New Car, Caviar: Examples of How GA4 vs. Shopify Revenue Attributed to Organic Search Can Vary

Last updated:

October 5, 2024

Image credit to Family Guy.

I love digging into data from organic search.

Some of what excites me the most personally, as an SEO practitioner, are the types of insights drawn from Google Search Console.

Say a new page has been published, or an old one revamped, and now the queries the page ranks for have changed, either altogether, or for metrics like their average position, clicks, and CTR.

Maybe there are nuances across device types, countries, or different search appearances, like product snippets vs. merchant listings.

Maybe the SERP layout changed in a significant way, sending average position up but clicks down, or vice versa.

Maybe rankings are just volatile.

All of these can be fun areas to explore.

But as an SEO consultant, my duty isn’t to my personal interests, but rather the goals of the businesses I’m helping.

Clicks from, say, improved rankings aren’t really what put food on the table, at least for the types of clients I usually help.

Image credit to Close Encounters.

For them, it’s about the bottom line: conversions and revenue, like get reported in GA4 or Shopify Marketing Reports.

In this article, we’ll look at case studies from two Shopify stores to explore the complexities of ecommerce conversions and attribution for their SEO. We’ll also look at opportunities within Shopify to report on sales metrics and investigate how the revenue from organic search that Shopify reports compares with GA4 ecommerce reporting.

Here’s an overview of what we’ll cover:

SEO & Conversions
Ecommerce Conversions & Their Complexities
Meet Shopify Analytics & Marketing Reports
GA4 vs. Shopify Mini Case Study
Takeaways

*Note: If you’re looking for information about SAG Organic in Shopify, I added a section below to explain more about what this is.

SEO & Conversions

Some sites might monetize their traffic, but the sites I typically help, they’re more so interested in having their target audiences convert (take a beneficial action) on their sites.

That could be submitting a form or application, making a call, downloading an asset, requesting a quote, or buying a product.

There are ancillary benefits of getting visibility in SERPs with your target audience of course, like building brand awareness and trust that can have a positive impact downstream on both organic search performance as well as other digital marketing channels.

For example, if a People Also Ask question is appearing prominently for a branded search of the business, asking something like, “Does this product really work?,” it’d be nice to have some type of educational and beneficial answer there, even if the CTR to the page, or likelihood of a conversion from the user in that session, may be low. Because maybe, perhaps even likely, once they’re done researching you and your competitors, that user will trust your brand enough to buy, and/or tell their friends.

But I digress.

The point is, conversions are important KPIs in many SEO campaigns.

That means using either Google Analytics or another analytics platform or source to report on that data.

Ecommerce Conversions & Their Complexities

One type of site that I’ve been helping more lately has been ecommerce sites, particularly ones built on Shopify.

Historically, when I worked on ecommerce sites, often built with WooCommerce, nopCommerce, or other CMSs, I’d use ecommerce reports in Google Analytics UA (and later Google Analytics 4) to report on revenue attributed to SEO efforts.

Of course, the complexity of a user’s purchase journey online today (between all the possible touch points), means it’s usually not as straightforward as them googling [buy red apple shoes] — I made up that product, but lemme know if you get the brand reference 😉 — going to the website product page (maybe journeying through a category page first), and clicking add to cart and then checkout.

As Wix explains in an eCommerce blog article on customer journeys:

“Every so often, a buyer will take a relatively straight path to purchase. They’ll search for a product, find your item, and within the same sitting, they’ll complete the purchase.

But much more often, customers will be “pinballed” between various touchpoints. They’ll see between 6,000 to 10,000 ads in a day as they’re scrolling through their phones, checking their emails, or listening to Spotify. Then, once they decide to do some shopping, they’ll likely hop between Amazon, your site, and a competitor’s shop.

The eCommerce customer journey is the sum of all of these interactions …. It begins with the moment a customer becomes aware of your brand to when he or she finally makes a purchase.”
– The eCommerce customer journey and how to map it (Wix)

There are different attribution models in analytics platforms to help account for some of this complexity.

As Optimize Smart explains in their guide to GA4 attribution models:

“By default, GA4 uses the cross-channel data-driven model as the reporting attribution model.

