May 12, 2026: Performance data risk for Shopify Google & YouTube app users

Action required: Shopify Google & YouTube app users may lose historical Google Ads and Merchant Center performance data during Shopify’s Merchant API migration.

If your Shopify store uses the Google & YouTube app to send products to Google Merchant Center, you may be affected by a change that permanently disconnects your historical performance data (for example, clicks and conversions in Google Ads).

Who is affected?

Affected	Most affected	Not affected
Shopify merchants who use the Google & YouTube app as a product source in Google Merchant Center	Merchants who rely on product-level data in Google Ads or Merchant Center (such as Producthero users who use performance-based campaign segmentation and Products AI optimization)	Shopify merchants who don't use the Google & YouTube app

What happened?

Google is transitioning from the Content API to the Merchant API and will remove Content API support starting August 18, 2026. However, Shopify has already started migrating merchants to the Merchant API (either automatically or via a voluntary app update).

For all stores using the Shopify app as their primary data source in Merchant Center, this migration changes the product IDs Shopify sends to Google Merchant Center. When an item’s ID changes, Google treats it as a new product - removing any historical performance and conversion data for that item. Once removed, this is not recoverable.

What does this mean for me? (affected users only)

If you update to the new version of the Google & YouTube app (or are migrated automatically), you will:

• Permanently lose historical product performance data (clicks, conversions) in Google Ads for affected items

• See campaign learning resets (Smart Shopping / Performance Max), which can temporarily reduce sales and increase costs

How to check if you were impacted

If you were automatically migrated, the ID structure of your items will have changed.

You can verify this by reviewing your product IDs and your data source.

1. In Google Merchant Center, go to Products & store > Products.

2. In the All products tab, you can find a list of your items and their IDs.

3. In the Product ID column, compare a few item IDs to see whether the format changed. For example, from shopify_NL_123456… to shopify_ZZ_123456…

4. Go to Settings > Data sources > Primary data sources.

5. Find the data source created by Shopify. In the Source column, check whether the source name shows Merchant API or Content API.

6. Check whether the older Content API source is inactive.

7. Review your findings:

Your performance data is at risk if…	Your performance data is permanently lost if…
​The Shopify source is still Content API ​Your item IDs are the same format ​(if optimized) Product titles haven’t been changed ​Supplemental data is still applied to your items	​The Shopify source changed to Merchant API or Shopify App API ​Your item IDs changed format ​Product titles reverted to Shopify values ​Supplemental data no longer applies

What you can do

My performance data was lost

Unfortunately, if your account was migrated or updated already, there is no way to restore your performance data.

If you use Producthero, you can contact with our support team to see if we can recover your Labelizer labels and title optimizations, but we can’t restore any historical performance data.

My performance data is at risk

Shopify’s migration directly changes data in Google Merchant Center, which removes historical data and likely impacts ad performance. You can prevent this by sending your product data to Google through a feed management tool instead of directly via Shopify.

With a Channable core standard plan, when you create a Google Shopping channel in Channable, you can apply a dedicated rule that safeguards your performance data when your account is migrated.

This helps you:

• Preserve Shopify product IDs before data is sent to Google Merchant Center

• Reconnect supplemental sources and feed labels to the new primary source

• Prevent the Shopify Google & YouTube app from overwriting optimized data

If you are a Producthero customer with campaigns you want to protect, Producthero accounts will be migrated to Channable in 2026, so you can manage both your CSS and product feed conveniently in the same place. Setting up a Google Shopping channel now will save you work later.

Note: Creating a channel requires a Core standard plan (an additional cost to Channable CSS).

For the full step-by-step setup, see How to safeguard your performance data from Shopify x Google & YouTube app changes.