I have made an ingredient master page where I have used multicolumn to list down ingredient information. The page will eventually have 1000+ raw materials/ ingredients. Problem is content in the multicolumn is not scanned by search engine and hence when someone searches for the ingredient it doesnt show up. I even tried pulling in the content from metafields but it just doesnt show up in search results. Is it a way to solve this problem?
Topic summary
A user created an ingredient master page using a multicolumn section to display 1000+ raw materials, but discovered the content isn’t appearing in search results when users search for specific ingredients—even when pulling data from metafields.
Root Cause:
- Shopify’s search engine only indexes database objects (product titles, descriptions, page content), not content rendered through theme customizer sections
- Multicolumn sections often use JavaScript to display content, which search engines struggle to index
- Google can scan the page content, but Shopify’s internal search cannot
Proposed Solutions:
- Quick fix: Add ingredient data directly to the page content field (can be hidden from display but still searchable)
- Recommended approach: Implement a “Hub and Spoke” model using Metaobjects:
- Create an “Ingredient” metaobject in Settings → Custom data
- Store each ingredient’s details as individual metaobject entries
- Build a hub page that links to each ingredient
- Create a metaobject page template that auto-generates individual, SEO-friendly pages for each ingredient
- This produces 1000+ indexable pages instead of one complex page, significantly improving search visibility and SEO performance
If you’ve constructed this page in Customizer, then yes, this content is not scanned by the Shopify Search engine. Shopify scans data from the object in database, like product title and variant titles, description, page content, collection description, etc.
Google will scan everything on the page though.
So if you want something to appear in Shopify Search, it needs to be in the page content. You do not have to show it on the page though…
This may be helpful – https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-store/storefront-search/search-behavior#searching-specific-fields
Hello @Abhinay
The problem is that your theme’s Multicolumn section likely uses JavaScript to display content, which search engines struggle to index properly.
Additionally, a single page with over 1000 items is not effective for SEO. The correct and most powerful solution is to create a dedicated, indexable page for each ingredient using Metaobjects.
First, go to your Shopify admin’s Settings → Custom data to define an “Ingredient” metaobject. Use this to store each of your 1000+ ingredients with their details. This keeps your data organized and separate from your products.
Next, you will create a “Hub and Spoke” model. Your main ingredients page will become a “hub” that simply lists and links to each ingredient.
Then, in your theme editor, you will create a new “Metaobject” page template. Shopify will automatically use this single template to generate a unique, fast, and perfectly indexable “spoke” page for every ingredient you’ve created.
This approach gives Google over 1000 focused pages to rank, which is far more effective than one large, complex page.
Hope this helps!