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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 1005

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 1005

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)
kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

If it matters I'm still seeing new 404s as recently as the 5th, though with how complicated this situation has been I'm not even sure if that's a bad thing. Happy to share data if needed.

Denis_B
Excursionist
28 0 44

Same with me - latest batch of 404s on the 4th May - will part of the long awaited solution be to redirect these 404's?

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

Denis, they shouldn't be 301 redirected as some are actual pages that are used for tracking.

You shouldn't ask google to delist them using the temporary removal tool because you don't know if they consider that a canonical URL for your product

Traditionally speaking you'd want all of these crawled as 404s, visible to google index, then ask google to take them out. I cannot see this being a viable solution due to the scope.

 

As a store owner you should do nothing. We're at shopify's mercy and 'very early' this week ends mid-day tuesday (so in about 20 minutes in my opinion). I can't speak as a store owner, because I'm just a developer, but I can say that the store owners I've spoken to are all looking at alternative platforms as a precautionary measure.

Pascal_Keane
Shopify Partner
8 0 4

Nothing to add save I am experiencing the same issues. I think it is obvious by now that if you are a store posting in this forum, Shopify has never and will never pay any genuine attention to your issues. The Shopify staffer on this thread is well-meaning but hasn't added much value in the last three months as far as I can see - suggesting that he is working on a 'need to know' basis and someone has decided that he doesn't need to know. 

 

Separately, I continue to have issues with GA4 integration on Shopify. Just embarrassing. 

IanSEM
Tourist
3 0 1

Sorry, I meant 404 Error logs in my search console.

LuluBeau
Tourist
5 0 5

I am deeply frustrated by the significant decrease in traffic on my website, which can be directly attributed to the mistakes made by Shopify. It is imperative that Shopify takes immediate and decisive action to rectify these issues and fundamentally resolve the problem without any further delay. Time is of the essence, and Shopify must prioritize fixing the situation as soon as possible to restore the traffic and regain my trust as a customer.

Mont
Explorer
58 1 28

Only advice I can muster . Give up and move on. As a small business person for decades always facing one obstacle after another. Banks and Government were traditionally most difficult entities to navigate, but as of last decade big tech corporations who grew quickly to are now the most destructive. This issue affecting us was either by design or by disfunction. Either way they win we lose.  

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

To anyone suffering from this, dm me your index report graph with impressions shown it would be appreciated. The csv would be better. Getting all this info in one place. If

 anyone else is also compiling data please dm me to collaborate. 

shadi1
Explorer
74 1 49

I just got an email from google informing me that in the next few weeks the google shopify channel app will start automatically using google pixel tags for tracking my website!

 

I really hope this is part of the solution?

 

Screenshot 2023-05-11 131705.jpg

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

@shadi1 I don't think that's related unfortunately. 

 

@Greg-BernhardtCan we get our update for the day? And are we still pretending the google update had something to do with this when I watched 9,000 URLs get crawled the same day we lost 60% of our impressions, weeks before the google update?

 

 

kbarcant
Shopify Partner
50 0 81

/.well-known/shopify/monorail/unstable/produce_batch

 

The WPM Script is producing this and dropping it into all of my pages.

We are getting MORE "Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt" errors now.

These errors caused us a 60% drop in traffic. I would say "My clients" but we're down to "my client".

 

Edit: This has been there since January per wayback machine. Google can now see it, even though it's generated in the <script> tag.

Pip999
Excursionist
41 0 7

Do you have the full url? (don't need to include your website), as I've found it best to block them before my site gets crawled. 

jmsprsns
Visitor
1 0 4

This is affecting all of my client's sites as well. No word from Shopify yet.

 

How is this still an issue after all of this time??

 

It's been over 4 months. 

CCCCC
Visitor
2 0 0

Anyone considering migrating to Woocommerce? I have over five hundred 404 links and a lot more weird ones under “crawled” & “indexed”, they are gonna destroy my SEO. I am thinking about switching to WP n see if anyone got same thought? 

IvanKarakostov
Tourist
5 0 3

I'm currently managing several Shopify stores and have been experiencing a noticeable decline in organic traffic. At the start of this year, I set up another store, but its performance has been far from satisfactory. Despite investing significantly in SEO, it seems that Shopify isn't addressing the issue, or perhaps isn't inclined to. The situation has become quite critical as I'm encountering daily financial losses. It's been several months since this problem surfaced, so I'm seriously considering a switch to another platform unless a solution emerges imminently, Only 4 pages are indexed. I am very very disappointed!!!


 

IvanKarakostov
Tourist
5 0 3

I have also a lot of page with 404 not found, should I redirect them or should I leave them as they are?
Thank you!

