@gregbernhardt please have a look
Topic summary
Shopify merchants report Google aggressively indexing blank [email removed] and later [email removed] pixel sandbox URLs, inflating “Indexed,” “Excluded by noindex,” and 404 counts in Search Console and, for some, coinciding with ranking drops. WPM = Web Pixels Manager; x-robots-tag is an HTTP header used to apply noindex without a meta tag.
Early community workarounds included robots.txt disallows and Search Console removals, but blocking prevented Google from seeing noindex. Shopify staff advised removing those disallows and not using redirects or changing domains.
Shopify’s platform-level changes: web-pixels-manager URLs now return 404; wpm URLs serve noindex via x-robots-tag; a fix prevents crawlers from executing the JavaScript that exposed pixel URLs. An official FAQ was published; Shopify says merchants generally need to do nothing and that 404/noindex growth is expected temporarily and not harmful.
Recent developments: July spikes in WPM 404s and noindex counts, which Shopify attributes to versioning and cleanup. Some merchants suspect robots.txt gaps and continue to see cluttered GSC reports, ask for exact timelines, and debate 404 vs 410 (Shopify cites Google saying practical equivalence).
Side issues: recommendations and collections/all URLs appearing; community suggested targeted robots.txt rules. Many screenshots, example URLs, and code snippets are central. Status: partially resolved; cleanup ongoing; timeframe unspecified.
@ahsonmkhan the first linked URL is noindex and the second is 404
@gregbernhardt Thank you for all the support you have extended. We hope these will be sorted out soon.
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Hi Greg, there is no noindex in [email removed] pages and our site produces such pages everyday. Google still indexed them even we have add [email removed] in the robots.txt.
Our site had indexed about 3 hundreds pages before. Now google shows more than 6000 pages and our traffic dropped by 2/3. Can you guys stop the code to produce such no content, meaningless pages?
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@gregbernhardt Can you guys stop the code to produce such no content, meaningless pages?
Hi @gregbernhardt ,
The Google Search Console still does not check the noindex tag. I have put the pages into the recheck, but the GSC says the problem still persists…one example is this page:
https://www.beta-wellness.com/wpm@0.0.255@5dd7309bw0a4825d1pb4247666mb80b6589/sandbox/ I think our robots.txt (https://www.beta-wellness.com/robots.txt) is not the problem, because I have deleted the [email removed] part out of it. Could you maybe add the “noindex” tag as a meta tag? Please? BG, Miha |
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What I have learned from @gregbernhardt is to remove our added [email removed] so that noindex tag can work efficiently. It is slightly working for us.
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You mean from the robots.txt right? I have done that 
(beta-wellness.com/robots.txt), still not working properly…
What is the second screenshot? Still pages affected…
In one night one of my sites went from under 100 freshly fixed 404’s to over 3,000. The next day (3/15) I’m down to 75% of the traffic 3/16 I’m at 50%. It’s stayed steady since.
We need to get this resolved ASAP, this is not going to be easy to explain to the business owner why half of his traffic vanished. Please, any update would be appreciated. I’ll be tapping F5.
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its really bad that shopify is completely not addressing this issue when they are the CMS, majority of stores on teh platform are being affected.
I went to do a check on the sites in my country, a ton of them even big names are affected
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Hi
Where did the /web-pixel-manager@ come from, i have the /wpm@ issue going on right now. I had the web pixel manager issue and it was supposedly fixed few month ago.
The /wpm@ is getting fixed right now, my indexed pages dropped by 1000 last night, i tested to make sure @WPM is not blocked by robot.txt any more and its also not being indexed .
So The /wpm@ pages are dropping . Your screen shots are scaring me thou , I m really hoping the /web-pixels manager@ is not back now.
My Sales traffic and sales have also had a big drop the past few weeks. I haven’t heard anything about compensation yet . This is not our fault we should be compensated some how!!!
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Yeah, we need compensation !!!
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Are they seriously not going to resolve this? The silence is deafening.
- web-pixel-manager URLs will 404 and drop from the index
- wpm URLs will be noindex and drop from the index
Both of these things will take weeks to complete. You will see an increase in your “pages with noindex” report and that is a nonissue in terms of SEO.
- wpm URLs will be noindex and drop from the index
What is the shopify’s method? Add noindex tag in wpm pages? I did not find such tag in these pages at present.
You said nonissue in terms of SEO. Now Google has indexed these pages. If your guys do not know what is spam from Google, here is the definition from Google Spam Policies for Google Web Search | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers .
Spammy automatically-generated content
Spammy automatically generated (or “auto-generated”) content is content that’s been generated programmatically without producing anything original or adding sufficient value; instead, it’s been generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. Examples of spammy auto-generated content include:
- Text that makes no sense to the reader but contains search keywords
- Text translated by an automated tool without human review or curation before publishing
- Text generated through automated processes without regard for quality or user experience
- Text generated using automated synonymizing, paraphrasing, or obfuscation techniques
- Text generated from scraping feeds or search results
- Stitching or combining content from different web pages without adding sufficient value
If you’re hosting such content on your site, you can use these methods to exclude them from Search.
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@jackzhu the noindex is sent via http header, not meta tag
@gregbernhardt i see it. But our site also still get such pages indexed. Why shopify could not stop the code to produce such pages?