Shopify purchase tracking stopped after the Thank you page upgrade? How to check and fix it

John Singh · 4 October 2026

If Google Analytics, Meta or TikTok started showing fewer purchases than your Shopify orders from late August 2026, the first thing to check is Shopify’s new Thank you and Order status pages: tracking code pasted into the Additional Scripts box doesn’t run on them. If they show more purchases than orders, a replacement may be counting twice. You can check both in about fifteen minutes, from your Shopify admin and with one test order.

What changed, and when

A common way to track purchases on Shopify was to paste each platform’s code into the Additional Scripts box in the checkout settings, where it ran on the Thank you page. Shopify has replaced those pages with a new version. In the words of its help center: “August 26, 2026 was the deadline to upgrade and replace your Thank you and Order status pages. Stores that weren’t upgraded by that date were upgraded automatically.”

Two things about the new pages matter for tracking. They don’t run what was in the box: “Additional scripts for tracking and analytics and page customizations aren’t supported on the new Thank you and Order status pages.” And there’s no switching it back on: “If your Thank you and Order status pages are upgraded, then you can’t reactivate your additional script.” Both are from Shopify’s page on replacing additional scripts.

The box itself had been frozen for a year by then. Shopify’s upgrade guide for stores below Plus says: “As of August 28, 2025, the additional scripts section in the Checkout settings is view-only.” So if nobody moved the code during that year, whatever was in it stopped running when the store’s pages were upgraded.

What kept working is the route Shopify wants tracking to take now: pixels, which you manage under Settings → Customer events. App pixels are installed by an app, such as the Google & YouTube, Facebook & Instagram or TikTok app. Custom pixels are code someone adds by hand. Shopify’s developer changelog of 21 July 2025 says “Web pixels now automatically load on Customer Account and Order Status pages”.

Apps that added code to the Order status page through script tags stopped there too, on 26 August 2026 for stores below Plus, according to Shopify’s developer documentation. The same page shows Plus stores a year ahead, on 28 August 2025. This guide is written for stores below Plus, but the checks work the same way on Plus. Script tags on the rest of your storefront stop on 1 March 2027, which a separate note covers.

Signs your tracking is affected

• Fewer purchases than orders, from a particular date. Google Analytics, Meta or TikTok shows purchases falling from late August 2026, or from whenever your pages were upgraded, while your orders in Shopify didn’t.
• Ads that suddenly look worse. Your ad platforms see fewer purchases for the same sales, so the cost per purchase they report goes up even if nothing changed for your customers.
• Purchases counted twice. A platform shows more purchases than you have orders, or one test order arrives twice. That usually means two setups are sending the same purchase. In Shopify’s guide to migrating pixels: “A common issue when migrating is tracking the same event more than 1 time.”
• A partner stopped recording sales. Affiliate, influencer and conversion snippets often lived in Additional Scripts too, and when one stops, nothing in your admin shows an error.
• Something disappeared from the Thank you page. A post-purchase survey, a review request or an upsell that came from code rather than from an app’s block on the new page.

Some gap is normal and isn’t a fault. Shopify says that once additional scripts are replaced with pixels, “you might notice a decrease in events received by the third-party platform. This is because app pixels and custom pixels only track customer behavior with consent”. Each platform also counts in its own way. What points to a fault is a sudden drop from a particular date, a platform showing no purchases at all, or more purchases than orders.

A fifteen-minute check

You need your Shopify admin, access to whichever of Google Analytics, Meta and TikTok you use, and an inexpensive product you can buy and refund. Nothing here changes your settings.

1. See which pages you have. Go to Settings → Checkout and look at the Configurations section. Shopify says that if a notice to upgrade your Thank you and Order status pages appears there, you’re still on the old pages. If there’s no notice, you’re on the new ones, and nothing in Additional Scripts runs.

2. Write down what used to run. If your admin still shows the Additional scripts section on that page, it’s view-only. Copy or screenshot what’s in it: that’s the list of what used to run on your Thank you page. Look for gtag or an ID starting G- (Google Analytics) or AW- (Google Ads), GTM- (Google Tag Manager, which can hold several of these inside it), fbq (Meta), ttq (TikTok), and anything carrying an affiliate or partner’s name.

3. Find each one’s replacement. Go to Settings → Customer events, which lists your app pixels and custom pixels. For each item on your list, find the pixel that now does its job. An item with no replacement isn’t running on your new pages.

4. Look for doubles. On the same page, check that each platform is there only once. Google Analytics through the Google & YouTube app and again in a custom pixel (directly or through Google Tag Manager) can send every purchase twice.

5. Check how much data each app pixel may share. On the same page, click each app pixel’s name: its page shows Optimized, Shopify’s default, or Always on (analytics apps’ pixels stay Always on). On 13 January 2026, Shopify announced a new default for marketing pixels: “When we see zero signals coming from a pixel over days or weeks, we will pause data sharing until we see new signals”. On a quiet store, a pause can look like broken tracking. Always on keeps sharing running, and in Shopify’s words gives the pixel “access to all of your customer and business data, without limitations”, so choose it deliberately.