Italia-Straps
Explorer
58 1 53

Another crawl and unfortunately, we saw a massive increase in no-index pages.

 

We now have 1,100 not indexed pages for our small site which only has 37 indexed pages! Google impressions and traffic continue a downward trajectory.

 

We are seeing a big increase in the “collections/all” spam.

Upon reviewing the URLs in GSC we now also see SPAM pages being injected on wpm@ pathway which looks like it means spammers are finding another way in.  Sample URLs attached.

 

Michael_Salerno_0-1684118963323.pngMichael_Salerno_1-1684119073961.jpeg

 

Are there any updates on these issues? 

Has Shopify communicated with Google to let them know of these problems?

Thanks

Pip999
Excursionist
41 0 7

I'd encourage everyone to keep posting spam index links, this gives everyone a chance to block these link hopefully before they get crawled. 

jasonwill21
Excursionist
18 0 14

It's another new week soon! Hopefully we have some good news to save our Store 😁 

Trevor
Shopify Staff (Retired)
3408 463 1005

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

BusterAndBellas
Excursionist
28 0 26

The link you posted to the blog redirects to this thread. I found the direct link here: https://community.shopify.com/c/blog/shopify-web-pixels-manager-sandbox-faq/ba-p/2062077

Trevor
Shopify Staff (Retired)
3408 463 1005

You're right! That was my mistake. I've updated the link

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

jasonwill21
Excursionist
18 0 14

Thank you @Trevor for the upadate, Lets observe the update impact and hope it brings back our SEO traffic.

Denis_B
Excursionist
28 0 44

"We have created a solution to stop the crawlers from executing the JavaScript preventing pixel URLs from being crawled"

 

What is the solution?

 

So the action we should take is to do nothing and wait for all the pixel urls to disapear from the google reports?

 

I went ahead and temporarily removed in Google the pixel urls that were indexed by Google. Should I request cancelation or let them expire?

Denis_B
Excursionist
28 0 44
Denny10
Excursionist
20 0 17

Correct me if I'm wrong. It looks like Shopify before had just hardcoded an iframe to each page, which was ok, but became a problem since Google handled it the way it did. The iframe itself seems to be the same.

But with this solution an extra step is made. The iframe is not injected directly into the code. Asynchronous JavaScript is loaded. You can find <script async="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/wpm/example.js"></script> in your source code now, which injects the iframe.

Disallow: /cdn/wpm/*.js has been added to robots.txt to prevent Google crawling the JavaScript.

 

This might work - let's see what our crawling logs say in the next days 🙂

p1Commerce
Shopify Partner
128 17 67

@Denny The previous code loaded the iframe from javascript also.  The difference now is that they moved the javascript for it into it's own js file and blocked that file in robots.txt.

The block in robots.txt will prevent Google from rendering the code that generates the iframe and since it's a js file blocked instead of a page, Page Indexing in Search Console should be clean - though I'd expect an increase in 404 errors as the /wpm@ urls now 404.

Appreciate the assistance? Please hit the Like and Accepted Solution buttons.
--
An Exceptionally Technical eCommerce Firm
Entirely Focused on Search Position - p1commerce.com
p1Commerce
Shopify Partner
128 17 67

shopify-pixel-implementation.png

We've updated our Definitive SEO Guide to Shopify's Web Pixel Manager Problem article with details of this change: https://p1commerce.com/resources/shopify-web-pixels/#attempt-4

Appreciate the assistance? Please hit the Like and Accepted Solution buttons.
--
An Exceptionally Technical eCommerce Firm
Entirely Focused on Search Position - p1commerce.com
Denis_B
Excursionist
28 0 44

Appreciate your guidance on dealing with  his issue - a more professional approach than Shopify

 

D

TIMECAPSULES
Excursionist
33 0 23

Hi Trevor (Shopify Community Moderator),

 

Thanks for working on getting the solution to this issue (and Greg and the wider Shopify team).

 

I have been undoing a number of prior "interim fixes" (that I inserted over the last few months) over the last week - so that I can then just use your Shopify solution as the only "fix" - this way I can then monitor my website to see what is going on.

 

At this stage, it is too early for me to tell if your solution is working - but I have my fingers cross.

 

Question .... P1Commerce added to your solution, with an extra step (that wasn't in your solution) as follows:

Step 2: Use Google's Removal Tool

Request the temporary removal of your /wpm and /web-pixels-manager URL patterns in Google Search Console.

 

 

Do you agree that we should also implement this extra step?

 

Thanks

Shaindel
Visitor
3 0 0

Maybe I'm just not technical enough to understand Trevor's response but it seems like to me that there's no information provided here about how to fix the issue or what Shopify did to fix it.  Did I miss something?

jasonwill21
Excursionist
18 0 14

A week after this solution released, seems not much improvement on my GSC. This is the latest indexing I requested last week and just updated by Google today.

