Shopify pages not indexed: causes and fixes
Big Shopify stores often have hundreds of product and collection pages that Google saw but left out of search.
The three most common reasons on Shopify
Crawled - currently not indexed
Why it happens: Many product pages copy the maker's description, or have only a title, a price, and one photo. To Google, they look like copies of pages on other stores.
The fix: Start with your best sellers. Write your own description for each one, add size or fit details, and link to them from your collection pages and home page.
Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user
Why it happens: Shopify shows each product at /products/handle and again inside each collection, at /collections/name/products/handle. Links with ?variant= make even more copies.
The fix: This is usually fine. Shopify tells Google that /products/handle is the main page. Make sure your theme links to that address, so Google sees one version.
Discovered - currently not indexed
Why it happens: When a store adds thousands of products at once, Google can't visit them all right away. It waits.
The fix: Link new products from collections that are already on Google, and add products in smaller groups. Archive sold-out products that won't come back, so they leave the sitemap.
Where your sitemap is
Shopify makes your sitemap for you at /sitemap.xml. It links to smaller sitemaps for products, collections, pages, and blog posts. In Search Console, submit only /sitemap.xml.
Settings that hide pages on Shopify
- A store password (Online Store > Preferences > Password protection) keeps Google out of the whole store.
- Rules in
robots.txt.liquidcan block whole sections. Check it after you add an SEO app. - Draft products, and products not on the Online Store sales channel, are left out of the sitemap.
To tell Bing about changes too, see IndexNow on Shopify.
Questions
Should I submit the product links inside collections?
No. Submit /sitemap.xml only. It lists each product once, at its main /products/handle address.
Why does Search Console show addresses with ?variant=?
Google found them in links. They point to the main product page, so they show up as copies. You can ignore them.