Re: Shopify Bug - Web Pixels Manager Sandbox

Solved

How can I prevent the new indexing bug from creating useless pages on Google?

ChummyTees
Tourist
9 0 33

Shopify has a new bug - they are indexing tons of useless pages in Google again. Is there any way to stop this from happening? The code seems to only be editable by shopify since it's in the content_for_header.

 

Do a google search for:

inurl:/web-pixels-manager@

(https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3A%2Fweb-pixels-manager%40)

 

Each site has multiple versions of this page indexed. Peets.com for example has 20. 

bug1.jpg

 

The pages look blank, but include something like this in the code:

 

 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Web Pixels Manager Sandbox</title>
    <script id="web-pixels-manager-setup">(function e(e,n,a,o,t){e&&(window.Shopify=window.Shopify||{},window.Shopify.analytics=window.Shopify.analytics||{},window.Shopify.analytics.replayQueue=[],window.Shopify.analytics.publish=function(e,n,a){window.Shopify.analytics.replayQueue.push([e,n,a])});var r,i,s,l,d,c,p,u,f=a+"/"+o+"."+function(){var e="legacy",n="unknown",a=null,o=navigator.userAgent.match(/(Firefox|Chrome)\/(\d+)/i),t=navigator.userAgent.match(/(Edg)\/(\d+)/i),r=navigator.userAgent.match(/(Version)\/(\d+)(.+)(Safari)\/(\d+)/i);r?(n="safari",a=parseInt(r[2],10)):t?(n="edge",a=parseInt(t[2],10)):o&&(n=o[1].toLocaleLowerCase(),a=parseInt(o[2],10));var i={chrome:60,firefox:55,safari:11,edge:80}[n];return void 0!==i&&null!==a&&i<=a&&(e="modern"),e}()+".js";r={src:f,async:!0,onload:function(){if(e){var a=window.webPixelsManager.init(e);n(a),window.Shopify.analytics.replayQueue.forEach((function(e){a.publishCustomEvent(e[0],e[1],e[2])})),window.Shopify.analytics.replayQueue=[],window.Shopify.analytics.publish=a.publishCustomEvent}},onerror:function(){var n=(e.storefrontBaseUrl?e.storefrontBaseUrl.replace(/\/$/,""):self.location.origin)+"/.well-known/shopify/monorail/unstable/produce_batch",a=JSON.stringify({metadata:{event_sent_at_ms:(new Date).getTime()},events:[{schema_id:"web_pixels_manager_load/2.0",payload:{version:t||"latest",page_url:self.location.href,status:"failed",error_msg:f+" has failed to load"},metadata:{event_created_at_ms:(new Date).getTime()}}]});try{if(self.navigator.sendBeacon.bind(self.navigator)(n,a))return!0}catch(e){}const o=new XMLHttpRequest;try{return o.open("POST",n,!0),o.setRequestHeader("Content-Type","text/plain"),o.send(a),!0}catch(e){console&&console.warn&&console.warn("[Web Pixels Manager] Got an unhandled error while logging a load error.")}return!1}},i=document.createElement("script"),s=r.src,l=r.async||!0,d=r.onload,c=r.onerror,p=document.head,u=document.body,i.async=l,i.src=s,d&&i.addEventListener("load",d),c&&i.addEventListener("error",c),p?p.appendChild(i):u?u.appendChild(i):console.error("Did not find a head or body element to append the script")})(null,null,"https://cdn.shopify.com/shopifycloud/web-pixels-manager/0.0.186","sandbox","0.0.186");</script>
  </head>
  <body></body>
</html>

 

 

 

 

Accepted Solutions (2)

Trevor
Shopify Staff (Retired)
3408 463 1003

This is an accepted solution.

Hello everyone. 

 

Thank you for your patience while we worked towards providing a fix to this issue and building out an FAQ that addresses the primary concerns and questions from this thread. You can find our FAQ on the Community Blog. 

 

We welcome you to continue the conversation in the blog section of the blog post with any valid questions that aren't already answered by the FAQ. We will monitor the comments section for any valid feedback on how this change may impact Shopify stores and will actively remove or edit any comments that spread misinformation or speculation on the issue. 

 

On that, this thread contains some misinformation and speculation on the issue and how it may impact ones online store. For this reason, we will no longer be monitoring this thread, but want to keep it open and available for historical purposes. 

