I’m trying to add my sitemap to Google Search Console following instructions. I’m a new Store for only two months and teaching my old self how to do all of this.
As owner, when I go to my Google Search Console, I need to verify. But I need to add the DNS record/code because if I do it the other way (using via URL) and try to add my sitemap, it says “couldn’t fetch.”
So I read Shopify discussions and went back to click on the actual domain (not the url) and try to do it again, but I have to add the DNS code to my Shopify store. I CAN’T FIND WHERE TO DO THIS. ?? The only instructions I find to do this is this:
"from your Shopify admin! To do that, head to Online Store>Domains then click on the domain you want to edit, and you’ll see a page where you can hit ‘DNS Settings’. "
WELL, I cannot find any “DNS Settings” option under Domains. This is the only thing that pops up when I go to “domains”
Hi Mrs B.! I’d be happy to help you with this. Kudos to you as well for going outside your comfort zone to learn more about ecommerce and teach yourself how to run an online business. That’s a really big learning curve for anyone and takes some serious dedication.
For your domain DNS records, the first thing to clarify is where is your domain being hosted? Did you buy it through your Shopify admin, or from a 3rd party like GoDaddy or Google Domains?
If the domain is hosted outside of Shopify then you will need to sign into your domain account through the host provider to update the DNS records. The steps you are seeing in the Help Center are specifically for updating your DNS records for Shopify hosted domains.
Feel free to share some screenshots of what you are seeing if you need help figuring that out.
Thank you shay for responding and for your kudos! I can use all the help I can get! I am referring specifically to my Shopify store which is on their domain. I did not purchase an additional domain. Though I have other stores with third parties, I specifically am referring to Shopify. It should be visible on the screenshot above where it indicated “couldn’t fetch” when I put in the site map extension “sitemap.xml” for the instructions. I can’t figure out how to get it to work. My third party domains are Etsy and Amazon and I did research and did not see any successful ways to do that through my research. And then I have my own domain that I own bigaxespice.com and I honestly can’t figure out how to do that either with websitebuilder. I will be happy if I can at least get Shopify started through the Google search console. Thank you! Looking forward to your answer on what my next steps are!
I want to clarify a few terms to make sure we are on the same page
A domain is the website address that customers would type into the address bar to visit your website. You can have multiple domains, if you want, but most stores have only 1 or 2. All Shopify created stores are provided a unique domain that looks like this: your-store.myshopify.com.
The .myshopify.com domain DNS cannot be edited as it is owned by Shopify. If you need to edit the DNS information for your Shopify store, you need to add a custom domain. You mentioned you also have the domain bigaxespice.com, I took a look and that appears to be pointing to another store that is not hosted on Shopify at this time. Did you want to update that domain address to point to your Shopify store, or were you planning on buying a new domain?
Thank you for your time you spent to reply. I thought I could have google
point to BOTH my shopify AND my bigaxespice.com page. I am not sure how
this works but thought I could do both. This morning, because I added a few
new pages to my bigaxespice.com (the one I own), I re-submitted my sitemap
for that page. I thought I read somewhere in shopify forums that you should
do that periodically as your website changes. Since I did quite a bit of
changes/additions this morning, I re-submitted the sitemap again. Even
though it popped up a message (both for the shopify AND my bigaxespice.com)
that it was submitted successfully, I still have the status as “couldn’t
fetch” for both. So at this point, that’s my issue. Is it fetching or
not? If not, why would it say (on both my submissions) that it was
successfully submitted. Thank you!
You can definitely have both your websites searchable by Google, but they both need to be verified before the sitemap can be submitted.
The steps you shared in your original post for editing the DNS settings can be done for the external site you have with the custom domain URL.
For your myshopify website you will need to either purchase a custom domain for it or use the alternative method of editing the theme code. Follow this link to review those steps - Finding and submitting your sitemap · Shopify Help Center.
Once you have confirmed that your domains are verified by Google then I would resubmit the site maps for the websites for Google to crawl. If the error persists, try clearing your cache and cookies and attempting again.
The only instructions I find to do this is this:
