business's physical locations from users who visit your website.
- See which channels (paid and organic) and campaigns drive the most visits to your stores.
- Make more informed decisions about your ad creatives, spend, bid strategies, and other elements of your campaigns.
Requirements
To be eligible for Store Visits, you need to meet the following requirements:
General requirements
- Have Analytics, Google Ads, and Google My Business accounts.
- Have multiple physical store locations in eligible countries. Ask your account representative if store visit conversions are available in your location.
- Have high volumes of store visits data to attribute to website traffic.
Analytics requirements
- Have activated Google signals.
- Have your Analytics property linked to at least one Google Ads account that contains location extensions from Google My Business.
- All Google Ads accounts linked to your Analytics property must have the same location extensions.
If your Analytics property is linked to a Google Ads Manager account, then all Google Ads accounts linked to that Manager account must have the same location extensions. - All Google Ads accounts linked to your Analytics property must have Store Visits enabled in the Google Ads UI.
Google Ads requirements
- Have at least 90% of your linked locations verified in Google My Business.
- Ensure location extensions are active in your Google Ads account.
How Store Visits in Google Analytics works
Store Visits in Google Analytics provides an estimated count of the number of store visits from users who visit your website and then visit your physical store within 30 days.
Store visits are estimates based on data from users who have turned on Location History. Only aggregated and anonymized data is reported to advertisers, and they aren’t able to see any store visits from individual website sessions, ad clicks, viewable impressions, or people.
Store-location data comes from location extensions that are linked from your Google My Business account to your Google Ads account, and then from your Google Ads account to your Analytics property.
Set up Store Visits
If you meet the general requirements for store visits in Analytics, follow these steps to ensure that your Analytics property and Google Ads account are set up appropriately to measure store visits:
- Activate Google signals for the Analytics property.
- Link the Analytics property to at least one Google Ads account that has active location extensions.
- Make sure that all Google Ads accounts with location extensions that are linked to the Analytics property have the same location extensions from Google My Business.
Once your Analytics property is set up appropriately, it can take up to three business days for Store Visits reports to appear under Conversions in the left navigation. Store Visits reports will not appear in the left navigation if there is not enough data to generate Store Visits metrics. It can take up to 60 days after you activate Google signals to start seeing actual Store Visits data.
Limits and caveats
- Your stores must be located in eligible countries where Google Ads offers store visits reporting.
- The Store Visits reports can take up to 60 days to show data in Google Analytics after you activate Google signals.
- Store visits have a fixed lookback window of 30 days. For any given day, the reported store visits metrics in Google Analytics may increase over the next 30 days, as more web visitors end up visiting your store.
- The date and location that you see for each store visit in the reports are for the website session that led to the store visit, not for the actual store visit.
- If a website user visits the store multiple times in the next 30 days, then the Store Visits reports will count all the store visits and not just one.
- Store visits are attributed to the website session based on Analytics' existing last non-direct click model.
- Store visits are available for a limited set of dimensions.
- The following are currently not supported:
- Segmentation
- Audiences and Remarketing
- BigQuery Export
- Custom reports
- Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution reports
Store Visits reports
The Store Visits reports contain the following key metrics:
- Store Visits: Number of visits to the store from users who initiated sessions on the website and then visited the store within 30 days. The number of visits for a given date is reported starting the day after, and may increase for the next 30 days as more users visit the store.
- Store Visit Rate: Number of store visits / number of sessions.
To access the reports:
- Sign in to Google Analytics.
- Navigate to your view.
- Open Reports.
- Select Conversions > Store Visits > Overview [or other desired report].
Overview report
Use the Overview report to answer questions like:
- What percentage of my website sessions lead to store visits?
- How many store visits did I receive within the past 30 days?
Channels report
The Channels report helps you understand which channels are most effective at driving store visits. It shows store visits by Default Channel Grouping (display, search, paid search, email, etc.). It uses the last non-direct click model to attribute store visits across channels.
Location report
The Location report shows store visits by the location of the website session (and not the location of the store visit). This helps you understand the likelihood of store visits across different regions.
Best practices
- Pay attention to which region’s users buy the most online, and whether this holds true offline. There might be regional differences in online/offline behavior that should be included in ROAS calculations.
- Observe the impact of your advertising campaigns (across Google Analytics channels) on users actually visiting your physical store locations by leveraging the channel reports.
- Keep track of store-visit rates after marketing invitations or promotions, as well as for city-level engagement.
Troubleshoot issues with Store Visits in Analytics
I can’t find Store Visits reports in Google Analytics
- Activate Google signals for the Analytics property.
- Link the Analytics property to at least one Google Ads account that has active location extensions.
- Make sure that all Google Ads accounts with location extensions that are linked to the Analytics property have the same location extensions from Google My Business.
Once your Analytics property is set up appropriately, it can take up to three days for Store Visits reports to appear under Conversions in the left navigation.
Store Visits data is not available in the reports
Store Visits metrics will be published once sufficient website and store-visit traffic has been collected. Generally speaking, at least 100K web sessions over 30 days are required to report store visits. The actual data collection time depends on your website and store traffic and can take up to 60 days after you activate Google signals.
You will not see Store Visits data if there are not enough visits to your store, or if none of your store locations are in eligible countries.
Store Visits reports will only appear in Analytics properties that meet all the prerequisite for this feature. Make sure that your Google Analytics and Google Ads account are set up appropriately:
Store Visits data stopped generating
Store Visits reports will stop generating data if you change the setup of your Google Analytics or Google Ads accounts that impact your eligibility for Store Visits. For example, if you turn off Google signals, or unlink your Analytics properties to all Google Ads account with location extensions, then Google Analytics will stop reporting Store Visits metrics.
To reactivate Store Visits reports, follow the steps in Set up Store Visits.
Store Visits reported in locations I don’t have physical stores
Similar to other reports in Google Analytics, the date and location that you see in the Store Visits reports are based on the website session that led to the store visit, not for the actual store visit. As a result, you might occasionally see store visits in locations where you don’t have physical stores. This can happen when:- Users arrive at your website through a virtual private network (VPN), then later visit your stores
- Users initiated sessions on your website then traveled to visit your stores
Related resources
- Google signals
- About location extensions (Google Ads help center)
- About Google My Business (Google My Business help center)