What Are Google Hosted Conversions?

Updated: Jan 14, 2025

Understanding Google Hosted Local Actions for Businesses

Local Actions in Google Ads for Businesses are conversions that are counted when potential customers view an online advertisement and complete an action, like visiting the advertisers’ physical address. Local conversions are directly connected to Google’s other products and services, such as Google Maps and Google Ads. For example, you see an advertisement for a Jiffy Lube Oil Change, a couple of days later you select directions to the nearest location on Google Maps. Google will then track your activity and count that action within Google Ads.

Confused by a jumble of marketing data? Hosted local actions are just one piece of the puzzle. At Top Draw, we create comprehensive measurement plans that go beyond the basics. We’ll track key metrics, analyze campaign performance, and provide clear insights into what’s actually driving results for your business. Stop guessing and start knowing! Schedule your free consultation today with Top Draw and let’s build a data-driven measurement plan that brings clarity to your marketing efforts.

Detailed Overview of Six Key Local Conversion Actions

Clicks to call: Clicks on the “Call” button
Local actions – Directions: Clicks on the “Get directions” button
Local actions – Website visits: Clicks on the website link
Local actions – Other engagements: Clicks on other tracked user actions (for example: share location, save, etc.) 
Local actions – Orders: Clicks on the “Order” button
Local actions – Menu views: Clicks on the menu link

How Google Hosted Location Actions Enhance Ad Tracking

Google Hosted Location Actions are conversions tracked by enabling Google Ads location extensions in an AdWords account. This allows all the above-mentioned actions to track any Google location-based ad or service after an ad interaction, such as Google My Business. The implementation of these conversions was confirmed through a phone call with Google, and these actions cannot be removed or paused within the account.

Google likely added these conversions to accounts to support the automated smart and local campaigns announced at the Google Marketing Live 2018 Keynote.

Kim Spalding explained that these Smart campaigns were created to help small businesses do more by making campaigns simple, saving advertisers time, and focusing on driving results. “When small businesses grow, so do our communities,” (Spalding, K. 2018). Phillip McDonnell continued to elaborate on Google’s innovation rollout of local campaigns, leading to simpler experiences for consumers. Local campaigns promote local businesses across local networks and focus on achieving online, as well as offline, performance goals.

Google Marketing Live, 2018

Locating and Analysing Local Action Conversions in AdWords

Google-hosted local action conversions can be found in the settings conversions. Even though they are locked, there is no need to worry. These conversions only show under the “all conversions” column, and you can segment by conversion action to see a more detailed breakdown.

Tracking Multi-Location Businesses with Per-Store Reports

If you have multiple locations, you can see the per-store report, which shows the number of people visiting your physical store location either during or after viewing your online advertisement. These conversions will show more specific data from the different store locations, like website visits, phone calls, and driving directions to the physical address. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can also be used to supplement this data.

Top Draw will continue to monitor Google and its new product launches to determine how to better influence this for local businesses. More to come as we continue to test and research.