Connecting Google Analytics 4

GA4 integration requires Starter or higher.

Connecting GA4 pulls daily session data from your GA4 property into Ordinary: sessions, users, engagement, and how they split by channel group, source / medium, campaign, country and device.

What the GA4 integration does NOT do: it does not replace or supplement Ordinary’s session and traffic numbers. Our first-party pixel is the single source of truth for sessions, devices, funnel steps, and attribution. GA4 will usually show slightly different session counts than Ordinary (different session definitions, bot filtering, and sampling) and that’s expected — we never composite the two.

Before you start

• You’re on Starter or higher.
• You have a GA4 property (not Universal Analytics — support ended in 2023).
• The Google account you’ll sign in with has access to the GA4 property.
• Your GA4 property is tracking your Shopify storefront.

Step 1 — OAuth

1. Settings → Google → Connect with Google Analytics.
2. You’ll be sent to Google’s consent screen.
3. Pick the Google account that has access to the GA4 property.
4. Approve read-only Analytics access.

Step 2 — pick your GA4 property

Ordinary lists every GA4 property your Google user can see. Pick the one tracking your Shopify storefront.

If you can’t find the right property:

• Confirm in GA4 itself (analytics.google.com) that the Google account you OAuthed with shows that property in Admin → Property Access Management.
• If the card says No GA4 properties available, the “View your Google Analytics data” permission probably wasn’t granted. Click Re-authorize Google Analytics and approve it.

Step 3 — data starts flowing

There’s no history import: GA4 data starts from the day you connect and builds up from there. The card shows Connected. GA4 session data syncs hourly. once a property is picked. To switch property later, use Change property on the card.

What flows in

Daily figures, split by GA4’s default channel group (Direct / Organic Search / Paid Search / Organic Social / Paid Social / Email / Referral / Other), source / medium, campaign, country and device:

• Sessions and engaged sessions.

• Active users and new users.

• Bounce rate, average session duration and engagement time.

• Event counts, key events and GA4-reported revenue.

• Your own events — daily counts of your custom events and GA4’s recommended ecommerce events (add_to_cart, view_item, begin_checkout, and so on), split by the traffic source of the visit. Events GA4 collects on its own (page_view, session_start, first_visit, scroll, click and similar) and purchase / refund are left out: your orders already come from Ordinary’s own tracking.

Where it shows up

Marketing Mix → Your GA4 events, under the channel cards. It only appears once GA4 is connected and a property is picked.

• Top events — tiles for your most frequent events in the selected date range. With a comparison period selected, each tile shows the change against it.
• Events by channel — pick an event (click a tile or use the event picker). The table lists the same channels as the cards above it, with that event’s count from GA4, the orders Ordinary attributes to the channel, and the event-to-order rate (orders ÷ events).
• The orders column follows the attribution model selected at the top of the page.

Event counts come from GA4. Orders and attribution come from Ordinary’s own tracking. Channels follow Ordinary’s attribution: a visit with campaign tags (or a Google Ads click) counts toward its channel, and a visit GA4 credits to a search engine or a referring site without campaign tags counts as Direct — the same way Ordinary attributes its orders. Your channel taxonomy settings apply to both.

Refresh cadence

• Every hour, Ordinary refreshes today’s data and re-pulls yesterday’s.
• Daily, the previous day is pulled once more after GA4 has finished processing it. GA4 can revise the most recent day or two as Google finalizes its numbers.

Disconnecting

Settings → Google → Disconnect on the Google Analytics card, then confirm. GA4 data stops syncing. If other Google integrations (Ads, Search Console, Sheets) are still connected, Ordinary’s Google sign-in stays active for them — you can fully remove Ordinary’s access at any time from myaccount.google.com/connections.

Troubleshooting

• Property doesn’t show up — the Google account you signed in with doesn’t have access to it. Check GA4 Admin → Property Access Management.
• “No GA4 properties available” — the Analytics permission wasn’t granted, or the account has no GA4 property. Click Re-authorize Google Analytics.
• Numbers don’t match GA4 UI — GA4’s UI uses thresholding (hides small user counts for privacy). The Data API we read from can differ by ~1-5%.

Related articles

• Attribution and Marketing Mix
• What is a first-party pixel?
• Channel taxonomy