Google’s expanded rollout of store visits reporting for AdWords (which will soon become Google Ads) Customers of all sizes has begun. This reporting provides performance breakouts by individual store locations.
Marketers are going to be able to see in-person visits to their physical stores, as well as other types of “offline” conversions that are associated with each business location:
The per-shop report shows you an estimate of how many in-person visits you’re getting for each of your physical locations, and conversions from other shop-specific actions – like phone calls, website visits, getting driving directions and more. Using this information, you can move your budget around to increase the performance of shops that are already successful, or to shops that require more support.
The following are the additional offline actions or engagements included by default in the reports, in addition to physical store visits:
- Calls — clicks on call buttons.
- Directions — clicks on “get directions” buttons.
- Website visits — clicks on website links associated with location-based ads.
- Orders — clicks on “order” buttons.
- Menu actions — clicks on menu links.
- Other actions — “Clicks on other tracked user actions (for example: share location, save, etc.) on any Google location-based ad or service after an ad interaction.”
In the new interface, to access the data, advertisers will select the desired campaigns, then Locations in the left navigation, then “Geographic report drop-down” and then “per-shop report.” Check out the Help Center page for more details.
According to Google, all customers that uses location extensions (all geographies) should be able to access these reports by the end of July. It’s not only available to enterprises but small business customers as well. Google stressed that all visitation data is “aggregated and anonymous.”
Originally, the only folks that store visit conversion reporting was available to was large enterprise customers who had multiple store locations that had “thousands of ad clicks and viewable impressions.” If advertisers are seeking to tap into the new reporting, they will still need to have Google My Business accounts linked to their AdWords accounts. And, as mentioned, location extensions must be active.
This expansion of conversion and offline visitation reporting will further mainstream the connection between online research and offline purchase behavior that has been years in the making. To get a complete picture of online-to-offline activity, however, marketers also need to consult Google My Business Insights reporting.