Google advises publishers it will no longer report on store visits data in Google Analytics. Data will stop generating at the end of October, though historical data will remain available.
This announcement was quietly rolled out via an update to a Google Analytics help page.
The update was spotted by Charles Farina of Adswerve, who shared his discovery on LinkedIn:
The notice reads:
“On 10/31/2022, Store Visits reporting will be discontinued. As of this date, new Store Visits reporting will not be generated. Historical Store Visits reporting will remain available. Please reach out to your account manager if you have any questions.”
Store visits in Google Analytics is an estimate of the number of people who visited a physical location after visiting its website.
Google tracks store visit data by following the activity of people with location history enabled on their phones.
Reports on store visits are only available to businesses with their Google Analytics property linked to a Google Ads account.
That means businesses aren’t losing the data, as Google Ads will continue reporting on store visits after it’s discontinued in Google Analytics.
If you use Google Analytics to monitor store visit data, you’ll have to switch to Google Ads by the end of the month.
Other than consulting a different report to track the data, there should be no disruptions due to this change.
Source: Google
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