Why Shopify Store Owners need this
Shopify gives you a clean store out of the box, then themes and apps start editing it. A review app can strip the H1 from a product template or a theme edit can drop the title tag, and nobody notices because the storefront still looks fine. Meta titles and descriptions have no built-in templates, so every collection and product depends on someone having typed them by hand or through an app. Collections also cannot be nested, which pushes owners into extra collections and menu workarounds that end up thin. If you have searched for shopify seo apps or wondered why your store is not showing on Google, a crawl is a sensible first look. The Technical Site Audit (Crawler) fetches your homepage, then crawls up to 12 pages taken from the first internal links in its HTML, usually your header menu, and flags missing titles, short titles, absent meta descriptions, H1 and H2 problems, thin text, noindex tags and images without ALT. It also checks up to 40 links. It does not run JavaScript, read your sitemap or tell you whether Google has indexed anything. Treat it as a quick menu-level health check.
Shopify Store Owners specific guidance
What to enter and what gets crawled
Enter your public primary domain with the exact host customers see, for example https://www.yourstore.com, not a collection URL and not the myshopify.com address. The crawler reads only the links in that page's HTML and keeps only those on the host it lands on after redirects; www and non-www count as different hosts, and subdomains are skipped. On a typical store it lands on /search, a few /collections/ pages and some /products/ pages from your header menu, in menu order. Ten-minute check: open your main menu in the admin (Navigation or Menus, depending on your admin version), because the first links in the header are roughly the pages that get audited. If the store is still password-protected under Online Store, then Preferences, remove that first, or the password page gets audited instead. A clean result proves only that those menu pages are fine; it says nothing about the rest of your catalog.
Reading the score and the link results
Read the Issues to Fix list before the number. Overall Score is 100 minus a penalty built from per-page problems and broken links, a SeoMods formula and not a Google measure. On Shopify, many or all link checks often come back as Links not verified, because bot protection refuses bursts of requests from one server; these are not counted as broken, so open a few in your browser. Shopify's own /search page carries noindex by design, so All pages indexable can flag it for a reason you want to keep. Titles under 30 characters trigger Titles are long enough, which is a prompt to look, not a penalty from Google. The result does not show duplicate product paths such as /collections/shoes/products/runner next to /products/runner, because canonical tags and cross-page duplicates are outside what it compares.
What to fix first on a Shopify store
Work through Critical items first: a missing title, a missing H1 and any noindex you did not choose. Open the affected template in Online Store, Themes, Edit code, and look in theme.liquid or the product template for a removed title tag or heading; if the code looks intact, switch off recently installed apps one at a time and re-run. Next, fill the missing meta descriptions in the Search engine listing section of each product or collection, then add real intro copy to collections flagged as thin, since Shopify cannot nest collections and workaround collections tend to arrive empty. Missing image ALT text can be edited per image in the product media editor. Re-run after each round and compare the Issues to Fix count. The crawl only samples 12 menu pages, so a clean run does not prove the rest of your products are clean, and it does not tell you whether Google shows any of them.
Example scenarios
1. A review app removed the product H1
- Situation
- Illustrative example: A store owner installs a reviews app and edits the product template to fit its widget. The product title now renders inside a styled div instead of a heading, and the storefront looks identical, so nobody notices. The header menu links to /collections/all and five product pages.
- Input
https://www.yourstore.com- Reading the result
- Expect Every page has an H1 to appear under Critical with a count such as 5 pages, and the Crawled Pages table to list no H1 beside the /products/ paths. That points at the product template, not at individual products. The result cannot name the app responsible, so switch apps off one at a time and re-run to see when the row clears.
2. Every link comes back not verified
- Situation
- Illustrative example: A well-maintained store with about 40 menu and footer links is crawled. The 12 pages download fine, but the link checker's burst of requests from one server is refused by bot protection and each link returns 403.
