Google announced that it will be rolling out store visit measurement to advertisers in the U.S. as an enhancement to Estimated Total Conversions, which it launched last year.
Estimated Total Conversions is designed to show advertisers the conversions they see immediately, like online sales, in addition to an estimate of conversions that will likely take multiple devices to complete. Store visits are a pretty big metric in that department, so this is a major addition to the feature.
“If visits to your physical locations—like hotels, auto dealerships, restaurants, and retail stores—are important to your business, you can use conversion tracking to help you see how your ad clicks influence store visits,” says Google. “See which campaigns and devices drive the most store visits to your business. Understand your return on investment (ROI) and make more informed decisions about your ad creatives, spend, bid strategies, and other elements of your campaigns.”
To be eligible to measure store visit conversions, advertisers must have a Google My Business account linked to their AdWords account, set up location extensions, have multiple physical store locations in the U.S., and receive a large number of both ad clicks and store visits. In other words, it’s not going to be available to the average small business. At least not yet.
“If you’re eligible, conversions from store visits will be added to the ‘Estimated Total Conversion’ columns in your campaign reports,” Google says. “You’ll also see a new conversion action called ‘Store visits’ added to your conversion reports. If you don’t see store visit data in your account and believe you qualify, reach out to your Google AdWords representative.”
According to the company, roughly 95% of retail sales take place in physical stores, but 32% of consumers say location-based search ads have led them to visit a store or make a purchase.
Image via Google