Shopify SEO Homepage Title and Meta Description Not Updating

Topic summary

A Shopify store owner updated their homepage title and meta description in the platform’s SEO settings, but these changes aren’t appearing in Google search results despite multiple crawl requests and sitemap submissions over several weeks.

Root Cause Identified:
The issue stems from the <title> tag being commented out or missing in the theme.liquid file. When examining the source code, the title tag was absent, preventing Google from reading the updated SEO settings.

Contributing Factors:

  • Theme code may not be properly connected to Shopify’s SEO settings
  • Possible interference from recently deleted apps or theme customization
  • Google’s algorithm may override meta descriptions based on search query relevance

Resolution Steps:

  • Uncomment or restore the title and meta description tags in theme.liquid
  • Request Google to re-crawl the site after fixing the code
  • Clean up unused apps that might have modified the theme

Status: The original poster resolved the technical issue and requested a new Google crawl. One other user reported experiencing the same problem and is seeking guidance without using third-party apps.

Summarized with AI on November 9. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.

Hi all,

I am currently working on my website’s SEO ranking on Google. I have updated my website’s homepage title and meta description on Shopify.

I have also followed Google’s instructions on crawling by indexing and uploading a sitemap according to the below link:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/ask-google-to-recrawl

I’ve tried this several times over the past couple of weeks now. However, my website still appears to not match the details above when I search for it on Google. The title appears to be my alt text for my company’s logo in the heading. It seems that the meta description is from contents of the homepage but I’m not entirely sure.

I was wondering if this is something that I could fix on the Shopify backend? Especially since I’ve requested Google to crawl my website several times now but still hasn’t turned out the way I want it to be.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Maverick

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Dear @Maverickyeung

Please note that showing title and description on SERP depends upon Google algorithm w.r.t the relevancy of user’s query.

Hi there,

Thanks for your response. If I understand what you’re saying correctly, does this mean that it’s irrelevant what you put in Shopify in terms of title and description? Since it’s essentially dependent on Google’s algorithm and the user’s search query.

Thanks,

Maverick

Looking at the cache of the website, I see it has been crawled on Aug 13:


However, looking at the source code of your theme, I couldn’t find a title tag. So something is missing from your theme.liquid file:

When you enter the meta title and meta description, you are trying to help Google to understand what’s on the page. If Google isn’t using your title or description you’ve entered into Shopify, it could be due to a few reasons.

  1. The theme isn’t connected properly to these settings in Shopify and it has it’s own settings in the theme Customizer. As Josh mentioned, it looks like someone removed the title tag , possibly the theme was coded incorrectly or when you deleted an app that set this tag, they overrode your settings.

  2. The information you’ve entered into the meta title and description doesn’t describe the page properly. If Google determine that the content you’ve entered doesn’t properly describe the page, they will use whatever content they think is appropriate.

In your case, I think #1 is the culprit.

Hi Josh and Ilana,

Thanks very much for your reply and pointing to directly where the issue may be. It turns out that the title and page description tags were commented out in theme.liquid for some reason. As you suggested, it could’ve happened as I was recently decluttering my site by deleting unused apps. I’ll request Google to crawl my site again and hopefully it’ll sort itself out soon.

Thanks again!

Maverick

Save time and update your product meta details at once using our Bulk Meta Update.

Hey @Maverickyeung , did that fix work for the meta description?

@Josh_Uebergang I’m also facing the same issue at my end. There is also a title tag in the theme.liquid file and also in the source code. So, could you help me how could I solve my problem without using any third-party app?

1 Like