Google has quietly expanded Customer Match beyond CRM fields. A revised Google Ads Help Center page now lists eight columns for manual file uploads: Email, Phone, First Name, Last Name, Country, Zip, User IP address and User interaction timestamp. Search Engine Land reported the change on September 25, but the help page has no publication date, so the exact release timing is unknown.
The IP field is the headline change. Advertisers can pass IPv4 or IPv6 values as a plain, unhashed string. Google’s instruction is blunt: “Pass as a plain, unhashed string (don’t hash).” Email, phone and name fields keep the existing SHA256 hashing flow.
A European carve-out
IP matching is not supported for end users in the EEA, UK or Switzerland. That covers 32 countries, and because a timestamp cannot travel without an IP address, the same exclusion applies to the new interaction time column.
The page does not explain how Google handles European rows. Advertisers “need to exclude those users from IP address sharing,” according to Search Engine Land, and must ensure data collection includes suitable disclosures and consent. The legal status of IP addresses in Europe is still contested, with a German court referring questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2025.
IP-only lists are now possible
An IP address can be uploaded with or without PII, so a list can be built from nothing but IPs and interaction times. Mobile device IDs remain a separate case and must be the only column in their file.
That pushes Customer Match beyond CRM data into server logs, analytics exports and form-submission records. A missing timestamp changes the match: Google defaults to the “latest known” user of that address, which may not be your customer.
The documentation is messy
The Help Center is inconsistent in ways that decide whether a file uploads cleanly. The timestamp column is named three ways: “User interaction timestamp,” “User Engagement timestamp” and “User Interaction timestamp.” It does not state whether headers are case-sensitive or which spelling the uploader parses.
The page describes an earliest and a last user timestamp but supplies only one header. It also says files “must contain these 8 column headers,” then says a single field such as email can be uploaded alone.
Why this matters
Google has spent 2026 closing older data pipes. The Data Manager API added IP ingestion in May, and the manual upload screen now follows. Google promised IP signals would help lift Customer Match match rates from the third quarter of 2026, but no figure has been released to show whether that happened.
- Use the timestamp. An IP alone is a weak identity signal and can match the wrong user.
- Filter restricted regions. Exclude EEA, UK and Switzerland rows and review consent disclosures.
- Do not trust match rate. Google says a Customer Match match rate “isn’t an indicator of list performance.”
Accuracy is unproven
IP address identity has had a bruising year. Third-party data measured IP-to-postal address linkages at 13% accuracy, and only 23% of residential IP addresses reached their intended geographic target. Google has published no accuracy data for its own signed-in user matching.
For performance marketers, the practical move is a controlled pilot. Pair IPs with timestamps, exclude restricted territories, test the exact header, and measure lift against downstream conversions rather than audience size.
Source: PPC Land
