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Shopify Google Analytics: The Old Preferences Box Is Gone

By StoreKitly

Shopify Google Analytics left Online Store Preferences. Install the GA4 tag in the Google & YouTube app, then delete the old tag so a purchase is counted once.

If your notes still say to paste a Measurement ID under Online Store → Preferences, they point at a screen Shopify has removed. The Google Analytics tag now goes in through the Google & YouTube app. A copy left in the theme, in checkout scripts, or in a custom pixel can still fire beside it.

This is a setup and cleanup guide. It does not say what a good conversion rate is, and it does not pick a bid. Shopify’s session conversion rate is a different count: read Shopify conversion rate optimization before you treat a GA4 purchase as the store’s conversion rate. The number you type into an ad platform is a margin decision, in break-even ROAS. The tag records events. It does not raise either figure.

Shopify Google Analytics in one paragraph (Shopify Help and Google, checked 2026-10-14): Install the Google & YouTube sales channel and connect a GA4 web-stream tag that starts with G-. You do not have to connect Merchant Center to finish that. Shopify retired the Google Analytics field in Online Store → Preferences. Tags not moved to the Google & YouTube app by February 2, 2025 were converted to custom pixels, which Google doesn’t support, so move the tag into the app. A second copy — that pixel, a theme snippet, or the same G- ID inside Google Tag Manager — can count one purchase twice.

Several people sit around a wooden table comparing printed bar charts and line graphs

The papers are a stock photo, not a GA4 property and not Shopify’s conversion tile. Two printouts that disagree are still two printouts, which is also what two tags do to one purchase.

Three places the same purchase can be counted

Where the tag lives What it is now What to do with it
Google & YouTube app The install Shopify Help and Google both describe for GA4 Keep this one, after you confirm the G- ID
Custom pixel under Settings → Customer events Where an unmigrated Preferences tag was moved Disconnect and delete it once the app tag is the one firing
theme.liquid, checkout.liquid, checkout Additional scripts, or Google Tag Manager A snippet somebody pasted Remove the duplicate Google tag. Tag Manager is not where Google wants that tag

The app’s name shifts by page. Shopify’s GA4 setup page says “Google & YouTube sales channel.” The pixel migration page says “Google & YouTube channel app.” Google’s articles say “Google & YouTube app,” and the install steps say to search the admin for “Google and YouTube.” Same App Store listing.

Put the G- tag in the app

Help splits the prep into a Google account, a GA4 property, and a web data stream whose Tag ID you copy. If the channel is not installed, the GA4 setup prompts you to install it. Merchant Center can wait: Help says you do not have to connect it to finish the GA4 tags.

Google splits IDs on the Shopify tag article. A G- ID is Analytics. An AW- ID is generally Google Ads, with its own steps on that page. Follow the G- steps here. If you also need Ads conversions, connect them in the app. Do not paste an Ads snippet into the theme beside the app “just in case.”

For the G- ID, Google gives two options:

  1. Connect the property. Google marks this as preferred. In the app’s Overview, open Just want to set up Google Analytics 4, choose Get started, connect the property, and confirm.
  2. Add the tag yourself. Use this when you lack access, or when the store must send hits to more than one GA4 property. The app connects a single account of each product type. Extra properties are manual: Settings → Google tags → Manage, add the tag, Save, Complete setup.

The Google account that links the property needs to be a direct administrator if you want the app to connect it and show tag details. If an agency holds that access, Google says you can still add the tag without connecting, and you should remove the old tag with them so both are not live.

Google Analytics cannot track events until you leave private mode. Help’s GA4 page says that in one line. The password-page article is the switch: private mode hides every online-store page from visitors and from search engines, and shows a password page. New stores start there. To open the store, go to Online Store, click Private, choose Public, click Update. The first time, the menu says Launch store instead of Update. On a trial, or with no business address yet, the Shopify app asks you to finish that before the password comes off.

What replaced the Preferences box

Shopify retired the Google Analytics field in Online Store → Preferences. Shopify’s pixel migration page and Google’s migration article describe the same outcome: tags not moved to the Google & YouTube app by February 2, 2025 were converted to custom pixels under Customer events. Google does not support a Google tag in a custom pixel. Data may still show up. Core features may not. Google support will not repair that setup. Migrate the tag into the app.

The pixel migration page lists what that custom pixel does to the tag:

  • Reported data can change, or in some cases be lost, because the events and the tag behave differently.
  • Enhanced measurement and cross-domain measurement might not work.
  • Tag Assistant might not work, or might describe the GA4 tag wrong.
  • Tag Diagnostics might miss the tag, or suggest features that do not work there.
  • Whatever you had saved under Additional Google Analytics Javascript is dropped.
  • Consent treatment of the tag might change.

A Universal Analytics property was already finished, box or no box. Shopify’s GA4 migration page says those properties stopped processing new data on July 1, 2023, and that the Universal Analytics interface itself closed after July 1, 2024.

The converted pixel also runs in a sandbox. Shopify’s pixels overview says app pixels and custom pixels cannot scrape the page for clicks, scrolling, form fields, or the main window’s URL the way an old theme snippet could. A tag can look installed and still disagree with the 2024 reports. That is not a reason to paste the snippet back into theme.liquid.

Remove the second tag after the app tag fires

Shopify’s migration page states the order as a choice. Connect the new pixel before you remove the old one if missing events worry you more. Remove the old one first if double-counting does. Once the app is connected, remove the old copy.