6. Check your customer accounts address. If your store uses its own domain, open Settings → Customer accounts and look at the URL shown there. Shopify says it must be a subdomain of your store’s domain, such as account.yourstore.com. “Otherwise, pixels and cookie consent won’t work for the Order status page”.

7. Place a test order. Open your store in a Chrome Incognito window, or a normal window with any ad blocker off. Avoid Safari’s and Firefox’s private windows: they can block tracking scripts by default, so working tracking can look broken. Accept the cookie banner if one appears, and buy an inexpensive product with a real payment. Then refund it from the order in your admin. The order still shows in your reports, and your payment provider may keep its fee.

8. Check that it arrived, once. In Google Analytics, open Reports → Realtime, which covers the last 30 minutes, and look for one purchase. Then look for it in Meta’s and TikTok’s Events Manager, which can take a little longer to show it. One purchase at the right value is a pass. None after half an hour usually means that platform isn’t receiving purchases; two means something is sending them twice. Google Analytics’ standard reports lag behind: Google says “Data processing can take 24-48 hours.”

9. Look at the Thank you page itself. While you’re there, check that anything you expect after a purchase, such as a survey, an upsell or a review request, still appears. If something is missing, the app that provides it usually needs its block added to the new page in Shopify’s checkout and accounts editor.

To test one custom pixel on its own, Shopify’s steps are Settings → Customer events, check that the pixel’s status is Connected, click the pixel, then Test. If its Pixel helper says “Pixel is awaiting consent”, accept tracking on your store’s cookie banner.

What the fix involves

The work is moving each item on your list to a pixel, and making sure each purchase is sent once.

• Use the platform’s app where there is one. For Google Analytics, Meta and TikTok, that’s usually the Google & YouTube, Facebook & Instagram or TikTok app, which adds its app pixel when you connect your account with your own login. Shopify recommends app pixels, and a custom pixel “if there isn’t an app that meets your needs”.
• A custom pixel for the rest. An affiliate or conversion snippet with no app goes into a custom pixel, under Settings → Customer events. It usually needs rewriting rather than pasting: Shopify’s pixel sandbox “only supports JavaScript”, and the code has to subscribe to Shopify’s purchase event, checkout_completed, and take the order details from it.
• Remove the doubles. Once the replacement works, make sure nothing else sends the same purchase: a second pixel for the same platform, or the same tag inside Google Tag Manager.
• Pass consent through. Shopify says “Web pixels always respect your store’s privacy settings”, so if you use a third-party cookie banner, Shopify’s advice is to “ensure that your consent banner is integrated with the Customer Privacy API”.
• Check it with a real order. Steps 7 and 8 above: one purchase in each platform, at the right value.

Afterwards, Google Analytics, Meta and TikTok will usually still show fewer purchases than Shopify. That’s the consent rule above, not a fault.

Common mistakes

• Reading Shopify’s conversion rate across 21 September. Shopify changed how it counts sessions from 21 September 2026 and says to “treat this as a new baseline for session-based metrics”. Orders and sales weren’t affected. A different conversion rate in Shopify’s own analytics across that date isn’t a tracking problem.
• Adding a second copy to be safe. Two pixels for one platform can count every purchase twice, so your reports look better than your sales and your ad platforms learn from numbers that aren’t real.
• Testing with tracking declined. With the cookie banner declined, Shopify holds back what pixels send, by design, and an ad blocker, or Safari’s or Firefox’s private window, can stop the rest. Test with consent accepted and blockers off.
• Pasting the old code into a custom pixel as it was. Code written for the old Thank you page relied on that page, and a custom pixel runs in Shopify’s sandbox instead, so it needs rewriting to use the purchase event.
• Expecting every platform to match Shopify. They won’t, because of consent and because each counts in its own way. What matters is that a test order arrives once in each, at the right value.
• Judging a test from Google Analytics’ standard reports. They can take a day or two to catch up. Use Realtime.
• Forgetting the snippet nobody owns. The affiliate or conversion code someone added years ago is the easiest one to miss, until a partner asks about missing sales.

If you’d like a hand

I take on selected work through freelance platforms, such as Upwork, with the scope, price and deadline agreed in writing on the platform before I start. I’m not taking direct orders or bookings through this site.

Sources

• Shopify Help Center: Upgrading and replacing your Thank you and Order status pages, the upgrade guide for stores below Plus, and Reviewing and replacing additional scripts
• Shopify Help Center: App pixels, Create custom pixel code, Testing custom pixels, Migrating pixels and custom domains on customer account pages
• Shopify changelog, 13 January 2026: New default setting for marketing pixel data sharing; 21 September 2026: Shopify Analytics session measurement improvements
• Shopify developer changelog, 21 July 2025: Web Pixels now run on Customer Accounts and Order Status Page; developer documentation: Order status script tags and checkout_completed
• Google: Realtime report, Data freshness and About conversion windows

Checked against Shopify’s and Google’s documentation on 4 October 2026. Not affiliated with Shopify.