 

We greatly appreciate all of you for bringing this to our awareness and collaborating with us while we worked towards a solution. @Greg-Bernhardt deserves a special shoutout as they have championed this thread and this issue internally. 

 

I'll be marking this as the solution as this has been resolved and helps surface this reply for anyone who may be new to the thread. 

Trevor | Community Moderator @ Shopify
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

View solution in original post

Trevor
Shopify Staff (Retired)
3408 463 1003

This is an accepted solution.

Hello, 

 

Thank you for your continued feedback on the web pixels issue. More recent replies have been sharing misinformation or misattribute the issue. For this reason, we've chosen to close this thread. 

 

If you believe you have a new issue that isn't answered by our FAQ, then we'd encourage you to create a new thread in our Technical Q&A board with as much detail as possible.  


Thank you. 

Trevor | Community Moderator @ Shopify
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

View solution in original post

Replies 385 (385)

Pip999
Excursionist
41 0 7

Download a no index app via Shopify and add in urls so that google does not crawl page. Then go to google search console and disavow any links. 

 

Seems to be a common occurrence in recent months on Shopify.  

ChummyTees
Tourist
9 0 33

What you said has nothing to do with the problem. These pages need deindexed, not blocked from crawling which editing a robots.txt file would do. Also, this has nothing to do with backlinks, so there is nothing to disavow. Thanks, but not helpful.

George_Greenhil
Trailblazer
175 0 58

Hey @ChummyTees ,

 

Did you manage to fix this on your store(s)? - noticed I'm getting 1000s indexed like this since last week.

 

 

ChummyTees
Tourist
9 0 33

This is a shopify bug - nothing we can do about it. Shopify needs to fix it themselves. 

rchadek
Shopify Partner
4 1 1

We're experiencing the same issue. Do you know if there's any way to bring this to Shopify support's attention and/or upvote this for a fix? 

tim202
Shopify Partner
31 4 3

This has happened to me also since the 18th of January

ChummyTees
Tourist
9 0 33

Pretty amazing how agressive Googlebot has been with indexing these pages. In 1 week, Peets.com has grown from 10 to 374. Total indexed went from ~1million up to 10 million as of tonight.

 

I contacted shopify, so they are aware of this. To fix, they will need to have this script ONLY serve up the javascript instead of now where it serves up javascript+ <head>, <body>, and <html> tags. Additionally, to deindex all the existing pages, they will need to move this javascript file to a new url and ideally 410 error the old url format so it gets out of the index as quickly as possible, but could 301 redirect it to the new url. 

George_Greenhil
Trailblazer
175 0 58

Hey @ChummyTees 

 

Seeing the same here in terms of huge new levels of indexation.

 

I also contacted Shopify to inform them this is happening to basically all merchants on the Shopify platform.

 

I advised that this could practically destroy some store's SEO and organic rankings if it's not fixed quickly.

 

Unfortunately support doesn't really seem to understand the issue and/or doesn't seem to be very fast acting on this. There is also no way for them to put me in touch with an SEO specialist from Shopify to explain the bug they have created directly to them. All have to go via general support which dont really understand the urgency. 

MaloRGT
Tourist
3 0 0

The same here, I contacted them and I insisted on the fact that it is a real urgency to fix ASAP, but it seems they don't understand and don't really try to understand the issue.

 
Italia-Straps
Explorer
58 1 53

Same issue here. It started to show up last week in Google Search Console.  For our site at least, the pages appear to be blank.

 

If you google "web-pixels-manager" it looks like it's affecting tons of Shopify stores. Maybe every store?

White_Sands
Tourist
3 0 5

I've just noticed this with 404 pixel thingy just today going into console (I'm so not technical) and wondered if it's affecting SEO.  I've not had any orders for weeks, coming into winter I should be getting a few ugg boot orders now.  Hope it's fixed soon!  I've been doing redirects as I noticed my pages not found jumped quite a bit, before realising it was something different.....

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

@White_Sandsthe reason you have no traffic is because of this shopify error. Legally speaking I can't say it's the reason you have no sales, but it's been verified that this issue is the reason for the drop. Sadly enough there's been no reporting on it but from what I know that won't be the case much longer. Those looking into it are also waiting on Shopify to release their statement so it's a bit of a stand-off.

