Creating lots of keyword-optimized content makes it more likely for your to get into the top SERP position. But only on one condition — Google and other search engines can discover and index your pages. The faster that happens the higher the chances of ranking at the top.
Quite a few things contribute to that. Today we'll discuss how to get Google to index your Shopify store and what to do if it doesn't.
We'll cover the basic indexing methods and the advanced indexing API for those who want to get indexed faster. So, just skip the first steps if you've already submitted your website to Google.
Ready to start?
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How Google Crawling and Indexing Works?
Before we cover the ways to index your store in Google, let's make sure we know how search engines discover your content in the first place.
- Step 1: Discover — Google discovers that your website exists through the sitemaps you submit to it or the backlinks you have from other websites.
- Step 2: Crawl — Google bot visits your website and downloads the pages to form a list of known pages.
- Step 3: Process — the algorithm extracts key information about your pages and prepares it for indexing.
- Step 4: Index — the algorithm moves the extracted data from your pages to the search index database (a library of web pages from which Google pulls the search results).
How to Get Google to Index Your Shopify Pages?
Now that you know how Google discovers and indexes your pages, let's see how you can submit your pages to it.
Submit a sitemap
The first and foremost step in every website's indexing journey is a sitemap. It is a file in XML format that lists all of your website pages. It helps Google and other search engines discover your website and index it accordingly.
You submit that website to Google through the Search Console (GSC). For that navigate to Indexing > Sitemaps and Add a new sitemap URL in a corresponding field. You can find your Shopify sitemap by adding the sitemap.xml to your domain URL, like in the example:
e.g. https://google-index-api-demo.myshopify.com/sitemap.xml
Once Google receives your sitemap you'll find all indexed and non-indexed pages in the Indexing > Pages section.
Request a crawl in GSC
The second most common way to get Google to index your Shopify website is by submitting a single URL to Google Search Console. Just paste a corresponding URL in the top search field and click Request Indexing.
Note: Google might return the error message saying that the URL "can't be crawled". It usually happens because of the NOINDEX meta tags on the page. But we'll get to that later.
Send indexing requests automatically
Although sitemap and manual indexing requests work fine, they are not the fastest since you still have to wait in the crawling queue. But there is a way to avoid that — the . It helps you to submit indexing request directly from the Shopify admin manually or automatically on any product changes.
Note: since the app does all the technical heavy lifting, all you need to do is set up the Google indexing API using our step-by-step guide.
To send indexing requests automatically navigate to Apps > Magefan Google Indexer > Configuration > Automatic Indexing and enable it. Then choose what Page Types to enable the automatic indexing for and On what Attribute Value Change.
Now, every time you make any changes to the product or collection, it is submitted to Google for indexing though the API.
Most Common Indexing Errors
If you've submitted a sitemap or a single URL to Google and still can't see it in search, there are a few reasons for that.
Page is missing from the sitemap
Since Google relies on the sitemap as a primary source of URLs, the first thing to check is if your sitemap contains the requested URL.
If the URL is there, then there might be some other reasons why a page is not indexed.
Page is blocked in robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file that tells search crawlers what pages they can and can't crawl. In Shopify, you can add robots.txt to your website domain like this e.g. https://google-index-api-demo.myshopify.com/robots.txt to see what kind of pages are blocked.
Additionally, you can go to Indexing > Pages in the GSC and see pages blocked in robots.txt in the following section.
Page blocked by meta tags robots
Meta tags robots are directives you give search crawlers on a particular page. This way, even if search bots can visit a page, they might not be allowed to index the content they discover (because of the NOINDEX directive).
So, that's another reason why a page may not be indexed in Google.
Rogue canonicals
Canonical URLs tell Google which page you want to index, if you have multiple pages with similar content.
e.g. pages with parameters (search, pagination, product variant), pages with/without trailing slash, www and non-www page URLs, etc.
This allows you to avoid duplicate content penalties and other SEO issues.
So the last but not least reason for the indexing issues might be rogue canonical URLs. These are the URLs marked with NOINDEX meta tag or blocked in robots.txt but still added as canonical for a page. They are marked as "Alternate page with proper canonical tag" under Pages in the GSC.
What Happens After Indexing?
Unfortunately, there is no set-and-forget approach when it comes to search engine rankings. The algorithms change, and so do the practices and approaches that get you to the top.
Getting Google to index your Shopify store is quite simple. The real challenge starts once your page gets ranked. Why? From that point you need to constantly improve and optimize your Shopify SEO to get better SERP positions, higher traffic volumes and more sales.