Google has added two columns to Customer Match uploads in Google Ads: the customer’s IP address and a timestamp for when they interacted with your business. Both now appear in Google’s instructions for uploading a customer list.
For a service business, that could be useful. Plenty of good customers filled out one form or booked once online and never gave you an email or phone number that matches their Google account. An IP address recorded at that moment gives Google one more piece of information to try to match.
Google hasn’t said how much it helps, though, and the data has to be right before it’s worth uploading.
What Google’s instructions say
- The IP address is the one the customer’s device used at the moment they interacted with you. Send it as plain text, not hashed. IPv4 and IPv6 both work.
- The timestamp is optional, and it can’t be sent without an IP address in the same row. Without a timestamp, Google matches the IP to the latest known user of that address.
- You can send an IP address with or without email, phone or name, and you can keep sending those without an IP.
- IP matching isn’t supported for people located in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland. Google’s Customer Match policy says the same and tells advertisers to leave IP data out for those regions.
Google’s page doesn’t give a launch date or say how much these columns improve matching. There’s also a small snag in the documentation. The list of headers calls the new column “User Interaction timestamp”, while the section that explains timestamps says to use “User Engagement timestamp”. Check the page for the current header name when you build your file.
A quick refresher on Customer Match
Customer Match lets you upload information customers gave you directly so Google can match it to their accounts. You can then reach those people again, and on Search and the Shopping tab you can adjust your bids for them. Google’s overview lists Search, the Shopping tab, YouTube, Gmail and Display. A list needs at least 100 members added or updated in the last 540 days to stay usable.
To use it at all, Google wants a good history of policy compliance and payments. The data also has to be your own, collected on your website, in your app, at your location or anywhere else customers shared it with you directly.
Three things to check before you add the columns
Where the IP address comes from. It should be the IP recorded when the customer filled out your form or booked online, with the matching time. Many form and CRM tools can store both. Some don’t by default, and a lead you typed in after a phone call won’t have one at all. Look at a handful of real records before you plan around this.
It also helps to remember what an IP address is: the address of an internet connection, not a person. Everyone on the same home or office Wi-Fi can share one, and phone connections change. Google’s instructions say that if you send an IP without a timestamp, it matches the address to whoever used it most recently. The timestamp is what ties the address to the specific visit you recorded.
What your privacy policy says. Google’s policy requires your privacy policy to say that you share customer data with third parties who perform services for you, and it requires consent where the law or Google’s policies call for it. If your policy was written before you ever uploaded a customer list, read it again now.
Who’s in the file. Leave the IP columns empty for anyone located in the EEA, the UK or Switzerland. A US service business won’t have many, but a seasonal homeowner or an overseas property owner can end up on your list.
Start with one list
Pick a list that’s easy to judge, like past customers you’d welcome back for maintenance or seasonal work. Export it from your CRM using the same fields every time, add the IP and time only where you trust them, and keep a note of what you uploaded and when. That way the next upload can be compared with this one.
Most of this work happens before Google ever sees the file. Glory’s CRM and landing page work sends web leads straight into the CRM and sets up the records they land in, which is where a clean submission time and source need to live if you want to use them later.
Try it on ten recent web leads today. If each one has an IP address and a submission time you trust, you’re ready to test the new columns on a past-customer list. If they don’t, fix how your forms capture the data first. The upload can wait a week.
Source note: The upload rules come from Google Ads Help’s Customer Match upload instructions and Google’s Customer Match policy. Channel and list-size details come from Google’s About Customer Match page. Google’s pages don’t give a launch date or a match-rate figure for the new columns. The readiness checks are Glory Digital Solutions’ own guidance.