 

Anyone has similar outcome?

Screenshot 2023-05-22 at 10.20.31 AM.png

IvanKarakostov
Tourist
5 0 3

Yes, I still see lots of nonindex pages and getting a lot of New Not Found pages. Does anyone know when we will see some improvement. Thank you!

jasonwill21
Excursionist
18 0 14

I hope the answer from others SHOULD NOT BE: Well, you just get punished by Google's March core update, do your stuff, know your shit, and keep moving on.

Italia-Straps
Explorer
58 1 53

Another Google crawl and an audit in GSC shows a continued increase in "no index" pages and 404s. It's all the wpm pages and the collections/all spam... same as before. Are any store owners seeing their indexing stats improve since this fix has been implemented?

 

Thanks

jasonwill21
Excursionist
18 0 14

The amount of "noindex tag " is still rising on my store. No significant improvement can be observed from my side so far.

Screenshot 2023-05-31 at 2.24.31 PM.png

Denis_B
Excursionist
28 0 44

404's still growing

SimpureLife
Visitor
1 0 0

404's still growing!!!! Why haven't you guys solved this problem? ?

Greg-Bernhardt
Community Manager
95 1 34

Our FAQ explains that 404 report will temporarily grow as the pixel URLs Google knows about will start to 404, but it will not discover any new URLs so the count will stop in the near future.

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

TIMECAPSULES
Excursionist
33 0 23

Hi Greg,

 

Please see a snapshot of my Google Search below. It appears to have stabilized. Is this what you expected to see? How should the graph change with time? Thanks. 5.31.23.png

Greg-Bernhardt
Community Manager
95 1 34

noindex pixel urls should stop, 404 pixels urls temporarily increase and then stop

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

TIMECAPSULES
Excursionist
33 0 23

Hi Greg,

 

Can Shopify use its "special relationship" with Google (i.e. I understand they are your Cloud Service Provider) to ask Google to do a once off "clear all Shopify websites" of 1. Excluded by 'nonindex' tag and 2. No found (404".

Screenshot 2023-06-18 092248.png

 

This would then re move all this "stuff" that Shopify appears to have fixed (THANK YOU!) and would then remove all this junk from all our Google Search Console (which would then enable all of us to put this incident behind us).

 

Having to wait another 6 (maybe longer!) months for the junk to disappear isn't very customer centric. Google should be able to do this for Shopify (as a once off "special") - given you are a large customer.

 

Please just don't say "we can wait" ..... no we really can't! Please escalate this issue up Shopify's management chain.

 

Thanks, and we look forward to your reply.

 

Regards.

Denis_B
Excursionist
28 0 44

So will they disappear from my 404 report over time? if so what time period?

Normally the only way to get rid of 404's is to re-direct them?

 

Greg-Bernhardt
Community Manager
95 1 34

If the content exists elsewhere then a redirect makes sense otherwise you're sending confusing signals to Google. A Google rep told us that the 404s will clear over time. No exact timeframe was given.

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

ahsonmkhan
Excursionist
31 0 3

@Greg-Bernhardt Some new pages are visible in the search console

New Pages.jpg

 

TIMECAPSULES
Excursionist
33 0 23

Greg,

 

No, this "sometime in the future isn't acceptable". We need Shopify to please get Google to 1. tell you exactly how long it will be before all this prior "junk" will be cleared (which Shopify believes they have fixed) and 2. if that timeframe is any more than another 2 weeks - then we need Shopify to use its relationship with Google to run a special "clear the buffer" exercise.

 

This is the only way we, the users, can then tell if this issue has really been solved.

 

Thank you

 

TIMECAPSULES
Excursionist
33 0 23

Greg (or Trevor) - please reply to my post of 06-27-2023 10:53 AM, this issue isn't going away until you arrange for Google to clear our Search Consoles!

 

Thanks

Mont
Explorer
58 1 28

Hi Greg, appreciate that you're sticking this out with us. It is correct that 404's clear over time. Since we may from time to time change or modify a page here and there. Google doesn't punish for normal activity. But 100's and 1000's is another matter altogether, particularly when some of these pages are spammy ads. 

alazandra
Tourist
5 0 0

THIS HAS NOT BEEN RESOLVED AT ALL!!

I have 100s of new 404s that look like this wpm@0.0.239@1bfdbe36waf26f8b1p2c0f542dm9f61a9b0/sandbox/it-ca/products/

as of today.

I have been following this thread and the previous thread that was marked as "solved". It has not been solved in the absolute slightest. I have redirects to try and get these errors to drop off. Stop coming backing with your absolute baffle of a solution when clearly there is nothing in place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1