GA4 Issues (Landing Page Plus Query String)

Shopify Apps
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1

Within our apps we are offering Affiliate program for our most loyal merchants. Our logic heavily relies on GA4 to connect installations with the affiliates in order to reward them.

Until recently (May 7th), we used landingPagePlusQueryString among other dimensions to extract all relevant info.

Since May 7th if an installation happens landingPagePlusQueryString metric is returned as an empty object “(not set)”. However, every other traffic when installation didn’t happen we do get landingPagePlusQueryString, and everything works perfectly.

Dimension for installation we use: keyEvents:shopify_app_install

Dimension for URL: landingPagePlusQueryString

These two are somehow conflicting with each other.
If anyone has any suggestions or solutions on what other dimension we can use to get the URL or how to fix this, we would greatly appreciate the help!

2

Hi @armanlukac ,

Use page_location instead of landingPagePlusQueryString for the shopify_app_install event it’s event-scoped and still contains the full URL with query parameters.

Also, store UTM or query parameters from the landing page in localStorage or a cookie, and send them manually with the install event (e.g., via gtag(‘event’, ‘shopify_app_install’, { affiliate_code: ‘xyz’ })).

This ensures reliable attribution even if GA4 stops linking session-level dimensions.

Please use this solution and do let me know if you need any further clarifications.

Thanks !

3

Hey @StevenT_A7 ,
Thank you for your answer!

Unfortunately, with the portfolio of 43 apps written in different languages and with numerous teams working on them, it’s not feasible for us to use cookies. It would be the best solution, but we are limited to basic GA4 from Shopify App Store page listings for this.

Tried pageLocation dimension, but it was also affected with recent changes from GA4, and it returns empty string just like landingPagePlusQueryString for each installation.

4

Hi @armanlukac ,

Use sessionSourceMedium and sessionCampaignName in GA4 instead of landingPagePlusQueryString or page_location.

These still capture UTM/affiliate info for shopify_app_install events, even after GA4’s May 7th changes and require no custom code or cookies.

Thanks!