Store Visit Conversions: Eligibility & Troubleshooting
What Are Store Visit Conversions?
Store visit conversions are the measurement tool in Google Ads that shows you how your advertising is influencing visits to your physical stores. If physical store visits are part of your business’s revenue model, store visit conversions give you the metric that stops you judging campaigns purely on online results.
If you want to see the full O2O system end-to-end (strategy, targeting, feeds, formats, and measurement), start with our Local Online Marketing for Retailers guide.
How Store Visits Works (And Why It’s Not 1:1 Tracking)
Store visits reporting is built around privacy. To ensure people’s privacy is maintained, Google Ads connects ad interactions and store visits using aggregated, modelled data, not reports on individual people. In some cases, Google also uses survey verification with a panel of Google Opinion Rewards volunteers to fine-tune the modelling.
The trade-off is: you don’t get person-level tracking, but you do get a consistent, scalable way to measure offline impact.
If you want to get to the practical “how to value a visit” part, our Footfall Tracking & Measurement guide goes through that in depth.
Eligibility Checklist (The Non-Negotiables)
If you meet the requirements Google can automatically turn on reporting store visits in your account. If you don’t, the conversion action simply won’t appear yet.
In general you’re usually eligible when all of these are true:
- Your stores are in a country where store visits reporting is supported (the UK is included).
- Your locations aren’t in a sensitive category (Google restricts locations related to things like religion, sexual interests, children and certain health issues).
- You are using location assets (or affiliate location assets) in Google Ads, and they’re active (not switched off at campaign or ad group level).
- Your account has enough ad interactions (clicks or impressions) and your stores have enough foot traffic to pass privacy thresholds. Google doesn’t publish fixed numbers as the thresholds vary by advertiser.
- If you use your location assets via Business Profile, your store locations are set up and verified.
If you want to improve the quality of your locations and verification, do a complete Google Business Profile Optimisation.
Why Store Visits Is Missing or “Pending”
The most common “missing store visits” reasons are one of these:
- Not enough volume yet (ads or foot traffic) to meet privacy thresholds.
- Location assets are linked, but campaigns aren’t opted in to show assets, or assets are disabled in key campaigns.
- Business Profile locations are not fully set up or verified.
- The account is in a restricted category.
- You are optimising to store sales (or another offline goal) and store visits is automatically excluded.
When your account becomes eligible, Google automatically adds a “Store visits” conversion action. It also automatically appears in reporting columns like “All conversions”. If you don’t see it, you may need to add the Store visits column in your reports.
The Store Visits Diagnostics Page (Your Fastest Shortcut)
Google Ads has a Diagnostics view specifically for store visits. It’s the quickest way to find out what’s blocking reporting, because it surfaces the main eligibility checks in one place.
How to access:
- Go to Summary within the Goals menu.
- Select the active store visits conversion action name to open the “Store visits” page.
- Select Diagnostics.
If you don’t have the Store visits conversion action yet, the Diagnostics page won’t be available. In that case you’re troubleshooting eligibility rather than trying to fix broken reporting.
Common Blockers and Fixes
Below are the most common issues we see, with the quickest fix first.
Location assets are linked, but not running
- Fix: Check that your campaigns are opted in to show assets and that location assets are not turned off at campaign or ad group level. Store visits only reports for campaigns that are actually running location assets.
Business Profile locations aren’t verified
- Fix: Verify every store location in Business Profile, and make sure the correct Business Profile is linked.
Your account is too small (for now)
- Fix: You can’t “force” eligibility. The fastest route is to increase qualified volume in the right catchment areas until the account hits privacy thresholds. Use Postcode Targeting vs. Radius Targeting to remove wasted areas and concentrate spend where visits actually happen.
PMax Store Goals setup is fighting you
- Fix: Start by selecting the store locations you want to promote and avoid stacking extra geo targeting on top. Google recommends not applying additional geo or radius targets beyond store locations (you can still use exclusions).
- If you want to see the full engine set up, read Performance Max for Retail.
Once You’re Eligible: How to Use Store Visits Properly
Once Store visits is reporting, treat it like a real conversion goal.
- Set a store visit conversion value so bidding can optimise to impact, not just volume.
- Include Store visits in Smart Bidding where appropriate.
- Use reporting to identify which campaigns, devices, and themes drive visits.
- Keep a steady evaluation window. Store visit reporting is modelled and can lag, so don’t judge performance on a tiny date range.
If you’re ready to see what this looks like in practice, read our 215% Increase in Store Visits Case Study.
If you’re ready to connect store visits to actual revenue, your next upgrade is offline sales imports. We cover that in our Offline conversions / Store Sales imports (POS) guide.
Conclusion
Store visit conversions are the proof layer of your O2O strategy. When they’re missing, it’s rarely “broken”. It’s usually eligibility, volume or location assets coverage.
If you want this set up properly, we can run a full store visits readiness audit and give you a clear plan to unlock reporting.