GA4 can now verify an install instead of just guessing
When an affiliate's listing click and the install happen in the same visit, GA4 now credits that affiliate as a verified match, so fewer installs land in your queue waiting to be confirmed by hand.
Why we built it: for affiliates using a raw App Store link, Shopify strips the referral code, so attribution fell back to a likely match that a founder had to confirm one by one. We checked the underlying analytics data and found a stronger signal we were not yet using.
For an affiliate who sends people through a raw App Store link, Shopify removes the referral code before it reaches your app, so there is nothing to credit directly. Until now, GA4 could only offer a likely match, an affiliate click that happened shortly before an install, which you then had to confirm in your Referrals queue.
We found that when the install and the affiliate's listing click belong to the same visit, the analytics data ties them together directly. That is not a guess, it is the same session, so we now credit it as a verified match. You will see these show up as GA4 verified in Referrals, separate from the weaker likely matches that still ask for your confirmation.
This means less manual review: the matches we can prove are marked as proven, and only the genuinely uncertain ones wait for you. If you would rather have the proven matches credited automatically, the auto-approve option in Settings and Tracking now covers them too, alongside the existing proximity matches. It stays off until you turn it on, and any match is reversible.