The Google & YouTube app is a Google-developed app available in the Shopify app store that allows you to easily integrate your Merchant Center, Google Ads conversion measurement, YouTube channel, and Google Analytics into your Shopify stores.
It's the recommended method for setting up Google tagging on Shopify, as it simplifies the process and ensures compatibility with Shopify's evolving checkout system. Learn more about Migrating your Google tags with the Google & YouTube app on Shopify.
If you have set up your Google conversion measurement on Shopify with a custom pixel implementation, you may experience limitations to your data collection and measurement.
On this page
- Limitations you may see if you use a custom pixel
- Data issues with custom pixels
- Impact to Google Tag Manager users
- Impact of the Google & YouTube app to your previous tag settings
What this means
Shopify’s new checkout experience, with Post-checkout (Thank-you & Order status pages) migration underway, changes how Google tags can be added to your Shopify websites. With this migration, Shopify is deprecating mechanisms that you may have previously used to add your Google tag to your website (such as checkout.liquid and additional scripts).
We recommend setting up Google tags with the Google & YouTube app before fully upgrading your Post-checkout pages so they can start to collect data.
You may experience issues if you attempt to add your Google tag or Tag Manager container using Shopify’s custom pixel feature.
Limitations you may see if you use a custom pixel
If you are using Shopify’s custom pixel to add your Google tag or Tag Manager container to your Shopify site, your data and tag behavior will be limited. Custom pixels are loaded inside of a sandboxed environment with limited access to standard web technologies and information about your website and how users are interacting with it. Additionally, the consent treatment in a custom pixel may be different than when you have your Google tag implemented elsewhere. Learn more about Shopify’s pixel limitations.
As a result, you may experience:
Data Loss: While tags running in Shopify’s custom pixel sandbox may be able transmit core signals like pageviews, purchase conversions, and values, some events and parameters that depend on signals from outside the sandbox may be lost. You may also see some decrease in data quality (such as conversion data drops and attribution issues) as a result of differences in the underlying web technologies available.
Decreased ease of use: Features in products like Google Ads and Analytics that work in conjunction with your Google tag may not work correctly when the Google tag is run from Shopify’s sandbox.
Examples of features that may not work correctly from Shopify’s custom pixel sandbox include:
Google Ads
- Setting up conversions with a URL
- Enhanced conversions
- Conversion verification/troubleshooting
- Phone call conversions
- Cross-domain measurement
- Consent mode URL passthrough
Google Analytics
- Automatically collected events
- Creating or modifying events
- Enhanced measurement
- Enhanced conversions
- Cross-domain measurement
- Consent mode URL passthrough
Google tag
Google support cannot help you troubleshoot issues if you are using a custom pixel since this is not a supported implementation.
Impact to Google Tag Manager users
Due to Shopify platform restrictions, Google Tag Manager is not able to be set up through the Google & YouTube app. You should move your Google tags out of their Tag Manager containers running on Shopify sites and instead configure measurement for those Google products directly in the Google & YouTube app.
For other third-party tags, we recommend working with the respective tag providers. Many third-party tools have their own apps available for Shopify.
Running Tag Manager inside of Shopify's custom pixel sandbox is not a supported implementation. Many core features and tags will not work as expected. Examples of features that may not work correctly from Shopify’s custom pixel sandbox include:
- Preview mode
- Many trigger types
- Many built-in variables
- Many user-defined variables
- Custom / third-party tags that modify the DOM (e.g. consent banners, fraud detection, accessibility audits, chatbot widgets, ecommerce widgets, video calling widget, product locator widgets, content personalization, content paywalls, user surveys, A/B experiments, phone call lead gen widgets, trust widgets, etc.)
- Tag Coverage summary
- Tag Diagnostics