Google also recommends that you use the cross-channel data-driven model as the reporting attribution model:

However, you can change the reporting attribution model to any of the following models:

Last Click

First Click

Linear

Position-based

Time decay

Ads-preferred last click

– Guide to Attribution Models in GA4 (Google Analytics 4) (Optimize Smart)

The GA4 data-driven attribution model uses machine learning to distribute credit for a conversion based on data for each conversion event, using the site’s account data to calculate each click interaction’s contribution.

Per the GA help article linked above:

“Data-driven attribution uses path data—including data from both converting and non-converting users—to understand how the presence and timing of particular marketing touchpoints may impact your users’ probability of conversion.”
– [GA4] About attribution and attribution modeling (Analytics Help)

Meet Shopify Analytics & Marketing Reports

As I’ve learned, Shopify has its own Analytics and Marketing reports. The analytics and reports you have access to vary depending on level of your account.

One report in particular that I’ve been paying attention to more recently is the “Sales attributed to marketing” report. This is found under the Marketing section. Within that report you can click on the Channel, and then you can add a “Paid, organic, other” Referrer column to get organic search data.

I’ve seen Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, and Ecosia in there so far, as far as search engines are concerned. (I also wrote a follow-up case study about how sales per session might differ between search engines, if you’re interested).

From there, you can select different attribution models:

Last non-direct click: Direct is ignored and 100% of credit goes to the last channel clicked
Last click: 100% of credit goes to the last channel clicked
First click: 100% of credit goes to the first channel clicked
Any click: 100% of credit goes to each channel clicked
Linear: Equal credit goes to each click

Toggling between these different attribution models can impact the Sales revenue reported.

Other data available in this report can include Sessions, Orders, Average Order Value (AOV), Conversion rate, First time customers, and Returning customers.

You can also filter by Referring URL and other metrics.

In the Google channel, you can also see Surfaces across Google (Google shopping listings) separated out. (I’ve personally been putting more emphasis on learning about Google’s shopping graph, Merchant Center, organic shopping listings.)

But here’s what I find super interesting, and finally the purpose of this article lol: the numbers reported for Orders and Sales, attributed to Google or Bing organic traffic, in Shopify’s sales attributed to marketing report sometimes vary in quite noticeable ways.

What I mean is, well, if you’re strictly reporting on ecommerce revenue from GA4 on behalf of your SEO efforts, site owners may be interested to see what Shopify has to say as well.

GA4 vs. Shopify Sales/Revenue for Organic Search, A Mini Case Study

I’ll compare Item revenue in GA4 for the organic/google source/medium with Sales in Shopify for the Google organic referrer (non-SAG results) for two ecommerce websites. Same for Bing organic search.

SAG vs. non-SAG results in Shopify

After I published this case study, I noticed it ranking for queries like [sag organic shopify]. Since this seems like a topic of interest, I included more information about it.

For this case study, I only focused on GA4 “item revenue” and Shopify “sales” data related to non-SAG results, or the traditional product results that appear in organic search, such as product detail pages (PDPs):

GA4 item revenue refers to “The total revenue from items only minus refunds, excluding tax and shipping.”
Shopify sales refers to “Your total sales from all channels after discounts, plus returns. This amount doesn’t include tax or shipping.”

SAG refers to Surfaces across Google, a catch-all term for anywhere Google may show shopping listings in Search.

In SEO, SAG is related to Google Merchant Center, and more recently refers mostly to free product listings. These often show up in grids, Google SGE results, image search, and product knowledge panels. Here’s an example of a grid in normal search results with free product listings:

In the sales attributed to marketing report in Shopify, you can select Google as the campaign and then filter by paid, organic, or other.

You may see SAG results attributed to “paid” like this:

These would be product ads, like these:

Or SAG results attributed to “unknown” like this:

These would most likely be free product listings, like in the example of the Nike golf shoes grid shown above.

Hope that helps clear up Google organic SAG vs. non-SAG results in Shopify!

Now, on to the case studies of GA4 item revenue vs. Shopify sales for organic search.

Site 1: A One-Sided Debate

This will be for a small niche ecommerce site, over the last 7 days.