- Input
https://yourstore.com- Reading the result
- Expect Pages crawled to show 12, Broken links to show 0 and Links not verified to show a number near 40, each with a 403 blocked pill. Those links are not counted against the score. Open five or six in your browser; if they load, nothing is broken. The crawl cannot tell you whether any of them would fail for a real visitor.
3. Thin collections created as a nesting workaround
- Situation
- Illustrative example: Because collections cannot be nested, an owner builds a hub page linking to collections such as black-t-shirts and graphic-tees, each holding only a product grid and a one-line description of about 40 words.
- Input
https://www.yourstore.com/pages/shop-by-category- Reading the result
- No thin-content pages may well stay clean: the word count includes menu, footer, product-grid and inline script text, so a Shopify collection with a one-line description often passes the 250-word line. A thin flag, shown as thin with a word count in Crawled Pages, is a strong hint; a pass proves little. Read each collection yourself, add genuine buying guidance, then re-run.
Common mistakes
- Expecting other hosts to be crawled. Only links on the host the start page lands on are crawled, so a blog or help centre on a subdomain or a second domain is skipped. Enter your primary domain and run other hosts separately.
- Reading Links not verified as broken links. A 403 blocked pill means the checker was refused, often by bot protection, not that the page is dead. Open them in a browser before deleting anything.
- Chasing the /search noindex. Shopify's /search page is noindexed on purpose, so a lone /search entry under All pages indexable needs no fix. Investigate only when a collection or product shows up.
- Treating 12 menu pages as the whole store. The crawl follows the first links in the homepage HTML, not a chosen sample of your catalog. Products that are not in the menu are never visited.
- Pasting the AI Fix Prompt unchanged. Its platform hint mentions WordPress and Nginx or Apache. Tell the assistant you are on Shopify and name your theme before acting on its advice.
Frequently asked questions
Does the crawler find duplicate content on my Shopify store?
No. It does not compare titles, descriptions or body text between pages, and it does not read canonical tags, so a product reachable at both /collections/shoes/products/runner and /products/runner looks like two ordinary pages. What it can do is flag thin text, missing titles and missing meta descriptions on up to 12 pages linked from your homepage. For duplicate manufacturer descriptions, compare two suspect product pages with the Text Similarity tool, and spot-check product URLs by hand.
Why do all my links show as Links not verified?
Shopify's bot protection often refuses a burst of requests coming from one server, even when the same pages loaded fine during the crawl. The crawler treats 401, 403 and 429 answers as blocked, lists them with a blocked pill such as 403 blocked and counts them under Links not verified instead of broken. They do not lower the score. Open a handful in your own browser, and if they load, they are fine. Only a link that errors for you too needs fixing.
Will this show why my Shopify store is not showing on Google?
Not directly. The crawl can reveal a noindex meta tag on a menu page, a missing title or an empty page, which are worth ruling out, but it cannot see whether Google has indexed anything or how you rank. Check Google Search Console for indexing status and confirm the store password is off under Online Store, Preferences. Then run the crawl to rule out on-page causes among the pages it reaches.
Does it read my Shopify sitemap or robots.txt.liquid?
No. It finds pages only through the links in your homepage HTML and never opens sitemap.xml or robots.txt, so a product that is in your sitemap but not linked from the homepage will never be visited. To check the file itself, use Sitemap Finder, and edit robots.txt.liquid in your theme code only if you know what you are changing. Treat the crawl as a view of what your navigation exposes, not of what search engines have been told.
Is a noindex on /search a problem on Shopify?
Usually not. Shopify's own /search page carries a noindex meta tag, and the crawler often lands on it because search is a menu link, so the All pages indexable row can show a failure for it. Look at which path is listed. If it is only /search, you can ignore it. If a collection or product page appears there, open it, view source, and search for noindex to find the theme or app that added it.
Reference: Shopify's own SEO guide advises keeping only one H1 tag on each page and nesting subheadings in order; this audit counts the H1s and checks that H2s exist, but it does not check the order.