Google has posted a new Performance Max help document describing local customer optimization for store-goal campaigns, timed to its shift of Local Service Ads into Google’s primary Ads platform. The setting prioritizes potential customers who are near a business or already interested in its area and who look ready to act, whether that means visiting or making contact right away.
Google’s documentation ties the targeting to specific moments: a shopper navigating in real time, planning a route, or searching for a nearby service on Waze, Google Maps, or Google Search. The linked Performance Max for store goals document adds that the same campaign format also runs on YouTube and Gmail, in addition to Google’s Display Network inventory.
Google also specifies a limit: local customer optimization does not work alongside online campaign goals or Performance Max campaigns that pull products from Merchant Center. That restriction pushes retailers toward a binary choice between online-focused and store-focused automation inside the same campaign type.
Search Engine Roundtable reported the new document on August 12. For local and multi-location advertisers, the change pulls proximity targeting further into an automated campaign type, leaving less manual control over which nearby searches trigger a store visit.
Reported by Barry Schwartz for Search Engine Roundtable on August 12, 2026.
