Shopify's analytics dashboard looks convincing — but it shows gross revenue before refunds, disputes, and app fees. Before you wire money, cross-examine the numbers independently.
The problem
Why self-reported data isn't enough
Shopify's default reporting shows gross sales — before refunds, returns, shipping costs, Shopify fees, and payment processing fees. A $200K gross sales store may net $80K after all deductions.
A Shopify store with $50K/month revenue but $48K/month in Facebook and Google ads is barely breaking even. Shopify revenue figures never include ad costs — sellers rarely volunteer this.
The seller controls which date range and which order statuses are included in the CSV they share. Cancelled orders, refunded orders, and disputed orders are easy to exclude.
Shopify shows session counts in its dashboard — but these include bot traffic, internal admin sessions, and traffic from paid sources that may not be sustainable post-acquisition.
The fix
ProofCap connects to the seller's GA4 via read-only OAuth and pulls 90 days of session data, acquisition channels, bounce rate, and engagement rate — independently of anything the seller shows you.
We compute the implied conversion rate from GA4 sessions vs Shopify order counts. If 10,000 sessions are producing 5,000 orders (50% conversion), that's a critical red flag.
We scan the backlink network for PBN clusters, anchor spam, and link farm patterns — signals of artificial traffic acquisition that will collapse post-acquisition when the link scheme is abandoned.
Our AI forensic model synthesizes all signals into a plausibility score with explicit risk vectors. You get a quantitative verdict before making an offer.
ProofCap reads GA4 session data directly from the seller's Google Analytics account via read-only OAuth — not from Shopify's own session tracking, which is controlled by the seller.
Watch out for
ProofCap connects directly to the seller's Shopify data at the API level. Free footprint scan to start — full forensic audit from $297.