 

As a side note, my competitors don't use shopify, they didn't get their ranking taken. My 3 biggest competitors for one store always scored lower than me on the SERP, now they're on the top and I'm in spot 6 or 7 instead of 1 or 2. I spoke to one of my friendly competitors yesterday, their traffic is up since 3/15. Turns out effectively delisting your website from google makes your competitors fill the void for the same search terms.

Mont
Explorer
58 1 28

same experience for us...

Greg-Bernhardt
Community Manager
95 1 34

We're making progress. I anticipate we'll have news very early next week.

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

jackzhu
Excursionist
11 0 7

@Greg-Bernhardt  I have replyed your private message as below

 

Hi, sorry for late reply as i did not see your message.

 

Here is the screenshot. You can see our impressions always become lower than before while the not indexed number becomes more and more (If becomes indexed, the impression would lower more violently).

 

jackzhu_0-1683250076184.png

 

 

alazandra
Tourist
5 0 0

Any update? I am getting 5-15 404 errors on google search console that look like this

https://shopifystore.com/[email protected]@0b28db42w5217fc9ep9e207d62md8042b1d/sandbox/en-f...

Denis_B
Excursionist
28 0 44

We are approaching 4 months since this Shopify created problem started - still no fix?

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

They're supposed to give us news early this week (see page 14 of this thread).

Lets keep our fingers crossed. I'm hopeful this will be the final fix as they truly have identified the root cause.

 

George_Greenhil
Trailblazer
175 0 58

@Greg-Bernhardt We were advised very early this week but still have no update or PDF/Documentation... We're now almost 5 months since I first reported this issue - when is the update coming?

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

The fix needs to be more than a .pdf, it needs to be a collaboration with google to undo the damage. I just got word that one of the Shopify sites I'm working with is switching platforms, they have 144k monthly visitors. My patience with Shopify is officially gone.

Greg-Bernhardt
Community Manager
95 1 34

An update is imminent, please hold tight.

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

While I appreciate the notice this one came too late to save the biggest store I've dealt with, I strung them along for multiple weeks with promised fixes from Shopify employees on the forums that never came.

 

We need a solution, not a situation update. What specifically is being done today to get our traffic back? Is Shopify going to give us each a Google Ad Credit to make up for the lost traffic? I have one site that's down about 30,000 clicks - at $0.60 (their average cpc) that's $18,000 in lost searches. I could calculate it at lost impressions if that's better for you.

George_Greenhil
Trailblazer
175 0 58

Hey @Greg-Bernhardt 

 

We were told we would get an update at the very start of last week which never came and then were advised imminent on Wednesday 10th, I would personally class imminent as within a day or two (down to my personal perception).

 

Can you please provide an actual date so we can plan around this?

 

shadi1
Explorer
74 1 48

Well its also getting worse my not indexed count jumped to 82k from 64k! and my indexed thou blocked by robot.txt has also jumped from 74 to 345. How are more wpm pages getting indexed ? Did they place a block in the robot.txt again?

Screenshot 2023-05-15 091419.jpg

Denny10
Excursionist
20 0 17

We also recognized increasing numbers of indexed wpm pages. I guess adding a robots.txt block has been tried by the Shopify Team, but i can't find that block in robots.txt anymore. So it has probably been removed again. If I am wrong, please correct me. If it has been deleted, no more pages shall be indexed since the change. Anyway, you should take into account that the GSC is showing delayed data of usually a few days.

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

We're supposed to get an update today, everyone hang tight.

romko18
Tourist
7 0 3

I was told during the weeked by Shopify support that I have to reach out to Google, because those "web-pixel" and "wpm" URLs are created by Google and not by Shopify.
I think I'm getting old and stupid. I thought I knew a bit about SEO, but this tells me I know nothing. So sad 🙂

p1Commerce
Shopify Partner
128 17 67

Fortunately, for security purposes, Google is not able to make whatever pages they want on people's Shopify stores; shopify support should be aware of this issue by now you would have hoped 😞

Appreciate the assistance? Please hit the Like and Accepted Solution buttons.
--
An Exceptionally Technical eCommerce Firm
Entirely Focused on Search Position - p1commerce.com
kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

Shopify created those URLs, NOT google. Their web pixel manager was a massive failure, they injected code that linked to those pages. It is solely Shopify's error, compounded multiple times with failed fixes.

shadi1
Explorer
74 1 48

No update yet, this is starting to feel like waiting for godot ........

