Hi! I received an alert from google search console saying they excluded a page from indexation, and when I look at the page it’s spam publicity: [MVUILL_0-1663842242468.png] URL : https://www.french-address.com/collections/vendors?q=Buy%20FUT%2023%20coins%2C%20Cheap%20FIFA%2023%20coins%20for%20s…

Hi @MVUILL I can definitely understand your concern! Based on the URL you shared it looks like this might be a collection created within your admin or possible from the new Shopify Collabs service. The “spammy” content of that page you shared is what appears to be the collection page title. If you…

This is exactly the issue - instead of 404-ing as expected, the page is rendered as 200 with whatever the value of “q” is as the collection object’s title so it’s outputted to the page, and that’s the exploit the spammers are taking advantage of.

As mentioned by Allan-EP above, the issue is on Shopify’s end is being exploited by spammers. Shopify should not be referring people with this issue to third parties. The problem touches Shopify stores with Shopify-provided themes. Shopify should fix the exploit on their end. It is not normal that…

@Allan-EP noindex is more appropriate. Whether or not a result is returned, the page exists. 0 is just as valid a number as any. 0 doesn’t = page doesn’t exist. 0 = 0 vendors. The danger of 404ing is that you may have a store that fluctuates between having a result for the query and not having a res…

You’re not understanding the issue. “Vendors” is not a collection on our store (and I would expect this is the case for many of the other stores in this thread), so /collections/vendors/ shouldn’t exist. A 404 is the expected response. On top of that, “q” is getting passed into the collection title …

Hi Allan, I do understand the issue. If you want to talk priority, then I agree, the ending of the query printout is really all that matters here. That is the incentive. Then we can talk about noindex vs 404 and I agree in your case if you’re manufacturing all your products, you don’t need a vendors…

Hi Allan, I’m not speaking for Shopify’s position nor have visibility on the teams addressing this issue. I’m on the internal SEO team just popping in to help where I can.

@gregbernhardt How can this be escalated to a team that can help then? Suggesting your entire customer base to implement a noindex is unacceptable, and this exploit will continue to spread as the vulnerability becomes known.

Looking at this further, the whole issue (probably) stems from the url_for_vendor filter Shopify was trying to be useful by creating an automatic collection-like page for vendors, and haphazardly allowed the q parameter to be used for the collection title. So, the platform fix should be to validat…

Here’s the fix I ended up using in the collection template: {% if collection.id or collection.products.size > 0 %} # {{ collection.title }} {% endif %} By checking for collection.id, we continue to support real collections created by the store owner. Otherwise, if this a product query by vendor, …

How can I remove a spam page from my website index?

Shopify Discussion

Allan-EP January 4, 2023, 3:20pm 76

@gregbernhardt So Shopify’s position is, “every single store needs to fix this at an account level instead of implementing a system-wide fix” for this exploit?

Topic		Replies	Views
Is my site hacked with spammy fifa coin links? Shopify Discussion troubleshooting	79	1139	September 28, 2023
Shopify Big Bug: collections/vendors?q=XXXXXX Shopify Discussion	44	822	May 7, 2026
WARNING: /collections/vendors can be a HUGE security risk for your site Shopify Discussion troubleshooting , shop-performance	37	803	September 10, 2024
How can I prevent the new indexing bug from creating useless pages on Google? Technical Q&A	387	6031	July 30, 2026
Loophole in Shopify stores (Chinese websites hacking attempts) Technical Q&A	31	410	March 22, 2023

How can I remove a spam page from my website index?

Related topics