Last Updated: April 5, 2023
If you installed the Google sales channel on Shopify, you may have noticed a rise in strange referrals in your Google Analytics reports: Medium = product_sync and Campaign = sag_organic
Where do sag_organic and product_sync come from?
When the Google sales channel uploades your product feed to Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping, it appends the following UTM tags to the product url:
UTM Tag | Value |
---|---|
utm_source | |
utm_medium | product_sync |
utm_campaign | sag_organic |
utm_content | sag_organic |
The following querystring is appended to your product’s link url:
&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic
Why do we need these UTM parameter?
Today, these UTM tags are no longer needed and should be stripped out from your product’s links.
They are a leftover from when Shopify first implemented the Google sales channel. They were Shopify’s way of helping you track the organic free traffic coming from Google Shopping. The intention was to help you separate Organic Google Shopping traffic from Organic Google Search Traffic.
The ability to get this granular is good, but the above implementation changed Google Analytic’s default behaviour, which is usually unwelcome (in particular when the change is unexpected).
A major problem with the Shopify implementation, is that they didn’t include a canonical_link as part of the feed. The canonical link ensures that only the “clean” version (without UTM tags) of the product link gets include into Google’s search index. Without this, you risk having your organic search traffic comign in with these UTM tags as well.
What does sag_organic mean?
The “SAG” in sag_organic stands for Surfaces Across Google.
Surfaces Across Google was the name of the Google feature that enabled “free shopping listings”. It has since been renamed to “free shopping listings” and the name “SAG” is no longer used.
Fixing your Product Urls
If you have Auto-Tagging properly configured in both Google Ads and in Google Merchant Center, then Google Analytics will be able to properly differentiate between Paid and Organic Shopping traffic.
Step 1
Rewrite the UTM tags
This will remove all UTM parameters from your Product Links
- Go to Merchant Center > Products > Feeds
- Click on the Content API feed
- Click on the Feed Rules tab
- Click the big blue PLUS + button, type link in the field, and select link from the drop down.
- For Data Source, select Set to, type link and select link from the Primary Feed: Content API list.
- Click OK
- Set the default behaviour if the link is blank to “Leave Blank”
- Now go to Modifications > Add Modification
- Choose Optimize URL > Set Parameter
Function | Parameter Name |
---|---|
Remove Parameter | utm_source |
Remove Parameter | utm_medium |
Remove Parameter | utm_campaign |
Remove Parameter | utm_content |
- Click OK and look in the right side column preview to see if the link has been properly updated.
- Click Save as Draft and Apply
Step 2
Set your Canonical Link
This will ensure that only the “clean” version (without UTM tags) of the product link gets include into Google’s search index.
“If you use tracking parameters in your link attributes, it is recommend that you use the canonical_link attribute to provide a canonical URL. Use the canonical_link attribute to ensure that products are associated with the correct URL in the Google Search index.”
Google Merchant Center Help
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188492?hl=en
- Go to Merchant Center > Products > Feeds
- Click on the Content API feed
- Click on the Feed Rules tab
- Click the big blue PLUS + button to add a new Rule and type canonical and choose canonical link from the drop down.
- For Data Source, select Set to, type link and select link from the Processed Attributes list.
- Click OK
- Change the default behaviour if canonical_link has no value to “leave blank”
- Add Modification > Find and Replace
Now we need to add two Find & Replace operations. One to remove the UTM tags and another to remove the Currency parameter that Shopify also appends.
# | Find | Replace | Advanced |
---|---|---|---|
1 | &?utm_.+?(&|$)$ | (leave blank) | Search as regular expression |
2 | ¤cy=(…) | (leave blank) | Search as regular expression |

- Click OK and look in the right side column preview to see if the new link looks nice and clean. It should only have the variant id in there.
- Click Save as Draft and Apply

Step 3
Configure Auto-Tagging
This will configure Google Ads and Google Merchant Center to properly tag your product urls, and Google Analytics not to override that tagging:
- Google Ads (in the left hand menu)
Settings > Account Settings > Auto Tagging: ON - Google Merchant Center:
Gear Icon > Conversion Settings > Auto Tagging: ON - Google Analytics:
Property Settings > Advanced Settings > Allow Manual Tagging to Override: OFF
Done!
You may need to wait a few hours for your feed to be update with the new values, but this *should* give you the default vanilla base setup that Google expects in Analytics.
Paid Shopping traffic will show up as google/cpc while Free Shopping traffic will show up as google/organic (or as “Shopping free listings” in GA4)
Related Resources
- Track your Product Performance [Google]