George_Greenhil
Trailblazer
175 0 58

Hey @ChummyTees 

 

Do you know if there is some kind of noindex tag we can add to our theme/stores which will mitigate further impact and indexing?

 

Shopify
Community Manager
203 5 269

Hi everyone,

 

This issue impacting the indexing results of Web Pixel Sandbox on Google has now been resolved on our end.  As Google controls their own indexing, it may take some time to see the result.

 

If you continue to experience any issues, please try clearing your cache, or let us know by posting a new topic with as much detail as possible.

 

Thanks for your understanding and patience!

Shopify 
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 

- To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

MaloRGT
Tourist
3 0 0

Thanks for the information!

ChummyTees
Tourist
9 0 33

Shopify - it's pretty shitty that you marked this as "resolved". I DID NOT accept your solution. 

 

More importantly, the way you "fixed" this issue is not truly a fix. You simply added "noindex, nofollow" to the pages but did not fix the root reason why Googlebot even is spending any time crawling these urls in the first place. Because of this, Googlebot will continue to waste our crawl budget on these urls - whether your noindex/nofollow directive "fix" is there or not. As I mentioned above, you need to remove the body, html, and head tags, 404/410 the old url format and use a new one. 

gdswann
Shopify Partner
1 0 2

Agree with this - there also seems to be different versions of these web-pixel-manager URLs, we've seen 0.0186, 0.0.216, 0.0.218 etc. So there's every chance there are multiple versions of these URLs being built and crawled, wasting more crawl budget, meaning less time spent crawling pages with value.

jonpemp
Tourist
8 0 3

Hey GD, im still xpereincing the same errors on 19 march, have you managed to fix?

 

after trying @p1Commerce method, did it work for you?

Greg-Bernhardt
Community Manager
95 1 34

@jonpemp An increase in 404s is expected and a good sign. We changed the pixel URL. Naturally, those will now 404 and drop out of the index. New pixel URLs have been set to noindex. It may take some URLs that were previously indexed weeks to drop from the index.

To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Community Blog.

CarWireless
Tourist
3 0 3

It's NOT resolved, as I have this issue with hundreds of those pages in my Google Console.

You need to fix this issue and don't make any excuses !

elnfhr
Tourist
6 0 5

Hi! Google last crawled my site on Jan 29. So after you claim to have fixed it, and that was the first time I got the issue. Can you explain what cache it is that I should clear? 

 

Vicky6
Excursionist
25 0 3

I'm getting just a blank page when I open my [email protected]/sandbox/pages/ listings in Google. Is that what Shopify intends to happen now with the fix in place? @Greg-Bernhardt mentioned in another thread that Shopify fixed it so the pixel pages are now throwing 404s. 

BusterAndBellas
Excursionist
28 0 24

I am getting this error also as of this morning in my Google Search Console. This is not a fix on Shopify's end!

jonpemp
Tourist
8 0 3

im still xpereincing the same errors on 19 march, have you managed to fix?

TheRightDrop
Tourist
3 0 4

Clearing the cache is not an acceptable solution, the code still exists within the site and now Google Ads is flagging it as malicious code and blocking ads.

Can you please provide a better solution like a rewritten code for pixels manager and a how to insert in place of the original.

Tierliebe
Visitor
2 0 0

I have still get crawled sites!! @Shopify Please fixe it. Or is there any good solution in this community i have maybe missid? Thx in advance 2023-03-02.jpg

I build Orthosis and Prosthetics for animals.
p1Commerce
Shopify Partner
128 17 67

There are multiple solutions proposed if you read through the thread. The only solution here that doesn't work is the one marked as the solution.

Following the steps I posted above has worked for all of our client sites.

Appreciate the assistance? Please hit the Like and Accepted Solution buttons.
--
An Exceptionally Technical eCommerce Firm
Entirely Focused on Search Position - p1commerce.com
FSFMatt
Tourist
9 0 19

This has not been fixed as far as we can see.

We are seeing an increase in these web pixel manager sandbox indexing errors.

Started on Wednesday 8th Feb 2023 with 394 upto the Saturday 8th April 2023 we are now on 17260.

dededus
Excursionist
30 0 9

Merhaba,

😞

IMG_20230205_111554.jpg

dededus
Excursionist
30 0 9

Google search console

Noindex 

MaBa
Explorer
115 1 19

I have the same problem. A lot of blank pages reported by google console related to web pixel sandbox manager. Google is anyway not indexing the pages because "excluded by no index tag"