Google Ads conversion tracking on Shopify: what it does and what it cannot tell you

What conversion tracking does

Google's help describes it this way. A Google tag sits on your store. When someone clicks your ad, a temporary cookie is placed on their device. When they complete the action you chose, Google recognizes the cookie and records a conversion. Each action you track, such as a purchase, is a conversion action.

Three columns in your reports come out of it.

• Conversions is the number of conversions across your primary conversion actions. Google says this is the column bidding generally uses.
• Conv. value is the sum of the values of those conversions.
• Conv. value / cost is conversion value divided by cost. It is ROAS, worked out on Google's conversion value.

How to set it up with the Google & YouTube app

Shopify's help page and Google's both describe this setup. Both were read on 14 November 2026. The steps below follow them and say where they differ. Shopify's page says the channel is managed by Google, and Google's help calls the app Google-developed.

Before you start, Shopify's page asks for two things. You need an existing Google Ads account, and the Google account you connect has to be an administrator on it.

1. Install the Google & YouTube app from the Shopify App Store. In your Shopify admin, go to Sales channels › Google & YouTube, click Connect Google Account, and choose the Google account that owns your Google Ads account.
2. In the banner Just want to set up Google Ads conversion measurement?, click Get started.
3. Select your Google Ads account and connect it. On Shopify's page you click Get started in the Google Ads section, then pick the account from a drop-down list under Connect your Google Ads account. Google's page adds that the app links one Google Ads account directly. Further accounts are added by hand, with a conversion ID and label.
4. From here Shopify's page says only to follow the prompts. Google's page describes them. Under Measure conversions you get a list of Shopify events and the conversion action each one is sent to. Select Confirm to keep the suggested list, or Manage to change a line.
5. Confirm your enhanced conversions settings. Google notes that you may not need this step, depending on your account setup.
6. Check the Google tag the app lists, and select Confirm.
7. Select Complete setup. Google's page warns that you can't open the app's settings until every step is done.

Shopify's page lists a second route for stores that sync products through Google Merchant Center. It starts at the banner Advertise your products with Google Ads and connects the account in a section named Set up your Performance Max campaign. The page doesn't say what that route does about conversion measurement, so check the result as described below.

To change the list later, open the app's Settings tab and select Manage. Google's page names the section Conversion event settings in one place and Customer event settings in another.

What the setup creates in Google Ads

You don't have to create a conversion action yourself. Google's Merchant Center help says that linking the account creates a purchase conversion action in Google Ads and sets it as the account default. Six more are created as secondary actions. They are add to cart, begin checkout, page view, view item, search, and add payment info.

Google's two pages don't agree on every action. The Google Ads page says purchase, add to cart, and checkout started are all suggested and set as the account default. So look at what your own account holds.

The difference matters because of what primary and secondary mean. If add to cart is primary, the Conversions column counts carts as well as orders.

Setting	What Google's help says	Where to look
Primary or secondary	Primary actions fill the Conversions column and are used for bidding. Secondary actions are for observation and appear under All conversions.	In Google Ads, the Goals menu, then Conversions, then Summary. Edit goal changes it.
Count	Every counts each conversion after an ad interaction. One counts one per ad click. Every is the default for website actions, and Google suggests it for sales.	Click the action's name, then Edit settings, then Count.
Value	With Use different values for each conversion, each order carries its own amount. Google names a value stuck at $1.00 as a sign that it isn't selected.	The action's settings.
Enhanced conversions	Sends hashed first-party data from your store with the conversion, which can make measurement more accurate.	In the app, the Settings tab, then Google Ads settings, then Enhanced conversions.

The pages about the app don't say which Count and Value its purchase action is created with. Open the action and read both.

What the conversion value contains

The Shopify help pages read for this article don't say. Google's developer reference for the app, last updated on 28 July 2026, does. The app sends a purchase event when Shopify's checkout completed event fires. Its value takes item and order discounts into account and "does not include shipping charges and taxes". Since 24 April 2025 the value is the order's subtotal minus discounts. Tax and shipping go in separate fields.

So the conversion value is lower than the order total whenever you charge shipping or collect tax. An order with $50.00 of products after discounts, $5.00 of shipping, and $4.00 of tax totals $59.00 in Shopify. Its conversion value is $50.00.

The reference covers Google tags loaded through the app. A tag you placed another way is outside it, and Google says a Google tag inside a Shopify custom pixel is not a supported setup.

To check it on your store, add the Value / conv. column in Google Ads. It is conversion value divided by conversions. It should be close to the products in a typical order after discounts.

How to check it works

Read the conversion action's status

In Google Ads, go to Summary in the Goals menu and find the purchase action. Its Status column shows one of five states.

