Digital marketing is becoming more important for car dealerships every day. However, with the rise of digital, it’s still challenging to answer the age-old question, “Did my marketing lead to sales?” Because the sale of a vehicle still primarily happens in-store, it can be very difficult to connect any marketing efforts to sales. But, if your dealership is eligible for store visit conversions, it can make connecting those dots a lot easier.

What are Google Ads store visit conversions?

A store visit conversion is a metric available to a limited number of advertisers on Google. It shows up in your Google Ads account if you are eligible for this conversion metric to show. Store visit conversions measure “the number of people who click or view your ads and then later visit your store.”

Why do store visit conversions matter for car dealers?

Traditionally, the automotive industry has not had a lot of ways to definitively connect digital marketing efforts to sales. That is why metrics, like Vehicle Detail Page Views (VDP Views), have been so heavily emphasized as a tell of sales. There weren’t a lot of direct ways to measure sales-to-marketing efforts, so roundabout metrics were used.

Digital advertising networks continue to grow, change and improve. This is great news for the consumer because it means they get better quality ads that are more helpful to their needs. This is also great news for advertisers because it means advertising tools are easier-to-use, better and faster. But it also means more metrics to evaluate the ROI of their marketing efforts are available, like store visit conversions from Google Ads.

Store visit conversions are rapidly becoming the best measure of success with Google Ads for car dealerships because they do not complete a majority of their sales online.

These metrics are especially important for car dealers because most people only visit a car dealership when they are ready to buy. In fact, new car buyers only visit an average of two dealerships before making a purchase. This number has dropped significantly in recent years (60% in the past decade). These figures tell us that a person visiting your dealership is more important than ever. Since it’s challenging to directly connect digital efforts to sales, store visits are the next best metric for measuring Google Ads campaign ROI.

How do I get store visit conversions to show up in my Google Ads account?

If you already have store visits showing up on your account, that’s great news!  If you don’t, there are some minimum requirements that you need in place to order to be eligible.

PLEASE NOTE, meeting these minimum requirements still does not guarantee store visit conversions being available on your account.  Before we jump into why these metrics may not be showing up, let’s look at Google’s expressed minimum requirements for store visit conversion visibility.

“To be able to measure store visit conversions you will need the following requirements:

• Have multiple physical store locations in eligible countries. Ask your Google account representative if store visit conversions are available in your location.
• Receive thousands of ad clicks and viewable impressions.
• Have a Google My Business account linked to your Google Ads account.
• Create each of your store locations in your Google My Business account.
• Have at least 90% of your linked locations verified in Google My Business.
• Ensure location extensions are active in your account.
• Have sufficient store visits data on the backend to attribute to ad click or viewable impressions traffic and pass our user privacy thresholds.”

Unfortunately, it is not fully public knowledge how Google determines which advertisers can see store visit conversions in their Google Ads account.  However, ensuring you follow Google’s requirements is a good start if you hope to get access to this information!

Some of the requirements are also somewhat generic/vague, and may not fully apply to car dealers.  For example, “Have multiple physical store locations in eligible countries,” does not always apply.  Dealerships who only have one physical location have been known to see these metrics in their account.

From Dealer Teamwork’s experience, the relevant requirements to dealerships who have store visit conversions showing up on their account are as follows:

• Receive thousands of ad clicks and viewable impressions.
• Have a Google My Business account linked to your Google Ads account.
• Create each of your store locations in your Google My Business account (if you only have 1, have that 1 linked).
• Have at least 90% of your linked locations verified in Google My Business (if you only have 1, have that 1 verified).
• Ensure location extensions are active in your [Google Ads] account.
• Have sufficient store visits data on the backend to attribute to ad click or viewable impressions traffic and pass our user privacy thresholds.

If you have multiple store locations, make sure to abide by the full list of requirements set forth by Google.

What are the limitations of Google Ads store visit conversions?

As previously mentioned, meeting the minimum requirements for store visit conversion eligibility do not always guarantee that you have access to these metrics.  This can be frustrating for car dealers since this is such a good measure of your Google Ads campaigns’ ROI.

If you meet all the minimum requirements and you still don’t see store visits, there may be other external factors preventing you from seeing this metric:

• Data privacy protection – in order to protect shopper’s privacy, store visit data is reported anonymously, and it cannot be tied to an individual person.  Google counts store visits from users who are opted into location history sharing.  Plus, it plugs this data into an algorithm that can determine store visits from non-opted in users that show similar behavior.  If Google cannot protect the privacy of shoppers while providing advertisers with this data, you will not be eligible to see this metric.  That plays into the requirement for a large number of clicks and viewable impressions.
• Data confidence level – related to the need for larger volumes of data to work with, if Google cannot determine store visits with a high-level of confidence, this data will not be available to you.  This ensures higher accuracy of this metric, which helps you assess ROI with more confidence.  This is also why Google recommends using store visit reporting once it reaches 100+ store visits.  After this threshold, Google’s algorithm is more precise.  Not having store visit conversions available does not necessarily mean you had less than 100 in the measured timeframe.  It could mean that Google could not calculate with enough confidence to share the metrics with you.
• Location & size limitations – it is not explicitly stated by Google, but one can assume that location and size of your dealership can play a factor in your eligibility since it uses location information to calculate store visits.  For example, if your dealership is in an area with poor WIFI/cell reception Google most likely cannot register someone visiting your store. Or if your dealership shares a lot/building with other businesses, Google needs to be able to verify with confidence that people are visiting your business versus others.  Google does not specifically outline these factors, so this is not a complete list.  However, these and similar factors are still good to keep in mind when considering limitations.

The good news is, Google understands how valuable this metric is, so they are constantly refining it to ensure it is available to as many dealers as possible.

Google may be able to help you find the reason you are not eligible if you have met all the minimum requirements, and if you have confirmed the limitations don’t apply to you.  If you have an account manager at Google, you can reach out to them, or if you are logged into your Google Ads account, you can reach out for help here.

How do I see store visit conversions in my Google Ads account?

If you’re a Dealer Teamwork customer, you have MPOP® Analytics reports.  If you have store visit conversions showing on your Google Ads account, your MPOP® Analytics dashboard and monthly recap PDF report will pull in that information directly from Google Ads.

Another easy way to see store visit conversions is directly in your Google Ads account.  There are a few different ways to get to this information. Google has a predefined report set up for viewing store visit conversions.  To access this data while logged into your Google Ads account:

1. In the top menu area, click “Reports”.
2. From the dropdown, hover over “Predefined Reports (Dimensions)”.
3. Another dropdown menu appears.  Hover over “Conversions”.
4. Another dropdown menu appears.  Click “Store visit”

From here, you can modify the time period to view the desired time frame and adjust other fields as you see fit.  Note: Google recommends that businesses with longer selling cycles use a 30-day window for measuring store visit conversions.  This means that Google will continue attributing a store visit conversion for 30-days after someone clicked or viewed an ad, meaning, reports will be delayed 30 days from the date(s) you are viewing.

You can also modify the columns that show up in Google Ads’ “statistics tables” (i.e. the default results windows in Google Ads that display when you are viewing metrics for campaigns, ad groups, etc.).  If you want to take this extra step and do more advanced data analysis, you can find instructions to add the store visit conversions column to your Google Ads reporting here.

When in doubt, you can always contact your Dealer Teamwork Account Manager for help!