Shopify store not showing up on Google: what to check, in order

To find out why a Shopify store is not showing up on Google, first confirm that it is missing: search Google for site: followed by your domain. If your pages come back, the store is listed, and what you are seeing is a question of ranking. If nothing comes back, either the store is new and Google has not reached it yet, or something is keeping Google out. On Shopify that is one of a short list: the store is still private behind its password page, it is still on a trial, its pages are marked to be left out, a robots.txt template blocks them, or Google is looking at the wrong domain.

This page is about being listed at all. Where a listed page ranks for a phrase is a different subject, and nothing here promises anything about it.

For a quick first look, give one product's address to the page indexing check. It asks for the page and shows what could keep it out of a search engine: the status it answers with, a rule in robots.txt, a noindex on the page or in its headers, and the address the page names as its own. The checks below go further, in the order that rules each cause out fastest.

What you see and where to go

1. Is the store really missing?

Google's help page on missing pages starts here, because a page that sits far down the results is easily taken for one that is not there at all. Listed and ranking are two different things. A store that is listed can still be on the tenth page for the phrase you typed.

Bing has a test of its own. Its help says to search for url: followed by a page's address, and that no result means the page is not in its index.

2. Is the store new?

If the store opened recently, waiting may be all that is left to do. Google's help page on missing pages says that crawling and then indexing a new page takes "anywhere from a day or two to a few weeks, typically", and that you should allow at least a week after submitting a sitemap or asking for indexing before assuming a problem.

Shopify's help says in one place that Google indexes a store "within 48 to 72 hours", and in another that "Google doesn't guarantee how long it will take". Go by Google's own words: it gives a range and no promise.

What you can do in that time is short:

• Give Google the sitemap. Check 7 has the steps.
• Ask once. In Search Console's URL Inspection tool, select "Request indexing" for the home page. Google's documentation says that asking again for the same address does not get it crawled any faster.
• Get a link from a site Google already knows. Google says it discovers new sites from existing ones. Bing's help says the same, more bluntly: it needs to see at least one link pointing to a site to find it.

Then run checks 3 to 8 anyway. A new store that is still private looks exactly like a new store that is waiting, and only one of them will ever be listed.

3. Is the store still private?

This is the first thing to rule out on Shopify. Its help says that when you first register for a plan, access to the store is restricted to private mode by default. In private mode, "all of your online store's pages are hidden from visitors and search engines", and the store shows a landing page with a password field in their place. Google's help names password protection among the things that keep a page out, and its technical requirements say Googlebot does not crawl a page that has been made private.

How to see it. Open your store's address in a private browser window, where you are not signed in. If you get a page that asks for a password, so does Google. In the admin, go to Online Store. The access setting menu on that page shows either "Private" or "Public".

What to do. Shopify's help gives these steps.

Before a store can be launched for the first time, Shopify asks for three things: a subscription plan, a store address under Settings, then General, and a payment method with test mode switched off.

Private mode can be switched on again later, from the same menu or under Online Store, then Preferences, in the "Store access" section. If someone did that for a redesign or a pause and never undid it, the store drops out of sight the same way.

4. Is the store on a trial, paused or frozen?

Three states of a store's plan bear on whether anyone can see it.

• A trial. Shopify's help on SEO lists this among the reasons a store is not in search results: "You're still on a trial account." It says search engines do not index trial stores. Its page on launching a store adds that during a free trial the store is automatically in private mode. Choosing a plan and launching the store ends both.
• Paused. On the Pause and Build plan, Shopify says customers can still view your products and cannot buy them. By that account the storefront stays viewable, unless you also switched private mode on, which Shopify's help suggests for a paused store. If you did, check 3 applies.
• Frozen or deactivated. Shopify freezes a store when its bill has gone unpaid, and says that while it is frozen "customers can't view your store". Its help also says a deactivated or frozen store's custom domains become disconnected, and have to be connected again after the store is reactivated. After either, look at whether your own domain is connected again. Check 8 covers that.

5. Is a page or a product hidden from search engines?

If the store is listed and particular pages are not, look at what has been hidden. Shopify's help describes three ways to keep a page out of search engines while it stays on the store.

