Google Search Console 2 Page indexing issue(s) - Blovked by robots - unused pages - problem?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A Shopify site owner received a Google Search Console alert about 2 indexing issues affecting their landing page site (using Dawn theme).

Issues identified:

  • 404 errors: Multiple non-existent URLs including /sandbox/worker, /cdn, /wpm, /contact, /comments, and /web-pixel- from late July-early August 2023
  • Blocked by robots.txt: Pages like /collections/frontpage with sorting parameters, /blogs/news.atom, and the frontpage collection itself
  • Currently crawled but not indexed: Account, cart, and collection sorting pages

Context:

The site only actively uses two pages (homepage and contact page). The blocked/erroring pages are unused features the owner isn’t utilizing.

Key question:

The owner is uncertain whether these issues require action or if Google will penalize the site for them. They’re considering removing all unused pages but want to know if this is necessary or if the errors can be safely ignored since the affected URLs aren’t part of their intended site structure.

Summarized with AI on November 18. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Just got this email from google -

"Search Console has identified that your site is affected by 2 Page indexing issue(s). The following issues were found on your site. We recommend that you fix these issues when possible to enable the best experience and coverage in Google Search.

Top issues

  • Not found (404)
  • Blocked by robots.txt"

I checked the links in the console:

For the ‘Not found’ : -
https://sitebrewer.com/sandbox/worker
1 Aug 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/cdn
1 Aug 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/wpm@
1 Aug 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/wpm
1 Aug 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/contact
1 Aug 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/comments
31 Jul 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/web-pixel-
31 Jul 2023

For the ‘blocked by robots’:

https://sitebrewer.com/collections/frontpage?sort_by=created-descending
1 Aug 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/collections/frontpage?sort_by=price-ascending
1 Aug 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/cart
31 Jul 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/account
31 Jul 2023

For the ‘crawled currently not indexed’:

https://sitebrewer.com/collections/frontpage
1 Aug 2023
https://sitebrewer.com/blogs/news.atom

Some context - this is a landing page site so I am only using two pages - the home page and contact us page.

The site is working fine. I have done some minor mods to remove the add-to-cart button etc. Dawn theme.

However - all of the pages that are blocked by the robots are pages which I am not using. Is this something to worry about or something google will penalize me for? Should I rather remove all other pages from this site then?