Critical SEO Issue: Pop-Up Drawer Content Blocking Google Search Listings

[jhnd]

Hello Shopify Community,

We’re facing a critical issue with a site’s search engine listings that’s impacting its visibility on Google and other search engines. Despite having an SEO meta description in place, unwanted content from the cart/add to bag pop-up drawer is dominating the search listings. Using default Dawn theme.

This problem is not just specific to Google; other search engines are also affected, but Google seems particularly harsh, not displaying the site in the listings at all, possibly due to this issue.

We’ve exhaustively tried different solutions, from optimizing meta tags to verifying structured data, yet the problem persists across all search engines.

This is an urgent matter for us as the site is not showing up on Google (despite having been crawled and indexed through Google Search Console over 2 weeks ago), and it’s adversely affecting its visibility and traffic.

Your assistance and insights would be invaluable. Thank you immensely for any support offered.

Best,

Jhn D.

Were there nothing in the bag/cart, the Essentials Shipping Bar app would instead say, “Free shipping for orders over $50.00!”

[claricelin]

Hi @jhnd ,

Rest assured - from what I can see, your home page meta description looks fine. It matches what you’ve added as Homepage title and meta description. See below screenshot.

What you’ve submitted to Google search console, that works! Typically it takes around possibly 1-2 weeks for a new site’s details to be updated in Google’s index. This is because Google deems that as low priority - submitting pages updates is not equivalent to seeing the changes within a few days.

What I did notice - you have many new recipes that have not been indexed yet. Submit those recipe URLs individually - request for index to inform Google of those pages. If you have already done so, the next step would be to wait. Otherwise, it looks all good!

If you need more exhaustive information around Google Search Console - you can also check out my video: How to get your Shopify store on Google Search

How to get Shopify Store on Google Search (Set up on Google Search Console) | Clarice Lin

Best,

Clarice

[jhnd]

Hi, Clarice.

Thanks for the reply and your time. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, without using filter searches like “site:blossombees.com,” which no one naturally uses, Google does not display results organically despite having already been indexed for 2+ weeks now.

While we understand it takes time to rank, we’re more concerned with the following meta description in other major search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo, etc.:

Why, if the meta description tag is formatted on the back-end dashboard correctly, is it displaying incorrectly in a live environment?

Well, using a simple web inspector, we can see it’s pulling the contents of the cart/bag drawer which is placed as a sticky header in the header group section. Header content is loaded before other page elements are loaded, which explains why it’s being listed first in search results. (This is also where search engines look for website information too.)

While it’s easier to say, “well, that’s just how those search engines work,” the simple fact is that Shopify is placing that content there. The common denominator here is Shopify, and their formatting of the header code for the Dawn theme. The issue is not the 3+ search engines displaying the incorrect meta description. However, we can see that they are filtering the header content differently, some display it all, and others display only parts. This is likely due to certain keywords and phrases like dollar values and “shipping,” or “free,” being omitted.

In our opinion, the solution here is not to sit and wait, the solution is to proactively modify Shopify’s codebase to reconcile this oversight within the Dawn theme. That may be outside of your knowledge and scope, so if we find a solution, in our own time, we will post it here. This way others who are surely experiencing this similar issue can find resolve.

At this current point in time, it might be worthwhile to explore placing the bag/cart drawer code either: outside of the header, after the meta description tag, or to disable the feature altogether. However, we have yet to fully review the code, so we cannot say which, if any, options will work. Again, we will post our updates here for the community.

Thanks again,
Jhn D.

[SEOProStaff]

Hi @jhnd ,

I understand the urgency of resolving the SEO issue with the cart/add-to-bag pop-up drawer content interfering with your search listings. The problem seems to lie within the site’s HTML structure, where the pop-up content may be incorrectly prioritized by search engines. A potential solution is to modify the site’s theme code to ensure that meta tags are clearly defined and prioritized for search engine crawlers, possibly by changing how and where the pop-up drawer is loaded in the code structure.

While addressing this issue, SEOPro can assist in other aspects of your site’s SEO. It can run an SEO audit to detect and guide you through fixing various SEO issues, including optimizing your meta tags, which see ms particularly relevant to your current situation. Plus, its bulk optimization tools can be very useful when applying changes to meta titles and descriptions across multiple pages. Since SEOPro also offers live SEO recommendations, it could provide additional insights into how to enhance your site’s visibility.

Full disclosure: We are the developer of this app.

[SEOProStaff]

Hi @jhnd ,

It sounds like the issue may be related to how search engines are crawling and prioritizing content from the cart drawer, which should not normally impact SEO listings. One possible solution could be adjusting the robots.txt file to disallow crawling of the cart drawer URLs or implementing ‘noindex’ directives for specific elements. Also, ensuring your AJAX loading scripts for cart content are not blocking the crawler’s access to the correct meta descriptions could help.

While I understand this is quite technical, SEOPro could potentially assist by providing an SEO audit of your Shopify store, pinpointing overlooked issues that might be affecting your search engine visibility. Although it doesn’t directly handle the theme’s code issues, it could give insights into other SEO improvements that might mitigate the problem indirectly.

Full disclosure: We are the developer of this app.