[UA] About Store Visits in Analytics [Legacy]

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 were 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 were 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. 

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.

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.

Limits and caveats

• Store Visits reporting has been discontinued as of October 31, 2022 and is no longer generating data. Historical data Store Vists reporting remains available.

• 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 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:

1. Sign in to Google Analytics.
2. Navigate to your view.
3. Open Reports.
4. 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

1. 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.
2. Observe the impact of your advertising campaigns (across Google Analytics channels) on users actually visiting your physical store locations by leveraging the channel reports.
3. 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, or data is not available in reports

Store Visits reporting has been discontinued as of October 31, 2022. Historical Store Vists reporting remains available only for properties that had it before October 31, 2022.

Store Visits data stopped generating

Store Visits reporting has been discontinued as of October 31, 2022 and is no longer generating data. Historical Store Vists reporting remains available only for properties that had it before October 31, 2022.

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:

1. Users arrive at your website through a virtual private network (VPN), then later visit your stores
2. 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)