Personalizing your site for each visitor

A visitor who clicked a Google ad for "emergency plumbing" and a visitor who's on your site for the third time this month are not looking for the same thing. Personalization lets one page show each of them something different - without slowing the page down or flashing the wrong version first.

What you can target

Each rule can match on:

• Where they came from - which site linked them here, or a utm_source/utm_campaign from an ad or email link.
• Returning vs. first-time. Someone who's visited before sees a different call to action than someone landing for the first time.
• Device. Swap a hero for a "Call now" button on mobile.
• Location. City, region, or country, from the visitor's connection - no sign-in or permission prompt needed.
• Time of day. Show different content during business hours vs. after.

What you can change

A rule swaps the text or content of one element on the page - typically a headline or a button label. You pick the element once (usually by choosing which text on the page it is), and give each rule its own replacement content.

Getting started

Open a site's settings and look for Personalization. If you don't have any rules yet, you'll see a set of suggestions based on your site's own content and the traffic it's already had - a city-in-the-headline swap, a returning-visitor message, one rule per ad campaign you've run, and a mobile "Call now" swap. Add the ones that make sense, edit the placeholder text, and they go live on your next publish.

An assistant working on your site's marketing can also suggest and set up rules for you - it starts from the same suggestions and your site's real analytics, and always asks before turning anything on unless you've given it permission to act on its own.

Checking what's working

Every rule shows how many visitors it's actually been shown to, right in the same place you manage it. There's also a quick preview: describe a visitor ("from Denver, via a search ad") and see which rule they'd see.

No flash of the wrong content

Personalization is applied before the page is shown wherever possible - a visitor from a particular city sees their version from the very first frame, not after a flicker. The one exception is "returning visitor," which can only be known once the page has started loading in their browser; even then, the swap happens as early as technically possible, before the rest of the page finishes rendering.