Google notifies publishers that Google Analytics will no longer report on data from store visits at the end of October, although data will stop being generated, past data will still be accessible.
“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,” Google said in their recent blog post.
Google Analytics “store visit” is the number of visitors that visited a physical location after browsing a website. Google monitors the behavior of people whose phones have location history enabled to collect information on store visits.
Google said that only companies whose Google Analytics property is linked to a Google Ads account can see reports on store visits after the implementation of the announcement which means businesses aren’t losing the information because Google Ads will keep tracking store visits even after Google Analytics stops doing so.
By the end of the month, if the users use Google Analytics to keep track of customer visits to their stores, they’ll need to move to Google Ads.
Meanwhile, reportedly, through a modification to a Google Analytics help page, this announcement was secretly released, however, Charles Farina of Adswerve noticed the update and posted his discovery on his LinkedIn account.