Customer Match UK: IP Matching Excluded. What to Do Instead

If you read the PPC press in late September, you saw the headline: Google Customer Match now accepts IP addresses for better matching.

If your customers are in the UK, that change does nothing for you. Google's own help page says so.

A second change is now doing the rounds. PPC Land reports a Google email to Data Manager users saying Data Manager will stop requiring pre-hashed data from 16 November 2026. Google has not confirmed this publicly. Its developer guides, updated on 21 October, still say to hash emails and phone numbers.

Neither change fixes the part you control most. That is the quality of the customer data you upload. This post covers both changes, what they mean in plain terms, and a first-party data checklist you can work through in order of effort.

Change 1: IP matching, but not for UK users

Google's Customer Match formatting page now lists a “User IP address” column. You send it “as a plain, unhashed string (don't hash)”. You can add a “User interaction timestamp”, but timestamps “can't be sent without an accompanying IP address”. If you send an IP with no timestamp, Google says “the system defaults to the 'latest known' user of that IP”.

Then comes the line that matters for UK advertisers:

“IP matching isn't supported for end users located in the EEA, UK or Switzerland (CH).”

The Customer Match policy page repeats it: “Ads doesn't support IP and timestamp matching in the EEA, UK or Switzerland.”

Google's Data Manager API guide says “match rate improvements from these signals are expected to begin in October 2026.” So some advertisers will see match-rate claims and wonder why theirs did not move. The same guide repeats that IP matching is not supported for users in the UK. If your list is UK customers, the feature does not apply to them.

Change 2: Data Manager may stop requiring pre-hashed data from 16 November

PPC Land reports an email from Google, posted on LinkedIn on 18 October by Anthony Higman. The email says that from 16 November 2026, Google Ads Data Manager “will no longer require hashed customer data (SHA-256)”. Instead, it will accept encrypted data by default. Google would then decrypt, tidy and match it “inside a hardware-isolated trusted execution environment”. PPC Land says this covers CRM connections, cloud storage, file uploads and the Data Manager API.

What we can and cannot say today:

Google has not confirmed it publicly. There is no help page, release note or developer blog post on it. Google's guide to Data Manager's encrypted import flow still lists “Hash the PII fields using the SHA-256 hash function” as a step. For ordinary file uploads, Data Manager already hashes your data for you. So the end of the pre-hashing rule should matter most to API and encrypted-import users. The email does say the new encrypted processing covers direct file uploads too.
The email names no country exclusions. We do not know whether it applies to UK accounts in the same way. Nobody should assume it does or does not.
It may not mean hashed data stops working. PPC Land says “no longer require” suggests hashed uploads stay accepted. The email does not say so.
The secure matching part is not new. Google says confidential matching is “enabled by default, and at no cost to advertisers”. AdExchanger reported it became the default in September 2024.

If you run a custom API integration, our post on Google Ads API conversion data shifts covers the developer side. For everyone else, the question stays the same. Is the data you upload accurate, complete and collected with permission?

Why data quality is the UK lever

Customer Match and enhanced conversions work the same way. You give Google contact details your customers gave you. Google matches them to signed-in users. Better data usually means more matches.

For standard uploads, Google will hash the data for you (see the FAQ below). If you upload through Data Manager, it also tidies the formatting. Neither can fix a wrong, old or incomplete record. Google's formatting rules show what clean data looks like:

Emails: lowercase, with spaces trimmed. Remove full stops before the @ in gmail.com and googlemail.com addresses.
Phone numbers: E.164 format, with the country code. A UK mobile stored as “07700 900123” needs to become “+447700900123”. CRMs often store numbers as typed.
Names: lowercase, with no prefixes such as “Mr” or suffixes.
Country and postcode: sent as plain values, not hashed.

All of it is in your control. Neither change above touches it.

What a poor list quietly costs

A weak list does not throw an error.

Take a hypothetical lead-gen business with 4,000 past customers in its CRM. Half the phone numbers lack a country code. A few hundred emails are old work addresses. The list uploads fine. Google matches fewer people than it could. Your “exclude existing customers” audience misses some of them. So you may keep paying for clicks from people who already buy from you. Demand Gen lookalike segments seeded from this list may be thinner than they look.

The same goes for enhanced conversions for leads. Google describes it as an upgraded offline conversion import. It “uses user-provided data, such as email addresses” to improve “accuracy and bidding performance”. If the form email does not match the CRM email when the lead closes, and no GCLID travels with the lead, Google may not be able to link the sale to the click. Smart Bidding then learns from less of your real sales data.

