Has anyone else experienced Google Ads conversions being recorded and then later disappearing?
I’ve been running into this issue frequently since January this year. My campaigns are only targeting the UK market.
When I compared the four months before January with the four months after, I noticed a significant discrepancy. In both periods, my Shopify backend shows around 80 orders. However, before January, about 40 of those conversions were tracked in Google Ads, whereas after January, only 16 conversions were recorded.
My cookies are configured through Shopify, and I’ve also set up enhanced conversions. As far as I can tell, the basic tracking setup should be correct.
This issue is also seriously affecting my CPA and ROAS reporting in Google Ads, making it difficult to scale or confidently increase ad spend.
Has anyone experienced something similar or found a possible cause or fix?
yes, this is a known issue affecting uk advertisers since early 2025, mainly due to consent mode v2 enforcement.
shopify’s native cookie banner doesn’t fully pass google’s required consent signals, causing conversions to drop or disappear from reports.
check your gtm tags for “override consent mode defaults” and disable it. also install a google-certified cmp like cookiebot or pandectes to fix signal transmission properly.
This is a very common issue that most Shopify store owners experience. Google and youtube app is not designed with advanced tracking technology like server-side tracking with first party domain/subdomain. Solely rely on shopify native app for tracking is not the wise decision.
solution:
To overcome this issue, I found Google Tag Manager GTM is the most advanced and consistent solution to accurate tracking Results for both google and meta.
To make it clear and understand the accuracy differences, I have implemented both Google Tag Manager (GTM) and App (google and youtube) with different conversion goal.
Comparison result:
GTM is tracking more conversions than the App is tracking. And I have verified the accuracy with the value and conversion number with backend orders in shopify.
I have added the images of 2 google ads account conversion result. If you would like to see more i can demonstrate.
Recommendation:
Create a conversion goal manually make it secondary goal on google, configure Google Tag manager GTM) environment using conversion ID and conversion label by triggering purchase event when someone reaches to thank you page with server side tracking and first party domain
keep the google app configured conversion goal as backup.
I can confirm/guarantee you that you are going to get better result than before as like other store oweners i worked with.
This is a really common issue and it’s almost always caused by browser-side tracking limitations rather than a Shopify bug.
Here’s what’s likely happening: your Google Ads conversion tag fires in the customer’s browser when they reach the thank-you page. But several things can prevent that from working:
Ad blockers — they block the Google tag completely, so the conversion never registers
Safari ITP — Safari limits cookie lifetimes, so if someone clicks your ad and comes back a few days later to buy, the click ID (GCLID) is gone
iOS privacy — App Tracking Transparency blocks cross-site tracking for a large chunk of mobile users
Page load timing — if the customer closes the thank-you page before the tag fires, the conversion is lost
The “disappearing” part you’re seeing is likely Google’s attribution model adjusting — conversions initially attributed then later removed because Google couldn’t confirm the match.
The permanent fix is to supplement your browser-based tag with server-side conversion tracking (Google calls this Enhanced Conversions). Instead of relying on the browser, your server sends the conversion data directly to Google’s API with hashed customer data (email, phone) and the GCLID.
This bypasses every browser limitation. You can set this up via Google Tag Manager server-side (technical) or there are Shopify apps that handle it automatically. Either way, you should see your reported conversions match much closer to your actual Shopify orders once server-side tracking is in place.
