Google Is Pointing Performance Max at “Nearby and Ready to Visit.” Here’s What B2B Distributors Give Up When They Flip That Switch.

Google has added a setting to Performance Max called Local customer optimization, and on the surface it sounds like a gift to any business with a physical location. Turn it on for a campaign with store goals, and Google prioritizes your ads for people who are nearby and ready to visit or contact you, across Google Maps, Waze, and local Search formats. I’ve spent 20+ years in Google Ads, and I’ve learned that the more a feature promises to “find the right people for you,” the more closely I want to know what it asks you to hand over in exchange.

Here’s what the update does, where I think it quietly shrinks your control and visibility, and why B2B distributors and manufacturers with branches, will-call counters, and showrooms should treat it as a test, not a default.

1. What Google Actually Announced

Per Search Engine Land’s coverage of Google’s help documentation, Local customer optimization is available for Performance Max campaigns using store goals, meaning offline conversion goals such as store visits, directions, and store sales. In a new campaign it appears as a toggle during setup. In an existing campaign you’ll find it under Budget and bidding optimization in campaign settings. Google says you can switch it off at any time to return to standard Performance Max behavior. The coverage did not describe any new reporting tied to the feature, and it did not give a rollout timeline.

2. The Catch Most Advertisers Will Miss: Merchant Center

Google states that Local customer optimization isn’t compatible with Merchant Center. That means campaigns that rely on a product feed, or that optimize toward online conversion goals, can’t use it. You either strip the feed out or build a separate store-goal campaign. For a distributor whose best-performing Performance Max campaigns are feed-driven and organized by product line, that isn’t a minor footnote. It’s a forced choice between your catalog structure and Google’s local targeting.

3. Where I Push Back: Control and Data Visibility

Performance Max already limits what advertisers can see: no keyword-level reporting, thin placement data, and limited visibility into which audience signals are doing the work. Local customer optimization adds another layer of automated judgment about who is “ready to visit,” and Google hasn’t published how it defines that. I have three concerns.

• You can’t audit intent. “Nearby and ready to visit” is Google’s inference. A procurement manager researching a supplier from a hotel across town and a contractor on the way to your counter can look the same to the algorithm, and you won’t see the difference in the data.
• Store goals reward foot traffic, not account value. Directions and store visits are easy for Google to count. They don’t tell you whether the visitor was a $50 walk-in or a $50,000 account. Optimizing toward the easiest signal to measure is how accounts drift away from profitable orders.
• It pushes the same direction as every other recent change. Legacy Search features are being folded into AI Max with automatic migrations that Google scheduled for this fall and winter, and Local Services Ads are moving into a Performance Max campaign type in Google Ads, where Google advises advertisers to download historical reporting before their accounts transition. Each change is framed as simplification. Each one also asks you to see less.

4. Why This Matters More for B2B Distributors and Manufacturers

Most B2B buyers don’t “visit” on a whim. They request quotes, reorder from approved vendors, and decide across a buying committee over weeks. A signal built for restaurants and retail doesn’t map cleanly to that cycle. Where it can help is in a narrow case: a distributor with branch locations and a will-call or pickup business, where nearby contractors and tradespeople genuinely do walk in the door. Outside that case, the risk is that you pay for local traffic that looks great on a store-visit report and never shows up in your quote pipeline. And if your entire catalog runs through Merchant Center, turning this on means rebuilding something that already works.

5. The Playbook Before You Flip the Switch

1. Don’t touch your feed-based campaigns. Because the feature can’t coexist with Merchant Center, leave your product-line Performance Max campaigns alone and test, if at all, in a separate store-goal campaign with its own budget.
2. Audit your store goals first. Confirm what’s actually counting as a store visit or a store sale, and whether those conversions reflect real accounts or just foot traffic. If you can’t tie them to orders, don’t optimize toward them.
3. Run it as a capped, time-boxed test. Give it a small share of budget for 4 to 6 weeks, compare cost per qualified quote and order value against your current campaigns, and keep a clean baseline.
4. Keep your offline conversion import honest. Feed closed orders and qualified RFQs back into Google Ads so the algorithm learns from revenue, not just visits.
5. Protect your Search campaigns. Keep branded and high-intent keyword campaigns separate so Performance Max doesn’t absorb the demand your most controllable campaigns already capture.
6. Export your data now. Pull search term, location, and conversion reports before any account-level migration, since history doesn’t always carry over.
7. Remember the off switch. Google says you can turn the setting off at any time. Put a review date on the calendar so a test doesn’t become a permanent default.

Sources

• Search Engine Land on Local customer optimization arriving in Performance Max
• Search Engine Land on Google’s AI Max migration timeline for Search campaigns
• Search Engine Land on Local Services Ads moving into Google Ads via Performance Max

Wondering whether Performance Max is finding you real accounts or just foot traffic? Let’s look at your actual numbers.