How to determine the purchase confirmation URL without actual buying?

Technical Q&A
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Topic summary

Main issue: Configuring a Google Tag Manager (GTM) purchase trigger in a Shopify store without knowing the post-purchase confirmation URL; Google Analytics 4 (GA4) records purchases but Google Ads does not. GTM code was added to theme.liquid (head/body) on an Impulse theme.

Key clarification: A respondent states Shopify checkout is not customizable, so theme-level code does not run on checkout/thank-you pages. This likely explains why the Google Ads purchase trigger doesn’t fire.

Impact: The thread does not establish why GA4 still captures purchases while Google Ads does not; no technical root cause beyond checkout limitations is confirmed.

Proposed solution: Use a third-party app (Pasilobus Google Analytics) with built-in Tag Manager to track purchases for both GA4 and Google Ads.

Open questions: How to obtain the confirmation URL without making a real purchase was not answered. The requester asks if an app is necessary and seeks alternatives without installing one.

Status: Unresolved; no non-app solution or confirmation URL method provided.

Summarized with AI on January 20. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello,

My conversion is being captured by GA4 but not by Google ads. I am using tag manager and put the codes under Head and body in theme.liquid. In Tag Manager when I set the trigger of purchase it asked me to put the URL of confirmation but I don’t know how the URL looks like after the purchase. How can I know URL without actually buying something?I m using Impulse

I believe that’s the reason why it doesn’t trigger the purchase event but I might be wrong.

I also don’t understand why Analytic captures but not google ads.

Thank you for the answers

2

Checkout is not customizable hence the code you add to your theme code, does not work on your checkout.

We created an app to solve this problem, you can use the Tag Manager built in the app and track conversions with both Google Analytics and Google Adwords easily.

Install the app here: Pasilobus Google Analytics

3

Thank you for the answer. Is downloading an app really necessary? I’d rather to not to download for conversion tracking. Are there any other way that I can track my purchase events?