• A product's status is "Unlisted". Shopify says that setting adds the noindex and nofollow meta tags to the product's page and removes the product from the sitemap. It is meant for a product that should be reached only by its direct address. On the product's page in the admin, the status reads "Unlisted". Set it to "Active" to bring the product back.
• A metafield named seo.hidden is set to 1. It can be added to a product, a page or a blog post, and hides it from sitemaps, search engines and the store's own search. Shopify's help says third-party apps can use this metafield, so an app may have set it. Look in the "Metafields" section of the product or page. To undo it, delete the value, leave the field blank and save.
• A noindex tag in the theme. Shopify's help gives code for the <head> section of the theme's theme.liquid file that marks one page, or one kind of page, noindex. A developer or a previous agency may have added it. In the admin, go to Online Store, open the theme's "Edit code", and search theme.liquid for noindex. The lines look like this:

{% if handle contains 'page-handle-you-want-to-exclude' %}
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
{% endif %}

To check from outside, open the page, view its source in your browser and search for noindex. The page indexing check reads the same thing, and "Indexing allowed?" in Search Console's URL Inspection tool reports it as Google saw it. Once the tag is gone, Google has to crawl the page again before anything changes. You can ask for that with "Request indexing".

A page can also be missing because it is not on the store at all. Shopify's help says a product has to be published in the Online Store sales channel, and a page set to "Visible", to be shown. A product in "Draft" status, or a collection whose visibility is "Hidden", answers with a 404 "page not found".

6. Is robots.txt blocking the store?

robots.txt tells crawlers which addresses they may request. Shopify generates the file for every store, at the root of the primary domain. Open it in a browser, with your own domain:

https://example.com/robots.txt

Shopify's default file lets crawlers request your public content, such as product, collection, page and blog pages. Its help lists the main rules, and none of them closes the store:

• Disallow: /admin, /cart/, /checkout, /checkouts/, /account and /orders keep crawlers out of pages that belong to the admin or to one customer.
• Disallow: /collections/*+* keeps out filtered collection pages, and Disallow: /collections/*sort_by* keeps out sorted ones, because they repeat what is already on the collection's page.

A rule that blocks the store looks like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Shopify's default does not say that. A store's file differs from the default when its theme holds a template named robots.txt.liquid, which replaces the file Shopify generates. Shopify calls editing it "an unsupported customization" and warns: "Incorrect use of the feature can result in loss of all traffic."

How to see it. In the admin, go to Online Store, open the theme's "Edit code", and look in the templates folder for robots.txt.liquid. If the file is not there, the store is serving Shopify's default. To test one address against the rules you see, paste them into the robots.txt tester.

What to do. Shopify's help says that deleting the template brings back the default file: right-click robots.txt.liquid, select "Delete permanently", then click "Delete". Copy what the template says somewhere first, in case a rule in it was wanted. Shopify's help recommends a Shopify Partner, or someone with experience of code and of SEO, for any edit to this file.

One status in Search Console looks like a fault here and usually is not. Shopify's help says "Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt" is normal for the addresses its default file keeps crawlers out of. Google's help explains it: a blocked address can still be listed when another page links to it.

7. Does Google have the sitemap?

Google finds a new page through a link from a page it already knows, or through a sitemap. A new store that nothing links to yet has only the second. Shopify writes the sitemap for you. Its help says every store generates a sitemap.xml file at the root of each of its domains, that the file links to separate sitemaps for products, collections, blogs and pages, and that it is updated when you add one of those.

How to see it. Open https://example.com/sitemap.xml with your own domain, or give the store's address to the sitemap checker, which finds the sitemap, says whether robots.txt points to it, and counts the addresses it lists.

Shopify's help adds one condition: a search engine cannot read the sitemap while the store is in private mode. The same goes for verifying the store with Google. If you are not ready to launch, Shopify says you can switch private mode off, verify, and switch it on again.

What to do. Giving Google the sitemap takes a verified Search Console property. These are the steps as Shopify's help gives them.

Google says you need to be an owner of the property to submit a sitemap there. The status it shows afterwards is "Success", "Has errors" or "Couldn't fetch". The last one means Google could not get the file. On Shopify, look first at private mode and at whether the property is for the address the store is really on.

The tag lives in one theme's file. Google's help says Search Console checks from time to time that the tag is still there, and that access to the property ends if it cannot be confirmed. A change of theme is a moment to look.

Bing Webmaster Tools can import a verified site from Search Console, sitemaps included, so the work above does for both.