This is wasted spend you cannot see in the account. If you suspect it, our wasted spend analysis checks whether your conversion data is strong enough to trust.

Before you start: check the policy basics

This is not legal advice. Take advice on UK GDPR from your own adviser. But Google's Customer Match policy sets some clear rules of its own:

First-party only. You “may only upload customer information that you collected in the first-party context”, such as from your website, app or shop. No bought lists.
Privacy policy. It must disclose “that you share customer data with third parties to perform services on your behalf”.
Consent. Google says to “obtain consent for such sharing where required by law or any applicable Google policies”, including its EU user consent policy.
Account standing. You need “a good history of policy compliance” and “a good payment history”.

Google's policy page splits access in two. “All policy-compliant advertisers can use Customer Match ... in the 'Observation' setting and for Exclusions.” The 'Targeting' setting and manual bid adjustments need “90 days of Google Ads history and more than $50,000 total lifetime spend”. So most smaller accounts can still exclude existing customers and observe list performance. They may not be able to target lists directly. If consent for your tags is also unclear, read our guide to Google Ads consent mode in the UK.

A first-party data checklist, in order of effort

For a business with 5 to 100 staff. Start at the top. Stop when the effort stops paying.

Under an hour

Find your lists. Where do customer emails and phone numbers live? CRM, shop platform, booking system, spreadsheets? Write it down.
Check your privacy policy. Does it say you share customer data with third parties, such as advertising platforms, to provide services? If not, raise it with whoever owns the policy.
Check Customer Match access. Every policy-compliant account can use lists for Observation and Exclusions. Targeting and manual bid adjustments need 90 days of history and more than $50,000 lifetime spend.

A morning

Fix phone formats. Export your list and convert UK numbers to E.164 (+44, no leading zero). Fix it in the CRM too, so it stays fixed.
Clean emails. Lowercase, trim spaces, remove obvious duplicates and test addresses.
Split the list. Separate current customers, lapsed customers and leads that never bought. Each is a different audience.

A day or two

Record where each contact came from. Add CRM fields for the source and date, and how you told them about advertising use. If you cannot say where a contact came from, leave them out of uploads.
Set up enhanced conversions for leads. Capture the user-provided email on your lead form with the Google tag or Google Tag Manager. Then import closed leads through Data Manager. Google says: “include GCLIDs with your uploaded events whenever possible.” From April 2026, Google says it accepts user-provided data from tags, Data Manager and API connections together. Check what your account shows.

Ongoing

Connect, do not upload by hand. A scheduled CRM connection through Data Manager keeps lists current. A one-off CSV goes out of date as customers change.
Check the conversion actions it feeds. Status, source and primary or secondary. Our Google Ads conversion tracking audit and tracking audit checklist walk through it.
Use value, not just volume. Once the basics hold, rank customers by value and seed lists from the best ones. Our LTV segmentation guide shows how.

The takeaway

Google keeps changing how Customer Match data gets processed. The IP upgrade skips the UK. The hashing change is reported but not yet published. Google has not stated its UK scope. Neither one makes a messy list better.

Clean phone numbers, current emails, a recorded source for every contact and working enhanced conversions will help whatever Google ships next. That is measurement you can trust, and it starts in your CRM, not in the ad account.

FAQ

Do I need to hash my Customer Match data myself?

Not for a standard upload. Google's Customer Match help says you can hash it yourself with SHA-256, “or Google Ads will hash it for you”. Data Manager's guide says its “smart hashing is automatic”. Pre-hashing is needed today in the Data Manager API and in Data Manager's encrypted file-import flow. PPC Land reports a Google email saying that requirement ends on 16 November 2026. Google has not confirmed it publicly yet.

What is the quickest way to improve Customer Match results in the UK?

Fix your data. Put phone numbers in E.164 format with the +44 country code. Clean and lowercase emails. Only upload contacts you collected yourself, with the right permissions. For more quick answers, see our Google Ads 2026 questions answered hub.

Is your conversion data good enough to trust?

Our free Wasted Spend + Tracking Confidence Check looks at where your Google Ads budget goes. It also checks whether your conversion data is strong enough to bid on, including how leads and sales get back into Google Ads. When we manage accounts, we charge a flat fee, never a percentage of your spend. So we have no reason to tell you to spend more.

Get your free wasted spend analysis

Google's Customer Match IP Upgrade Skips the UK. Here's What to Do With Your First-Party Data Instead