Google Ads Not Tracking
Shopify Purchases?

Usually one of seven things: the purchase action isn't Primary, the Google & YouTube app is off or linked to the wrong account, an old tag died with the old checkout, the ad click gets lost before the sale, consent is blocking the tag, transaction IDs aren't unique, or the orders never went through your online checkout. The fix: one purchase source (normally the app), one Primary purchase action, Enhanced Conversions on, consent tested both ways, then a test order checked.

Check it isn't hiding before you assume it's broken. Google Ads only puts a sale in the main Conversions column if the conversion action is Primary and belongs to a goal your campaign uses. Secondary actions still record, in the All conv. column where nobody looks. And a campaign with its own goals that leave out Purchases will show zero conversions however much it sells.

Timing catches people too. Conversions are reported against the day of the ad click, not the day of the order, and can take hours to appear.

How to check: Goals, then Conversions, then Summary. Is your purchase action Primary, what does its tracking status say, and do your campaigns use the Purchases goal? Then add All conv. to your campaign view. If All conv. has the sales and Conversions doesn't, you've found it.

How to fix: make exactly one purchase action Primary and put the Purchases goal back into each campaign's goals. Exactly one, because two Primary purchase actions is how you end up counting every sale twice.

Shopify's Google & YouTube app is the easiest way to track Google Ads purchases. It runs the Google tag through Shopify's customer events, sends purchases, add to carts and checkout starts to conversion actions in your account, and keeps working when Shopify changes the checkout. It's what I'd use for most stores.

It also breaks quietly. Conversion tracking can be switched off in the app. It can be linked to a different Google Ads account from the one you advertise in. And its pixel can be throttled: since January 2026, app pixels default to a setting Shopify calls Optimized, which lets Shopify limit or pause a pixel it decides isn't pulling its weight.

How to check: in the app, confirm the linked Google Ads account ID is the one you run ads in, conversion tracking is on, and see which action purchases go to. Then Settings, Customer events: is the Google & YouTube pixel connected, and what does its Data setting say?

How to fix: link the right account, send purchases to the Primary action, and set the app pixel's data mode to Always on. Then make sure no old manual tag is running alongside it, because the app plus a GTM purchase tag is the classic route to double counting.

For years, Google Ads purchase tags on Shopify lived in the Additional scripts box on the order status page, or in checkout.liquid on Plus. Both are gone. Plus stores moved to Checkout Extensibility in 2024 and 2025, and everyone else's thank you and order status pages were upgraded on 26 August 2026. Any tag in the old places stopped the day your store switched. GTM in your theme can't step in either, because the theme doesn't run on checkout pages.

How to check: if conversions fell off a cliff on one day and orders didn't, compare that date with your checkout upgrade. Then list where your purchase tag actually lives now. If the answer is "a box that no longer runs", that's it.

How to fix: purchase tracking has to come through Shopify's customer events now, either the app or a custom pixel listening for checkout_completed. That event fires once per checkout, normally on the thank you page but on the first upsell page if you use a post-purchase upsell app. More in what Checkout Extensibility broke.

Google Ads only counts a purchase it can tie to an ad click. The link is the gclid, a click ID Google adds to your landing page URL, which the Google tag keeps in a cookie on your domain until checkout. Lose it and the tag can fire on every order while Google Ads records almost nothing.

Three things lose it: auto-tagging switched off, redirects that strip URL parameters, and tracking inside Shopify's custom pixel sandbox, where tags can't read the landing page URL or keep cookies the normal way. GTM in a custom pixel is the usual culprit, see what the sandbox breaks. GTM in the theme also needs a Conversion Linker tag.

How to check: confirm auto-tagging is on. Open a landing page with ?gclid=test on the URL, check the parameter survives, and look in your browser's developer tools for a _gcl_aw cookie on your store's domain.

How to fix: auto-tagging on, redirects fixed, GTM out of the custom pixel. Then turn on Enhanced Conversions, which sends a hashed (scrambled, one-way) copy of the customer's email with each purchase so Google can match sales the cookie missed. In the app it's a switch under Google Ads settings, plus accepting Google's customer data terms.

UK visitors get a cookie banner, and Google expects Consent Mode v2 so its tags know what they're allowed to do. When someone declines, the tags stop using cookies. Set up properly, they still send a cookieless signal and Google can model some missing conversions, if your account qualifies. Set up badly, the tags never get a yes from anyone and purchases quietly disappear.

On Shopify, your banner has to feed Shopify's customer privacy settings, because that's what its pixels listen to. A banner that doesn't talk to Shopify, or a custom pixel without the consent code Shopify says it needs, leaves Google with the wrong answer.

How to check: did conversions drop when the banner went in? In a private window, accept, place a test order and watch it in Tag Assistant. Repeat, declining. Consent states should be sent both times, with a full conversion on the accept path.

How to fix: one banner, connected to Shopify's customer privacy settings, passing all four signals: ad_storage, analytics_storage, ad_user_data and ad_personalization. You'll still lose the people who say no. That's the price of doing it properly. More in why consent mode made conversions drop.

A transaction ID is the order number your tag sends with each purchase. Google Ads uses it to throw away duplicates: if one conversion action receives the same transaction ID twice, the second isn't counted. Useful, right up until the ID stops being unique.

A hand-built tag that sends a fixed value, or an ID left over from testing, gets the first purchase counted and every one after it rejected. Conversions flatline, orders don't.

How to check: place two test orders and compare the transaction_id each one sends, in Tag Assistant or your browser's network tab. They should be different, and match the Shopify orders.

How to fix: send the real Shopify order ID from the checkout_completed event, in the same format every time. If you also import offline conversions, use exactly the same ID there.

Google Ads only counts purchases made in your online checkout after an ad click it can see. Plenty of Shopify orders never qualify: point of sale, draft orders you raised for a customer, subscription renewals, orders from other sales channels, and everyone who found you through organic search, email or a mate's recommendation. Compare Google Ads with all your Shopify orders and the gap was never going to close.

How to check: in Shopify's reports, filter orders down to the online store sales channel. Compare the same date range in both, one that ended at least a week ago so late conversions have landed.

How to fix: nothing to fix, just compare like with like. A steady gap is normal, because browsers and consent mean no tag sees everything. A sudden change in the gap is what tells you something broke.

If you've worked through all that and the numbers still don't add up, or you'd rather not poke around a live checkout, that's what my tracking audit is for. £500, fixed, one-off. I check the whole chain, from what Shopify fires to what Google Ads actually received, and you get a written fix list and a call to walk through it. Read-only, so nothing on your store changes while I look.

Don't leave it long. While Google Ads can't see your sales, Smart Bidding is steering your budget blind. And if the tracking's fine and it's the campaigns that need work, I do Google Ads management too.