So I’ve done a bit of digging.
Short answer is:
Not an SEO issue. This is just a generic warning from Semrush. However, Shopify could still look at a fix if they want to avoid confusion, not for SEO reasons.
It happens because:
- Shopify disallows Googlebot access to /checkout/ URLs.
- The URL in question is a JS file sitting under /checkout/ so it gets blocked from Googlebot crawl
- Semrush flags this as a potential issue
Some more detail### Example from Semrush
Been a while since I ran a crawl with this tool, had to find an example in the wild. This is from the “Blocked internal resources in robots.txt” Semrush report.
Not every warning an SEO tool spits out is actually bad for SEO or needs a fix, they are start points for deeper analysis and adding context.
What does preloads.js do in Shopify?
The /checkouts/internal/preloads.js file is small set of utility functions for pre-connects DNS and pre-fetches resources. Basically it helps to make the next pages and the checkout load faster by pre-loading files and warming up network connections before user clicks something.
Why is /checkouts/ blocked in robots.txt?
Because you don’t need your checkout to show in Google search result pages. This is not useful to users.
Still want to fix?
If you still convinced you need to force a “fix”, this will tidy up your Semrush report but won’t actually improve SEO in any meaningful way.
Add this line to robots.txt in the Googlebot group:
Allow: /checkouts/internal/preloads.js