Google’s duplicate-tag article says to take the old tags out after the app is measuring, and to point Google Ads bidding at the app’s conversion action if you had been bidding on the custom-pixel one. Look in four places:

  1. Settings → Customer events. Disconnect the custom pixel, then Delete and confirm. That is the usual home of the converted Preferences tag.
  2. Settings → Checkout → Additional scripts. If the Thank you page is already upgraded, Google says additional scripts are no longer accessible there and should have stopped on their own.
  3. checkout.liquid. Same note after the Thank you and Order status upgrade. Shopify’s pixel migration page says a Plus store should also check this file.
  4. theme.liquid. This file does not get that pass. Duplicate the theme, then search the layout for a Google tag you pasted (gtag, a UA-, G-, AW-, or GTM- ID, or googletagmanager.com). Delete that block. Leave Shopify’s own Liquid, including {{ content_for_header }}, alone. If you cannot tell them apart, stop and ask someone who can.

Then check. Google’s article says to open the home page, a product page, and a collection page in Tag Assistant, and to place a test order if you changed checkout. One purchase should send one purchase hit for that G- ID.

Google’s upgrade dates are August 28, 2025 for Shopify Plus and August 26, 2026 for other plans. Shopify’s Tag Manager page says automatic upgrades began in January 2026, and that additional scripts, script-tag apps, and checkout.liquid on the Thank you and Order status pages are lost. Both of Google’s dates were already past on October 14, 2026. The question is whether the tag still fires.

Tag Manager does not sit beside the app

Shopify’s Tag Manager page still recommends the built-in Google Analytics integration, because that page says Shopify already has the logic for Enhanced Ecommerce. It also says that putting Google Analytics inside Tag Manager on top of that integration duplicates tracking. “Enhanced Ecommerce” is Universal Analytics wording. Use the sentence as the duplicate warning, not as a map back to Preferences.

Google’s migration article says you cannot set up Tag Manager through the Google & YouTube app, and that Google tags should come out of Tag Manager containers on Shopify and be set in the app. The migration FAQ says the new checkout limits third-party tag managers, and repeats that a custom pixel is not a supported Google tag.

One Google tag, in the app. Tag Manager can remain for non-Google pixels, as a custom pixel, inside the sandbox. It should not also send the same G- ID.

A GA4 purchase is not Shopify’s conversion rate

In Shopify’s Conversion rate over time report, conversion rate is the share of online-store sessions that ended in a purchase. A GA4 purchase is a hit Google stored. Both can be right and still not match. A session can hold more than one order. An ad account can count a purchase on a click window Shopify never uses. The conversion-rate guide is where that definition is pulled apart. Here the rule is narrower: do not average the two percentages, and do not rebuild the theme to force them together.

Purchase value in Google can also fall without a price change. Google’s migration FAQ says that around the end of April 2025, Shopify fixed subtotalPrice on the upgraded Thank you page so order-level discounts are subtracted. Before the fix, the field could overstate the value sent to Google. You see that only if three things are true: the newer Thank you page, order-level discounts, and a tag that uses subtotalPrice. Google says the Google & YouTube app uses that field. Google does not say how large the change is. It follows how often and how deeply you discount. If you bid to a value target, Google says you may need to move the target. That move is the break-even ROAS guide, not a step in this install.

The events Google names

Google’s Shopify tag article says the app also adds view_item_list, remove_from_cart, view_cart, and add_shipping_info, and enriches five existing events. You can filter the added data in GA4 with shopify_event_name. To stop every event the app sends, including purchase, disconnect the Google Analytics integration in the app’s settings.

Linking Google Ads is a different list. Google says the suggested default conversion actions are then purchase, add to cart, and checkout started. That is the Ads mapping screen, not a catalog of GA4 events, and not a reason for a second tag.

Where Shopify requires consent — the pixels overview says that is usually the EEA and the UK — web pixels run only after the visitor grants the permissions that pixel asks for. New pixels ask for Marketing and Analytics by default. After you move a Google tag, the pixel migration page says to check that the consent banner uses the Customer Privacy API, because consent treatment can change.

That is a setting to audit. It is not a privacy policy, and it does not replace the rules where you sell.

Pixels load on the storefront, checkout, Thank you page, and Order status page. On customer account pages they load only after a custom subdomain for customer accounts, and then only for page_viewed. Meta’s pixel left Preferences in the same February 2025 change. This article does not set Meta up.

Do it in this order

  1. If you are testing a live tag, take the store out of private mode. A password page will not show you GA4 hits.
  2. Create the GA4 property and a web data stream. Copy the G- ID.
  3. Install Google & YouTube. Connect that property, or add the tag under Settings → Google tags when you cannot connect it or you need a second property.
  4. In Tag Assistant, confirm the tag fires once on a product page and, if you can, on a test order.
  5. Disconnect and delete the Customer events pixel the old Preferences tag became. Remove any copy in theme.liquid. If the Thank you page has already been upgraded, confirm checkout scripts are actually dead rather than assuming it.
  6. Read Shopify’s conversion rate in the guide linked above before you call a GA4 purchase rate the conversion rate.
  7. If the next decision is an ad target, set it from margin in the break-even ROAS guide, also linked above. The tag does not choose it.

FAQ

Where is Shopify Google Analytics in the admin?

Not under Online Store → Preferences. Open the Google & YouTube app and connect the GA4 property, or add the G- tag under the app’s Google tags settings. If the old tag was never moved, look under Settings → Customer events for the custom pixel Shopify created.

Is Shopify Google Analytics 4 a separate setup?

No. GA4 is the property you connect. A Universal Analytics property stopped taking new hits on July 1, 2023. A UA- snippet in the theme is not a backup.

Why doesn’t the GA4 purchase count match Shopify?

They count different things. Shopify’s conversion rate is sessions with a purchase. GA4’s purchase is an event Google stored. One session can include more than one order. Do not average them into a third number.

Does adding Google Analytics raise conversion?

No. The tag records what already happened. It does not change the offer, the checkout, or the price.

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