Issue with GA4 source tracking for my Shopify App

Shopify App Store
1

Hi everyone,

I’m experiencing a GA4 tracking issue with my Shopify app.

Problem:

  • GA4 shows only ~48 sessions from the App Listing page

  • But ~600 install events are recorded

  • This has been happening since Feb 2025

I have contacted Google, and here is what they found:

  • When users click Install on the Shopify App Listing page and are redirected to Shopify Admin for authorization, the GA4 session is lost

  • This breaks attribution between the landing page session and the install event

  • As a result, installs are recorded as new sessions (often “Direct” or “not set”)

  • This is especially common with:

    • Cross-domain tracking not configured

    • Delays during Shopify login/authorization

  • Because GA4 stream is set up on a single landing page within the Shopify app, the session gets interrupted whenever a user navigates to another page (such as the login page) and then returns, causing the session to reset and some data to appear as “not set.”

Can Shopify Dev implement a reliable way to:

  • Preserve GA4 session attribution across the Shopify App Store → Admin OAuth flow?

  • Or properly track install events tied to the original session?

Thanks!

1 Like
2

Hey @Charlie_Ngo, we had a similar post last year. Is this the same issue you are seeing? If so, a fix was put in place, but if it has resurfaced, I can look in to that further.

1 Like
3

Yes, we are facing the same issue. Please have a look at this.

5

Thanks for confirming that Charlie. We are taking a look.

6

Hey Kyle, do you have any update on this?

7

Hey @Charlie_Ngo, I’ve looked in to this and what’s happening here is related to cookie consent. When a user opts out, client-side GA tracking is blocked, so no page view session is created. However, the server-side install event was still being sent, resulting in installs showing up unattributed.

8

Hi @KyleG-Shopify, I think the issue here is different. If we change the event to Add App Button (which is recorded by GA4 on the listing page), the data look correctly. So the page view event is still recorded correctly.

The issue only for the Shopify_app_install event, when it is not linked with the initial utm in the page_view event and list to not set.