As we all know, the buying process is often more complicated than simply visiting a store, picking something out and skipping over to the register. Take shoes for example. Websites make it possible to virtually “wear” the shoes. Customers can see shoes in various sizes, colors and materials. They can read reviews, compare prices …just about anything but smell the leather (certainly, Google is working on this.) Shoes can and are bought online but some customers need to see shoes on their feet, feel their toes wiggle around and smell that brand spanking new leather. Too bad you can’t track a customer’s behavior once they leave the comfort of their screen and visit the store. Right?

Wrong! With Google Adwords, in addition to tracking all of website metrics that you should be tracking such as time on site, pages viewed, leads generated and sales conversions made, you can now track customer in-store visits. Yes, you heard that right, we’re talking visits to the ol’ bricks n’ morter.

Can you venture a guess as to how the world Google is doing this? Here’s where the geeks at AdEdge jump in and we’ll give you a hint. Smart Phones. Google knows exactly where your customers are. And we’re no longer just talking about a city, a street or even an address. Since Google has been mapping out the size and structure of many stores in Google Maps, they can now tell when a paid search customer visits your store, how long they are there and even in some cases, what parts of the store they visit. Google uses GPS location and WIFI signals overlayed on top of Google Maps to figure all of this out.

They can even tell if your customers are window shopping. A quick glance in the store or window shopping outside the store is not considered an in-store visit in Google’s metrics. Google AdWords takes into consideration the length of the visit. Employees who spend long hours in the store are not considered visitors in Google’s metrics.

The in-store conversion meter is just one more way to track the relative success of campaigns, groups, ads and keywords within a paid search campaign. If you’re going to track in-store visits, don’t forget to generate in-store visits by using two powerful AdWords targeting features: Location Extensions and Location Targeting. A geographically relevant paid search effort is more relevant, more memorable to your customer, more cost-effective and will always improve in-store visits. The Internet may be “the next best thing to being there” but nothing beats a customer visiting your store.

Ad extensions boost clickthrough rates — these extra links and lines of copy make your ads more visible and more relevant at the same time. And when you improve your visibility and relevance, you increase your clickthrough rate (CTR). Here are four of the extensions available and how to make the best use of them:

Ad Extension No. 1: Sitelinks. If your ad is showing in one of the top three premium spots, you can show sitelink extensions. These appear as additional links underneath your main ad. They don’t cost any extra, they offer more specific and relevant options for your prospect to click on, and they let you take visitors directly to the most relevant page. Best of all, they take up more space on the Google results page, pushing your competitors and the organic search listings further down and out of the way. Let’s say your website sells a particular brand of men’s shirts. You bid on the brand name as a keyword and write an ad that specifically offers a deal on long-sleeve crewnecks. With sitelinks, you can also add in three or four additional links in your ad that take visitors to offers for turtlenecks, short sleeve shirts or even hoodies, all from the same brand. Or you can highlight other information that may be of particular interest to the searcher, such as your “About Us” page, or your “Shipping and Returns Policy” page.

Ad Extension No. 2: Call Extensions. In late 2013, Google adjusted their editorial guidelines so you can no longer include a phone number in the headline or text of your ad. That’s actually a good thing, because the phone number option is now available through the call extensions feature instead. Activate this, and the phone number of your choice will appear underneath your ad as an additional free line. That buys you extra space for ad copy and allows your ad to catch more eyeballs by taking up more space on the results page. Call extensions are especially powerful when they show on mobile phones: You can set it so users click on your phone number and connect to you directly from your ad. That’s particularly handy if you have a site that doesn’t display well on mobile devices; better still, if the primary call-to-action on your landing page is to call your phone number. Your contact number will show at the top of your ad in place of your headline, highlighted in blue to indicate that it’s clickable.

Ad Extension No. 3: Location. This is similar to call extensions except that, instead of showing your contact phone number, Google will show your physical location. This is an excellent feature for local brick-and-mortar businesses that want to increase foot traffic to their location.

Ad Extension No. 4: Reviews. This specifically refers to reviews, not by individual buyers, but by reputable media outlets or blogs. This is another extension that’s tricky to set up. To qualify for this, you’ll need the URL of the webpage that contains your review, then either select a direct quote or write a paraphrased version of no more than 67 characters, including the source name. You then need to provide Google with the URL of the third-party site on which the review can be found. And you’ll need to post the same quote on your landing page. If you’re willing to do the dance, once you activate it, this extension will display the review quote as an extra line below your ad.