To anyone reading this, I figured it out. If you’ve been following all the instructions like I have, installed the master tag etc and wondering why you can track checkout, add to cart etc without doing any other changes but PAGE VIEW is not working… let me clarify…
SO when you install the tag itself in the shopify apps page with google ads, it installs just the tag and somehow impelmenets that automatically into google ads. So when you go to conversions > troubleshoot against purchase / add to cart / checkout, then it opens the debugger and you navigate to these pages then the debugger says it has found the tag. So that’s fine right? Google Ads have automatically been able to connect it to shopify.
What is annoying is that PAGE VIEW doesn’t come through. I had seen a few posts on here previously and on google stating that “you need to install the tag manually” and im thinking well if other tags are firing why do I need to do this again.
So what I did:
Went to google ads > Tools > Data Manager > find your google tag and select manage > installation instructions > install manually.
You will see a code snip that you need to go to your theme.liquid file and add it at the top of the section.
WHAT THIS DOES - apparently it tells google ads that “yes there is a tag on this page”.
Because when I went to tagassist before and navigated to the home page, it just had a strike through against the page name, like it couldnt find the tag. I dunno why… I DUNNO why it wasn’t covered from the initial shopify installation but it wasn’t. So this code actually says “hey I got a tag here”. BUT not finished yet. We haven’t told it WHAT event to fire.
Going back to Google Ads, Conversion > Conversion Goals > Click on Page View and at the bottom go to tag setup, and install yourself.
You will notice a DIFFERENT code snip to before, copy and paste THIS CODE underneath the previous code
So will look something like:
<script async src=......
.... (first code tag)
.....
…
(second code snip for event)
Save it! Go back to the debugger, and you will see the homepage no longer has a strike through, and on the left you’ll see something like “window loaded, dom ready, Page View” This is the actual event firing now!! So now the event is verified because it detects the event.
I hope more people see this, and actually appreciate the detail to understand WHY this is happening, WHY it wasn’t fixed as a result of the initial shopify integration (well we don’t know, but now you know its expected) and then WHY you need to add the manual tag as well + the event itself including exact details on where to find them.
I’ve been tired of searching and searching and people generally just leave random comments that are of no help to other community pages, so I really wanted to break this down best I can for people.
PLEASE if you found this helpful like the comment, because at least then I know I will be helping someone and not want anything back for it etc.