Is your Meta pixel working? A free Shopify tracking check

Two questions decide it. Does each purchase reach Meta and Google Ads? And do their counts hold up against the orders Shopify took?

Check 1: does the purchase reach the platform?

1. Meta. In Events Manager, open Data sources, select your dataset and click Test events. Open your store from that page and buy something. Meta notes that "activity is only recorded while the test events web page is open", so keep it open until the Purchase shows, and check its value. Outside the test window, Meta says data "may take 30 minutes or more to appear."
2. Google Ads. Google points to Tag Assistant to check that the tag fires. Expect the Conversions column to stay at 0 after your own order: Google records a conversion when it "recognizes the cookie" an ad click left, and your visit had no ad click. A new conversion action that reads Unverified or Inactive is not a fault either. Google says that status "is normal for new tags."
3. A custom pixel. Shopify's Pixel Helper shows its events "in real-time, alongside the data for those events."

If your store asks for consent, accept the banner first. Shopify's testing guide says to make sure you have "provided consent through your cookie banner" when your privacy settings require it. Whether to use a test order or a small real one depends on whether your store is selling yet: how to test your Shopify purchase tracking covers that choice and what each one can prove.

Check 2: do the counts hold up against your orders?

A test shows the event can fire once. It does not show how many of your real orders reach Meta and Google in an ordinary week, with ad blockers, consent choices and browsers that limit tracking in play. For that, take one normal week and set three numbers side by side:

• the online store orders Shopify shows for those days;
• the Purchase events Meta received in Events Manager for the same days;
• the purchases Ads Manager credits to your ads.

Keep the last two apart. Meta's help page puts it this way: "Events Manager shows most events that have been received, while Ads Manager and Ads Reporting show attributed events that have been received." Received events against orders tells you whether tracking works. Credited purchases tell you what Meta gives your ads, which is a different question. Events Manager vs Ads Manager explains the gap between them, and why ad platform purchases don't match your Shopify orders covers why a platform counts more or fewer sales than you took. If Events Manager shows about twice your orders, read duplicate purchase events before you change anything.

The free check that keeps running

Doing Check 2 by hand once is useful. Doing it every week is how you notice when the two drift apart. The Mirror plan does it from your Shopify orders, at $0, free forever at every store size.

• What you connect: Google Ads and Meta.
• What you see: what Google Ads and Meta claim beside the first-click new customers your store recorded from each, over the last 14 complete days.
• When: your orders are counted as they happen, and the first rows show by day 3. Each row reads "Too early to judge" for about 3 weeks on Meta and 6 to 7 weeks on Google Ads, because the platform can still be counting sales from ad clicks made before you installed. After that, each row says Undercounted, Above first-click or Matched.
• What it sends: no purchases to any platform.

Nothing is estimated to fill the wait. A row that cannot be judged yet says so.

What this check cannot tell you

• It reads counts, not your pixel's code. An Undercounted row says the platform claims fewer new customers than your orders show came from its ads. Finding the cause is still Check 1 and the pages linked above.
• First click is one way to credit a sale. Each platform credits sales on its own rules and windows, so a row reading Above first-click does not prove a fault. Attribution models sets the main ones side by side.
• The Mirror plan does not fix what it finds. Paid plans send every verified web purchase to the platforms you connect, server-side, within the plan's limit. Pricing lists what each plan includes.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• How to test your Shopify purchase tracking
• Meta Conversions API
• Google Ads conversion tracking
• How Safari and iPhones affect Shopify ad tracking
• What a tracking accuracy percentage leaves out