8. Is Google looking at the right domain?

A Shopify store can answer at several domains. Shopify's help says the primary domain is the one shown in the address bar, and that by default it has the form your-store-name.myshopify.com. When you add a custom domain and set it as primary, a visitor who enters any other domain of the store is redirected to the primary one.

How to see it. In the admin, go to Settings, then Domains. The list shows which domain is primary and whether each one's status is "Connected".

What can go wrong:

• The primary domain is still the myshopify.com one. Then that is the address Google is being given. Shopify's steps to change it: click the domain you want, click "Change" in the "Type" row, select "Primary domain" and click "Change domain type".
• The custom domain is not connected. Shopify says a newly connected domain can take up to 48 hours to connect, and its certificate up to 48 hours to be issued. After a store has been deactivated or frozen, the domain has to be connected again.
• The Search Console property is for another address. Google says a URL-prefix property includes only addresses that begin with exactly that prefix, http or https and www included. A store listed under https://www.example.com/ shows as empty in a property made for https://example.com/ or for the myshopify.com address. A sitemap submitted in the wrong property is not seen in the right one.
• The store moved here from another platform. Shopify's help lists this among the reasons a store is not in search results: the redirects from the old site were never set up. The old addresses that Google knows now lead nowhere. How to migrate without losing SEO covers what to redirect, and the redirect checker shows what an old address answers today.

Shopify's help also asks that, where you hold more than one domain and do not use them for separate markets, all of them redirect to the primary domain.

9. Was the store flagged?

Google's help page on missing pages names two Search Console reports to open.

• Manual actions. Google's help says a manual action will lower a page's ranking or remove it from results entirely.
• Security issues. These can lower a page's ranking, or put a warning on it in the browser or in the results.

If you bought the store from someone else, look at both even if nothing seems wrong: Google's help says a site can arrive with actions already filed against it. Open the URL removal tool as well. Google's help says to look there for an approved request to remove the site or an address, and that you can revoke one.

10. None of the above: what Google chooses to list

If the store is public, on a plan, open in robots.txt, on the right domain and clean in both reports, then Google can reach its pages. What is left is Google's decision, and Google is plain that it makes no promise: its documentation says it does not guarantee to crawl, index or serve a page even when the page meets every requirement.

Some statuses in Search Console's Page indexing report describe pages in that position, and some only look like trouble.

"Crawled - currently not indexed". Google's help says only that the page was crawled and not indexed, that it may or may not be indexed later, and that there is no need to resubmit the address.

"Discovered - currently not indexed". Google knows the address and has not crawled it yet.

A product listed under two addresses. A theme can link to a product through a collection, which gives it a second address that begins with /collections/. Shopify's developer documentation says the two addresses carry the same content, and Shopify's help says canonical tags are added to pages automatically so that duplicates stay out of results. Google then lists one address and reports the other as a duplicate or an alternate. Google's help calls that working as intended. Its documentation adds that a canonical tag is a hint and that the final choice is Google's.

What a store owner can do:

• Link every page from the store's menus. Shopify's help asks that each page has a link in the menus, and notes that making a collection visible does not by itself add it to one. Google's help asks that every page can be reached by following links from the home page.
• Write your own descriptions. Shopify's help says not to copy a manufacturer's text, because other sites may already be using it. Google does not list duplicate copies of a page.
• Keep adding pages of your own. Shopify's help calls the need for more relevant content the most common reason a store does not rank high, and says that making a store unique helps over the long term.

What nobody can do is make Google list a page. Requesting indexing again does not move a page up the queue, and Google says it accepts no payment to crawl a site more often.

When to get help

• Ask Shopify Support when you cannot get back into a frozen store, or when a connected domain still has no certificate after 48 hours and Shopify's own troubleshooting steps have not fixed it. Shopify's help sends both there.
• Ask whoever built the theme when a noindex or a robots.txt.liquid template is in it and you do not know why.
• Hand it over when a check above points at a cause and you would rather not change the setting or the theme yourself, or when nothing above explains it. Shopify SEO services from WP Ministry are sold as work: a one-time written audit with the fixes done and tested again, in which each finding names the documentation it rests on and says when it is Shopify's to decide.

What can be fixed is a store that keeps Google out. Whether Google then lists a page, and where, stays Google's decision.