Adam Hafez
Key takeaways
- Google Ads expanded Customer Match file headers to eight columns by adding User IP address and User interaction timestamp.
- Unlike email addresses and phone numbers, IP addresses and timestamps must be provided as raw, unhashed strings.
- Timestamps cannot be submitted alone and must be accompanied by a corresponding IP address in the upload file.
- The feature is strictly prohibited for users in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.
- When an IP address has no timestamp, Google matches it to the latest known user associated with that address.
Google Ads has updated its Customer Match data specifications to support raw IP addresses and user interaction timestamps, expanding the standard upload template from six columns to eight.
The change, detailed in updated Google Ads Help documentation and reported by Search Engine Land on 25 September 2026 in Google Ads expands Customer Match with IP address and timestamp matching, aims to increase first-party match rates as third-party cookies decline.
What changed in the template?
Advertisers using Customer Match to upload offline conversion or audience lists can now include two
new header fields: User IP address and User interaction timestamp.
While traditional identifiers like email addresses, phone numbers, and physical mailing addresses must be hashed with SHA-256 before ingestion, the new network parameters require raw strings. IP addresses must not be hashed, and timestamps must use ISO-8601 formatting with timezone offsets.
| Identifier | Upload format | Encryption requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Email / Phone | Normalized text | SHA-256 hashing required |
| First / Last Name | Normalized text | SHA-256 hashing required |
| User IP address | IPv4 or IPv6 string | Raw text (no hashing) |
| Interaction timestamp | ISO-8601 string | Raw text (no hashing) |
Where is this feature restricted?
Google’s policy guidelines prohibit uploading IP addresses or timestamps for customers located in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom, or Switzerland.
Under regional privacy regulations, IP addresses represent personal identifiable information that requires explicit consent for ad targeting. Advertisers operating multinational databases must filter European records out of the IP columns before uploading files to Google Ads.
How does Google pair IP addresses?
Timestamps are optional but cannot be submitted without an accompanying IP address. When both are present, Google correlates the network interaction against its internal activity logs at that exact moment.
If an IP address is submitted without a timestamp, Google maps the record to the latest known user associated with that network address. Advertisers should review data handling agreements with legal teams before syncing raw network identifiers.
The evidence
- Type
- announcement
- Impact
- medium
- Affects
- Customer Match, First-party audience lists, Offline conversion tracking, Data privacy compliance
Sources
- 1.Google Ads expands Customer Match with IP address and timestamp matching - Search Engine Land, September 25, 2026Primary
- 2.Format guidelines for Customer Match customer data file - Google Ads Help, September 25, 2026
Frequently asked questions
Do IP addresses need to be hashed for Customer Match?
No. Google Ads requires IP addresses and interaction timestamps to be uploaded in plain, unhashed text format, unlike email addresses which require SHA-256 hashing.
Can advertisers upload IP addresses for European users?
No. Google's documentation explicitly prohibits uploading IP addresses or timestamps for users located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland.
How does Google resolve an IP address without a timestamp?
When an IP address is uploaded without a timestamp, Google matches the record to the most recent user observed using that IP address across Google services.
About the author
Founder, UpgradIQ FZC LLC
Adam Hafez works on technical SEO and search measurement: how pages get crawled, indexed, ranked and now quoted by answer engines. He founded UpgradIQ, which reads Google Search Console and GA4 to tie ranking movement back to the changes that caused it. He publishes what the data supports and states the limits of it.
- Technical SEO
- Search Console and GA4 measurement
- Answer engine optimization
- Structured data
The briefing
Only what actually changed in search, delivered in full by RSS, Atom or JSON feed.
FollowRelated reading
Google adds a main content section to its helpful content page
Google's people-first content page now defines main content and lists four attributes raters assess: effort, originality, talent or skill, and accuracy.
How Google turns a query into results, per a Barcelona recap
A ROAST recap of Mueller and Illyes in Barcelona: synonym expansion, AI fan-out queries missing from Search Console, and retrieval before ranking.
Google's AI contribution pilot pays about 100 publishers, report says
The Information reports Google pays about 100 publishers in its AI contribution pilot, with payments for several smaller sites under 0.1% of ad revenue.
Cloudflare moves Monetization Gateway and Pay Per Use into beta
Cloudflare put two AI payment products into beta on 30 September 2026: per-request charges for agents, and monthly payouts to publishers for reported use.