Status	What Google says it means
Active	Everything works as intended.
Needs attention	There is something to fix, but conversions are still being recorded.
Misconfigured	Conversions have stopped recording because of a setup error or a broken tag.
Awaiting conversions	No conversion in the last 7 days. The action may be under 48 hours old, the campaigns paused, or traffic too low.
Removed	The action was deleted or archived and tracks nothing.

Place a test order

Shopify's help has a test for any app pixel. It doesn't name the Google & YouTube app. Go to Settings › Customer events, click the button next to the app pixel, and click Test. The Shopify Pixel Helper opens on your store and lists each event as it is received. To see the purchase, place a test order. Shopify warns that customers can't place live orders while your payment provider is in test mode.

Shopify calls the event checkout completed. Google calls it purchase. On Google's side, Tag Assistant shows whether your Google tag is found on the store and which events it sent.

A test order placed without an ad click shows the event firing. By Google's description it isn't a conversion, because Google records one when it recognizes the cookie from an ad click.

Compare a day's conversions with the day's orders

The Conversions column dates a conversion by the day of the ad click, not the day of the order. For a comparison with Shopify, Google's help points to the columns named Conversions (by conv. time) and Conv. value (by conv. time).

The two numbers won't match, for three reasons.

• Google counts the orders that followed an ad interaction. Shopify has every order.
• The conversion value leaves out shipping and tax.
• Shopify's help says ad blockers can stop a web pixel from sending, and that browser tracking limits weaken the match to an ad click. Your orders in Shopify aren't affected.

The warning sign is the opposite. If Google Ads shows more purchases than Shopify has orders, look for a second tag. Google says a tag left from an earlier setup can count one purchase more than once. The other causes are in why Google Ads and Shopify report different sales.

It cannot tell you whether a campaign made money

Take a Shopify store that sells soy candles and ships every order free. In one month, one Google Ads campaign spends $1,000. Google Ads reports this.

Column in Google Ads	Figure
Cost	$1,000
Conversions	60
Conv. value	$3,000
Conv. value / cost	$3,000 ÷ $1,000 = 3.0

Three dollars back for each dollar spent. Now the same 60 orders in Shopify. Each one holds $50.00 of candles after discounts, no shipping charge, and $4.00 of sales tax, so the shopper pays $54.00. Each one costs the store $27.00 in cost of goods and $8.50 to ship.

Line	Working	Amount
Paid by shoppers	60 × $54.00	$3,240
Tax, passed on	60 × $4.00	−⁠$240
Cost of goods	60 × $27.00	−⁠$1,620
Shipping	60 × $8.50	−⁠$510
Ad spend	From Google Ads	−⁠$1,000
Profit	$3,240 − $240 − $1,620 − $510 − $1,000	−⁠$130

The campaign lost $130. Google's $3,000 is right, because 60 orders at $50.00 of products each is $3,000. That is where the sum starts, and the Conv. value column stops there. Google's list of the purchase event's fields has none for what the candles cost you. What the carrier billed you isn't what the shopper was charged for shipping, which here was nothing.

After cost of goods and shipping this store keeps $3,000 − $1,620 − $510 = $870, which is 29 cents of each dollar of conversion value. It needs $1 ÷ 0.29, about $3.45 of conversion value for each ad dollar, to break even. At 3.0 it loses money. Break-even ROAS shows how to find that figure for your store.

Google Ads does have a gross profit figure. With conversions with cart data and a cost of goods sold value on each product in your Merchant Center feed, it reports revenue minus cost of goods. Here that is $3,000 − $1,620 = $1,380, which still stops before the $510 of shipping and the $1,000 of ads. The pages read for this article do not say whether the Google & YouTube app sends your Shopify product costs to Merchant Center.

AdZoom does this sum for each Google Ads campaign from your store's own orders, and shows the profit next to the ROAS.

The order in Shopify does not name the campaign

Conversion tracking sends data one way, from your store to Google Ads. Google Ads then shows totals per campaign. None of the pages read for this article describes Google Ads writing a campaign onto a Shopify order.

Google's own tracking uses auto-tagging, which adds a click id named gclid to the address a click lands on. Google says some browsers need it to track conversions. An app that reads your orders from Shopify doesn't get it. The order carries the UTM values of a visit, and the rest of the landing address is dropped.

To see an order's UTM parameters, go to Orders in your Shopify admin, click the order number, then open Conversion summary › View conversion details › View full sessions.

So an order can name its campaign only if the address the shopper landed on carried UTM values. In Google Ads, Google's documentation puts the parameters a landing page needs in the final URL suffix, and {campaignid} fills in the campaign's id on each click. The guide behind that link also covers Shopping feeds. The free UTM builder writes the suffix for you. Auto-tagging and UTM parameters work on the same address, so keep both.