A Shopify store owner reported a sudden Google Ads sales decline after about 1.5 years of running campaigns: October showed 23.79 attributed sales at about $21.22 cost per purchase, while November showed only 4 sales with the same budget. A key issue emerged: Google Ads appeared to be measuring or optimizing conversions as page views rather than purchases.
The main consensus is that conversion tracking or campaign goals likely changed, possibly after accepting a Google Ads recommendation. If “page view” became a primary conversion action, Google’s bidding may have started optimizing for low-value traffic instead of buyers. The recommended fix is to go to Google Ads Goals → Conversions → Summary, set page views to Secondary, and keep Purchase as the only Primary conversion goal.
Additional advice included checking Shopify order data against Google Ads attribution, reviewing UTM-tagged traffic, cookie/tracking changes, and considering Google Tag Manager (GTM) or server-side/enhanced conversions for more reliable purchase tracking. The issue is not fully resolved yet, but the clearest action item is to restore purchase as the only primary conversion signal.
hey guys. I have been running google ads for my store for about 1.5 years now. and suddenly within the period of a few weeks, the sales have dropped significantly. monthly i optimise search terms and assets, but don’t do much else as i’m not well versed in online marketing. for reference, in oct 2025 i made 23.79 sales through google ads with cost per purchase as $21.22. for nov, i made a total of 4 sales, the budget hasn’t been changed. additionally, for nov, i can’t seem to ascertain the cost per purchase, as the conversion value is now measured as page views and i’m not sure why that is.
You got some weird things going on, that’s for sure. One one hand you have the same products that Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Wayfair have but at 3-4× the price. And on the other hand this slide has virtually the same exact price and discount as another site…
As you mentioned that “conversion value is now measured as page views”
This could be one of the reason behind drop in sales.
Make sure purchase is the only primary goal for optimizing the campaign.
For Better result and optimization consider google tag manager GTM to configure google ads enhanced conversions.
Many Shopify store owners utilize native platform apps (like the Google & YouTube or Facebook & Instagram apps) for conversion tracking. However, in my professional experience as a Conversion Tracking Specialist, these native solutions often lead to underreported data and inconsistencies.
Some of comaparison result between GTM and shopify native App
yes that’s exactly what i thought was happening in terms of the main conversion goal being somehow changed. i think i must have selected that change through the recommendations that come up all the time. in terms of gtm, it’s been set up now for ages however i don’t know how to activate it for enhanced conversions. and for the life of me i can’t figure out how to ensure the conversions are set to be defined as purchase.
To configure with google tag manager GTM need a custom datalayer or GTM script on custom pixel to connect GTM with shopify and push ecommerce events till purchase.
Once GTM connected to Shopify you can create tag triggers and variables to track the conversions.
To implement Robust tracking configuration for all ads manager, it would be suggested to hire someone expert.
If you’d like to discuss this more, don’t hesitate to send me a PM
When tracking changes, it’s easy to end up making decisions off the wrong signal. If ads are optimizing for something other than actual purchases, it can look like sales “dropped” even when what really changed is what you’re measuring. Until the signal matches revenue again, everything else just feels broken.
May be hard to measure depending on your volume but have you actually seen a drop in sales or could it be that the conversions are not being logged for some reason? Google ads should be adding UTM params to the URL, can you check if you saw a drop in visitors with UTM params from Google ads? If visitors remained relatively constant then either less users than before are making purchases once they land on the site, or the purchases are not being reported correctly.
Did you recently change your cookie policy? Could it be that the frontend tracking script is not being run for some reason?
Are you sending server-side conversion events to Google? Doing this can reduce the chances of ad blockers and cookies restrictions and helps Google improve their targeting. You can do a custom setup for this or plenty of apps will do it for you.
Your conversion tracking broke somewhere in November and Google has been optimizing for page views instead of purchases ever since. Fix that first before anything else.
@Tracy59 nobody’s tracking app, the one I build included, has anything to do with this drop, because nothing stopped firing. Your October figure of 23.79 sales has a decimal in it, and an order count never does. That was Google splitting credit across ads, so judge November by your Shopify orders rather than by that column.
If the campaign bids for conversions, then once a page view action became primary the bidding started chasing page views, which are cheap and mostly not buyers. The November drop can be real sales lost to a changed target while every tag works fine. The advice to make purchase the only primary goal was right.
In Google Ads, open Goals, then Conversions, then Summary, set the page view action to Secondary and leave Purchase as the only Primary one. Expect the bidding to wobble for a while after the switch.
