Why is Google only indexing some of my Shopify products?

[Mad_Modeler]

Oh boy, where do I start ?

The more I delve into the workings of Shopify, and the more I delve into Google

The more I am convinced that Shopify and Google just do not get on.

I was made aware that Google, due to Shopifys structure only indexes to collection level, however close inspection of my search console show that Google is saying that "some" products/pages are being indexed (343 out of 4.7K)

Again, however, when I do a Google search for the products it says are indexed, my listing is not shown at all.

To be honest, I don't know which is true or relevant anymore.

If anyone who is an "SEO expert" knows the real answer, please can you let me know.

PLEASE NOTE

Any replies from persons hailing from the sub-continent, or promising to get me to the top of Google in X mins/days/weeks  etc, will be reported as spam.

Been there, done that and got ripped off, from now on, you get paid by results, not on promises, too many scammers on here.

[Josh_Uebergang]

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I was made aware that Google, due to Shopifys structure only indexes to collection level

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That is false. You can get Google to index almost whatever you want in Shopify. If your robots.txt is blocking a deeper crawl in your collection/tag filter structure, edit the robots.txt. If pages canonicalize where you don't want them to, then you can edit your theme.

On the opposite with telling Google to not crawl pages, you can noindex whatever you want in the theme. If you want content removed from the sitemap, then you can use a metafield to do so.

There can be many reasons your products or pages aren't crawled how you want. Site architecture could be poor. Bad internal linking. Weak off-page backlinks that drive authority and indexing of deeper content.

[Mad_Modeler]

I beg to differ.

Even when you edit the  code to remove the {{within}} statement, google still excludes the majority of  product URL's, even after that edit I have only 439 pages indexed with 5.01 pages excluded.

Furthermore even on these pages others are having the same problem.

https://community.shopify.com/c/ecommerce-marketing/product-pages-not-being-indexed-on-google/td-p/8...

In that post, even though the expert claims it as "solved" it only allows crawling of the top level product page, I am assuming that means it doesn't solve the problem with lower level pages.

Even Google reconises there is an issue

https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/65550035/shopify-products-discovered-currently-not-inde...

Shopify only allowed us to edit robot text as of July last year, and as far as I know didn't exactly announce from the hill tops.

There are no templates (that I can find) for robots text, and I haven't a clue how to write one.

[Josh_Uebergang]

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@Mad_Modeler wrote:

I beg to differ.

Even when you edit the  code to remove the {{within}} statement, google still excludes the majority of  product URL's, even after that edit I have only 439 pages indexed with 5.01 pages excluded.

Furthermore even on these pages others are having the same problem.

https://community.shopify.com/c/ecommerce-marketing/product-pages-not-being-indexed-on-google/td-p/8...

In that post, even though the expert claims it as "solved" it only allows crawling of the top level product page, I am assuming that means it doesn't solve the problem with lower level pages.

Even Google reconises there is an issue

https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/65550035/shopify-products-discovered-currently-not-inde...

Shopify only allowed us to edit robot text as of July last year, and as far as I know didn't exactly announce from the hill tops.

There are no templates (that I can find) for robots text, and I haven't a clue how to write one.

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For robots, you can learn more at Google https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/intro. It's not surprising they didn't announce it from the rooftops because it's a feature a small percentage of merchants care about.

You can't hold a gun to Google's head to index something. Even so, we've never had a Shopify SEO client with product indexing issues that haven't been solvable. Your site architecture and internal linking matters. It's not the platform.

[Mad_Modeler]

Someone else trying to encourage me to spend money on an APP that doesn't work

[Pandacuadscom]

Please don't doubt that, after a lot of practice, shopping AD feeds are good for Google SEO