If visits to your physical locations like retail stores, restaurants, auto dealerships, and grocery stores are important to your business, you can use store visits conversion tracking to help you learn how your ads influence store visits.
Many customers conduct research online before purchasing in store, and Google Ads can impact those online research decisions that lead to store visits. Store visits help measure the full value of your online ads by accounting for the additional conversions that happen offline. Using store visits, you can optimize your campaigns for omnichannel performance and maximize total return on ad spend (ROAS) across online and offline channels.
In this article
- Explore how to use store visits
- Find out how store visits works
- Understand eligibility
- Discover how to track store visit conversions with a Google Ads manager account
- Learn about the "Diagnostics" page for store visits reporting
- Review store visits measurement availability by country
- Determine how to optimize for store visit conversions
- Learn how to edit your conversion action settings for store visits
How to use store visits
- Report: Understand which campaigns, keywords, and devices drive the most store visits to your business.
- Value: Set a store visit conversion value to understand your full return on investment (ROI) and make more informed decisions about your ad creatives, spend, and bid strategies.
- Optimize: Include store visit conversions in your Smart Bidding strategies to optimize to omnichannel customers and prioritize 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 store and interacts with it. |
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The customer then visits your store’s physical location. |
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Google connects the customer's visit to the store to engagements with your ad in a privacy-safe way. Store 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 store 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 modeled numbers by using current and past data on the number of customers who click or view your ads and later visit your store. You can then understand these results in your Google Ads reports for store visits. |
Eligibility
If you have a physical store location or sell your products in a physical store and meet certain criteria, you may be eligible for store 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 stores must be located in eligible countries where store visits reporting is offered.
- Store locations must not be considered sensitive. For example, locations related to healthcare, religion, sexual content, and children would be considered sensitive and ineligible for store visit conversions.
- Your ads should use location assets or affiliate location assets so that we know which stores you care about. The more locations you have, the higher the likelihood your account will have enough data to be eligible for store 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, store visits won’t be reported, and your Google Ads account may not receive enough data to be eligible for store visits.
- Your ads must have enough ad clicks or impressions, and your business must have enough foot traffic, to pass our privacy thresholds. Since store visit reporting utilizes Google AI, we need sufficient data to accurately report store 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 store locations are set up in your Business Profile and all of your store locations are verified in your Business Profile.
If you meet the above requirements:
- Your account will automatically begin reporting store visits.
- Conversions from store 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 "Store visits" will be created for you in your Google Ads account. If you don’t find the “Store visits” conversion action, you can add a column in your reports for it.
If you don't find store visits data in your account and believe that you qualify, contact your Google sales representative.
Tracking store visit conversions with a Google Ads manager account
If you have a Google Ads manager account, store visits can always be viewed at the manager or client account level. However, if conversion tracking is set up at the manager account level, store visits will be deduped across child accounts.
If conversion tracking is set up at the manager account level, the count of store visits at the manager account level should always be equal to the sum of store visits for all the client accounts that are tracking store visit conversions under the manager account.
Although store 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 store visits.
Additionally, just because store visits are reported at the manager account level, it doesn't mean that every sub-account is eligible to report store visits. Even 2 accounts which seem similar may not meet the eligibility requirements at the same time. Learn more About store visit conversions.
Using the "Diagnostics" page for store visits
If you have questions about store visits reporting in your account, use the "Diagnostics" page to get the overall status of store visits reporting. On this page, you can view detailed information about specific issues in your account that can affect store visits reporting. The "Diagnostics" page will also show if your account is currently optimized for bidding to store 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 store visits conversion action name to open the “Store visits” page, then click Diagnostics.
How to review the "Diagnostics" page
- Current status: Indicates the store 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. Store 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 store 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 store 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 store visits (for example, to be used with conversion value reporting and Smart Bidding).
Store visits measurement availability by country
Store visits measurement is available in the following countries:
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Optimize for store visit conversions
If increasing visits to physical store locations is your goal, you may want to set up your Google Ads account to optimize for store visits:
Performance Max for Store Goals
If you want to grow store traffic, consider setting up a Performance Max campaign for Store Goals. Ads in Performance Max campaigns for Store 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 store locations you want to promote. You can set this by linking your Business Profile account or selecting affiliate locations. Learn more About Performance Max for Store Goals.
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Smart Bidding
If you’re looking to maximize your ROAS, consider using Smart Bidding for store visits. Smart Bidding for store visits allows you to find customers interested in visiting your store and maximize both online and offline impact for your existing Search and Shopping campaigns. Set a value for store visits, and include store visits in your biddable conversions across your account or in select campaigns. Learn more About Smart Bidding for store visits.
Smart Bidding for store 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 store visits
After your Google Ads account becomes eligible to report store 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 store 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 store visits conversion action 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 you need to edit.
- Click Done.