Shopify GEO, fixed in your theme by us

Per Shopify documentation, the default robots.txt allows public content and blocks pages such as admin, cart, checkout, account and orders, and it blocks some filtered and sorted collection URLs to limit duplicate content. To change it, a theme needs a file named robots.txt.liquid in the templates folder. Adding that file replaces the generated output, so Shopify advises saving a copy of the current file and comparing it with the rendered result before publishing.

Shopify strongly recommends building on the provided Liquid objects, such as the default rule groups, rather than pasting plain text, because plain text rules go out of date. The template supports a limited set of objects. Shopify also states that this customization is unsupported by its own support team and that mistakes can cost you traffic. Deleting the file returns you to the default.

That is why we do it carefully. We add or adjust rules for specific AI crawlers, check the live file after publishing, and keep the previous version so you can revert. Which crawlers to allow is your call, and our post on what to allow in robots.txt lays out the choices. One more point from Shopify: robots.txt rules are advisory, and blocking crawlers there does not stop product data that flows through Shopify Catalog to channels you have switched on.

• Current robots.txt saved before any change
• Liquid objects used, not a pasted text file
• Live file fetched and tested after publishing
• Market or domain specific rules only where needed

In the theme code editor, open the Templates folder and add a new file named robots.txt.liquid. Shopify's documentation says the template supports a limited set of Liquid objects: robots, group, rule, user_agent, sitemap and request. The robots object exposes the default rule groups through robots.default_groups. A safe edit loops through those default groups, prints each one, and then adds your extra lines.

Two kinds of change exist. To add a rule to an existing group, such as one more Disallow for the group that applies to every crawler, you add it inside the loop when the user agent matches. To add a rule for a specific crawler, Shopify's documentation says to write it as plain text outside the default rules loop. That second case is where AI crawler rules usually live, for example an explicit group for OAI-SearchBot or for a crawler you want to restrict. Keep the sitemap output inside the loop so the sitemap line is preserved.

Shopify warns that adding the template replaces the generated output, that the rendered result does not always match the generated file exactly, and that you should save a copy of your current robots.txt and compare it with the rendered template before you publish. Host specific rules through request.host are meant for stores that use Shopify Markets with separate domains or subdomains, and Shopify says to use them only in that case. After publishing we fetch the live file, test each bot group and keep the old version so you can revert by deleting the template.

• Current robots.txt copied and saved
• Default groups printed through the loop
• AI crawler groups written outside the loop
• Live file compared line by line after publishing

The Shopify Liquid reference describes the structured_data filter as converting an object into schema.org data. It supports product and article objects. A product with no variants becomes a Product. A product with one or more variants becomes a ProductGroup. The usual pattern is a JSON LD script tag that outputs the product through the filter, and many current themes already do this in a product template or snippet.

The audit step is simple. Open a product page, view the source, and search for application/ld+json. Read each block. Compare price, currency and availability with the visible page, and check that the brand, image and URL are right. Then look for a second block from a reviews or SEO app. If two blocks describe the same product, we decide which one is the source of truth and remove the other, so an engine does not see two prices.

Where your theme lacks a field you really have, such as a global product identifier or brand, we add it through product data and the template, not through invented text. For the logic behind product markup read ecommerce GEO.

• Product or ProductGroup block present
• One source of schema per product
• Price and stock match the visible page
• Reviews markup only where reviews are real and visible