Create an audience segment that includes your website visitors

To provide a comprehensive and consolidated view of your audiences and make audience management and optimisation simpler, you’ll find the following improvements in Google Ads:

  • New audience reporting
    Detailed reporting about audience demographics, segments and exclusions is now consolidated in one place. Click the Campaigns icon Campaigns icon and open the 'Audiences, keywords and content' tab and click Audiences. You can also easily manage your audiences from this report page. Learn more About audience reporting.
  • New terms
    We’re using new terms on your audience report and throughout Google Ads. For example, 'audience types' (these include custom, in-market and affinity) are now referred to as audience segments and 'remarketing' is now referred to as 'your data'. Learn more about the Updates to audience terms and phrases.

You can show ads to people who have visited your website before. This article explains the steps you’ll need to follow to create an audience segment that includes people who've visited your website.

Before you begin

If you aren't familiar with how to set up your data segment, start by reviewing About setting up your data segments.

Instructions

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon Tools icon.
  2. Click the Shared library drop-down in the section menu.
  3. Click Audience manager.
  4. Make sure that you're in the 'Segments' section on the left-side page menu.
  5. To add a website visitors list, click the plus button and select Website visitors.
  6. On the page that opens, enter a descriptive name for your data segment in the 'Segment name' text box.
  7. Choose an option from the 'Segment members' drop-down menu.
  8. The 'Actions' section is where you’ll build a set of action rules for your segment. You can base these on a single action, multiple actions, and excluded actions. For each rule, choose an action from the drop-down menu and enter a value for 'days'. The drop-down menu’s default option is 'Web page visit', but other options may be available based on the parameters in your website tag. The following tag parameters will populate additional options in the 'Action' drop-down menu:
    • dynx_pagetype
    • ecomm_pagetype
    • edu_pagetype
    • event
    • flight_pagetype
    • hotel_pagetype
    • hrental_pagetype
    • job_pagetype
    • listing_pagetype
    • local_pagetype
    • pagetype
    • travel_pagetype
  9. Click Refine action to add parameters for web pages on your site where you'd like to collect visitor cookies. Values can be words, numbers or dates, depending on the rule template and parameters you selected for the data segment you’re creating.
  10. After you've completed one rule, click Add action (OR) or Add action (AND) to build onto your action (depending on the rule option you selected).
  11. In the 'Pre-fill options' section, select an initial segment size option (the number of visitors to your website during a set time). You can choose to add site visitors from the previous 30 days to your data segment or start with an empty segment. The pre-fill option doesn't identify browser and application sessions from signed-out users on your website.
    • Note: If you have a global site tag on your website and want to include visitors who match your segment rules, select the option to add site visitors from the previous 30 days. Review Tag your website using Google Ads.
  12. (Optional) Enter a description of your audience.
  13. Click Create segment.

Create as many data segments as you'd like. Then, you can create new campaigns and ad groups where you can add them.

Note: Google Ads does not permit the implementation of tags on pages related to policy-restricted offers. Learn more about the Personalised advertising policy

Best practices: Tick icon Best practices

Review the Google Best Practices guide to learn how to re-engage previous site visitors with personalised ads.

Reach past visitors with a display campaign

Related links

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