Shopify
Shopify robots.txt blocking pages: fix it
Find the live robots.txt.liquid rule, remove an accidental Disallow, and restore Shopify defaults when the whole custom file is wrong.
Shopify serves custom robots rules from "templates/robots.txt.liquid," where an accidental Disallow can block crawling without removing a URL from the index. Find and remove the matching rule, or delete the custom file to restore Shopify defaults when every override is wrong, then test the live robots.txt again.
Why Shopify does this
Shopify serves a default robots.txt, but a published theme can replace or extend its rules with the templates/robots.txt.liquid file. A custom "Disallow" can therefore block a product, policy path, or larger section. Shopify now supports editing this template, although the default file is still the safer choice for most stores. A robots.txt block stops crawling, not indexing: Shopify says search engines can index a page without crawling it, and Google says the URL can appear without page content.
Check it right now
Before changing anything, confirm what a crawler actually sees. The check is free, takes one URL and needs no account.
How to fix it
- Run the robots.txt tester on the affected URL and copy the exact "Disallow" rule that matches it.
- From Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes. On the published theme, open the actions menu and click "Edit code".
- Open Templates > robots.txt.liquid. Remove only the custom "Disallow" that matches the page, then save the file.
- If every customization in the file is unwanted, right-click robots.txt.liquid and select "Delete permanently", then click "Delete". Shopify says this restores its default robots.txt.
- Run the tester again against the live URL. Confirm the matching block is gone before asking Google to crawl it again.
- Do not add noindex as a substitute. Google cannot see a page-level noindex while robots.txt prevents the crawl.
Why it happens again
robots.txt.liquid belongs to a theme, and Shopify says a theme uploaded through admin does not import that file. Check the published theme after a switch or upload rather than assuming the previous theme rules followed it.
stillindexed re-checks the URLs you give it every 30 minutes on Starter and alerts when a directive changes, at most 30 minutes after it does. It is a monitor rather than a crawler: it watches a list you choose and tells you when one of seven things changes. Card first, no trial, and a 30 day refund.
Catching it next time
Fixing it once is the easy half. The setting that caused this can be changed again by anyone with access, and the page will keep returning 200 while it happens.
Other ways Shopify loses pages
- A page or product is live in the store but missing from Google, or a whole store is invisible after launch.
- A store page in Google shows the wrong URL as its preferred version, and the canonical tag in the page source points somewhere unexpected.
- my Shopify migration lost pages from search
- A Shopify store reaches its final URL after two hops: one domain redirect from the platform and a second from a manual URL redirect.
- A Shopify storefront shows a connection warning because the automatic TLS certificate is stuck pending or failed.
robots.txt blocking pages that should be crawled, on other platforms
Sources
Every claim about Shopify above is from their own documentation, read on 2026-08-30. Platforms change their settings; if one of these is out of date, their page wins and we would like to know.