Google Organic Search Example

Here is the Item revenue reported in GA4: $204.35

Here is the the Sales number reported in Shopify: $359.63

Keep in mind, the attribution models are different. That Shopify sales number is based on the default “Last non-direct click” attribution model.

If I change to “Last click”: $275.20

If I change to “First click”: $363.64

If I change to “Any click”: $449.49

And how about “Linear”: $327.16

Ok, so the lowest sales attributed to Google organic (non-SAG) results is $275.20. That’s 34.7% more than the GA4 item revenue.

The highest is $449.49. That’s 220% more than GA4 item revenue.

Bing Organic Search Example

How about revenue for Bing organic search?

For all attribution models in Shopify, the reported order numbers is 1, giving the same reported sales: $45.52

If we switch the source in GA4 from Google to Bing, the item revenue becomes this: $45.52

Bing-o.

In Shopify that’s reported as 1 “Order” (AOV of $45.52).

An Order is the “Number of completed purchases by customers. This number includes returns. Orders shown that aren’t connected to a session are due to the 30-day attribution window.”

In GA4, it’s reported as 4 “Items purchased.”

An item purchased is “The number of units for a single item included in purchase events.”

The number of orders reported in Shopify’s report also varies depending on the attribution model, hence the different sales numbers.

We saw Last click have the lowest attributed revenue for Google organic. That credited 8 orders. Last non-direct click credited 11 orders. While Any click credited 14 orders.

Site 2: A Complex Arrangement

If you’re thinking reporting from Shopify instead of GA4 will put your SEO efforts in a better light, that’s not necessarily the case lol.

Here’s another ecommerce site, slightly larger, but with significantly more product SKUs.

Here the GA4 item revenue for the google/organic source/medium is: $3,261.32

The default attribution model in Shopify shows 20.6% less: $2,703.54

All other attribution models show huge variances as well.

Last click is $1.9k. First click is $3.2k. Any click is $4k. While linear is $2.3k.

Takeaways

I did find it interesting how the range of revenue attributed to SEO efforts for the first site could be roughly anywhere from 30% to 200% or more higher based on using any of Shopify’s sales attributed to marketing reports versus GA4’s Ecommerce purchases, while for the second site it could be as much as 25% higher or 40% lower.

In the first site’s case, the last click attribution model was the closest to GA4, and the lowest.

While for the second site, the last click was again the lowest, but the first click was actually the closest to GA4.

The attribution model used clearly matters.

Ultimately, how you decide to report sales and revenue or orders and items purchased is your prerogative, using the attribution models that make the most sense for your mix of marketing efforts.

Of course, there are many other things to consider as well, like how the data is gathered, whether it is recorded correctly, how it can be tracked in different ways, etc.

This is all just food for thought.

Possible Explanations for Discrepancies

In this case study, I looked at SEO-related data specifically.

But here’s a notable quote from a Bytes.Co article about revenue discrepancies between GA4 and Shopify in general:

“The reason the reported transaction and revenue data in Google Analytics does not line up with Shopify is that Google Analytics relies on javascript (gtag.js) for the implementation of its tracking code. This is often referred to as “browser-side” due to the javascript code being loaded via the browser rather than the website. This allows for the possibility for said tracking code to be blocked by third-party platforms, operating systems, cookie blockers, or ad blockers. Shopify instead tracks transaction and revenue data “server-side” meaning it can not be blocked by third parties as easily.”
– How to Fix Revenue Discrepancy Between GA4 & Shopify’s GA4 Integration (Bytes.Co)

Rock On

I’ll continue to dig into GA4 and Shopify ecommerce reporting relative to SEO, and share additional learnings along the way.

If you’re a store owner and want a hand with your Shopify’s site’s SEO strategy, feel free to get in touch with me!

Until then, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing! 🙂

SEO Strategist & Consultant

Ethan Lazuk

Ethan Lazuk

New Car, Caviar: Examples of How GA4 vs. Shopify Revenue Attributed to Organic Search Can Vary

SEO & Conversions

Ecommerce Conversions & Their Complexities

Meet Shopify Analytics & Marketing Reports