@EnterGallery I tried the remove tool, it seems useless. Tried every sort of tools, tactics, adjustment plus this shopify update, no improvement can be seen on my situation.
Hi @Trevor ,
I’m also seeing new “Wpm” URLs appearing in the “Not found (404)” section in GSC every day and they seem not to contain the “noindex” tag, at least in GSC they are not marked like that. Is your solution actually working?
Another Google crawl and an audit in GSC shows a continued increase in “no index” pages and 404s. It’s all the wpm pages and the collections/all spam… same as before. Are any store owners seeing their indexing stats improve since this fix has been implemented?
Thanks
You don’t want WPM being indexed so noindex is good.
You do not need to be concerned about such Web Pixel Manager pages in GSC showing a 404. Beyond 404, legitimate 404s are fine to have for SEO. These are pages that genuinely don’t exist and if they have no other variation or you don’t want them indexed, it’s fine to 404 them.
It seems Shopify must remove previous old versions when a new version of WPM is released. This causes the 404.
I’m working on a Google Ads tracking code with all features that uses WPM (or Shopify Customer Events/Pixels). In the diagnostics of Google Ads, I’ve seen these URLs as they are the webpage that trigger conversions. The number after the [email removed] symbol in the URL shows the version. Customer Events was buggy since it’s release. Shopify’s own example in 2022 didn’t even follow their guidelines and never worked. Ever since Customer Events release, I’ve seen the version number in the URL change almost every 2 weeks. The format today is like:
[domain]wpm@6d6339c0w77483ddapdc20cb53m2575a67f/web-pixel-shopify-custom-pixel@0543/sandbox/[hnadle]
Remember, you can now edit the robots.txt file in Shopify, so if a similar problem happens again, you can noindex it yourself.
Like is freaking moving, so let’s move on 
I’m still getting this error for https://libertysafe.myshopify.com/. I received a Google alert over the weekend that I’m having indexing issues for this URL.
I also still have these showing that was checked by Google in late May.
Everyone who have same issue and search drop more than ~40% send yours shop url to PM. I would like to investigate correlation between projects. We have 3 projects. 2 of them on 15th of march got improvement in search and one got search DROP. It would great get more projects with drop to better investigation
@DariusWS I would message you but it seems that I cannot due that due to a combination of factors that are not disclosed but only mentioned in https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-discussions/direct-messaging-members-in-shopify-community/td-p/484724
If you manage to find out something, please share with the rest of us.
I had a spike with page views in March but since then, things are downhill.
Also, I have requested removal but I still have almost the same number of invalid URLS.
@DariusWS, how do I PM you? Our store URL is
Znnadmin with a platform as large as Shopify, you think that this would be a priority for them and fixed a long time ago!
???
I’ve been seeing these URL’s for months and just did a redirect. But now my 404 validation report shows 4,794 pages not found.
Not sure what I should do here?? Just wait it out?
Thanks,
Sue
From 7-1 to 7-3 we got 4,200 new web-pixels-manager 404s on a website with <300 products. These newly discovered 404s are listing the referring URLs as their corresponding real pages, so the error is generated by Shopify.
Why is Search Console telling me that between 7-1 and 7-4 that it was referred to newly discovered wpm links from good pages on the website?
@DariusWS I also cannot PM, please see above the Shopify procedure to see how you can achieve that.
Following on from @P1Commerce advice, I have submitted /web-pixel-manager and /wpm to GWT for temporary removal. Google is no longer indexing these pages, however, we get surges of 404 error notifications in GWT - by 2,000 at a time! Every time we get a surge in 404s our SERPS decline significantly. This has happened 3 times now and correlates directly in time with SERPS position reductions. After a few months, the 404 errors decline again and ranking positions increase.
I’m tempted to add /web-pixel-manager* and /wpm* to the disavow in the robots.txt to stop the Google bot from crawling these pages. Any advice??
We went from <10 404s to nearly 10,000, along with literally about 10,000 other errors. We also went from 1000 daily users to 250. We’ve been repeatedly told it’s unrelated by Shopify and that no additional fixes are being rolled out as there’s no issue detected and the thread about the issue was closed. Shopify support has left my ticket open for days now with no response and I’ve been told to not pursue this issue further on the forums as well.
To anyone reading this: Don’t do what I did. Don’t waste 200 hours over three months analyzing this data expecting this to be fixable in any meaningful capacity. The ball is entirely out of our court on this issue, we can only wait to see if they return it or if they just leave us hanging.
We are facing the same issues. Sales significantly affected and 45% less traffic to our store.
Surely Shopify should be accountable for these errors .
Any kind of help would be appreciated.
Hopefully this helps. I wrote this up this morning for all of the store owners like my clients who just need to understand what’s going on. I did my best to put it in plain English since Shopify is directed at those who aren’t necessary professional web developers.
The Two Flavors Of Our 404 Errors
There are two types of 404 errors that you may see on your Google Search Console report: wpm 404s and real 404s. Wpm 404s are generated by the web pixel manager issue, and include with “web-pixels-manager” or “wpm” in the link. Real 404s are caused by pages on your site that cannot be found by Google. These are the ones that you need to resolve.
Limitations of Google Search Console Report
Shopify’s advice is to filter 404 errors by submitted pages only. This will remove all the wpm 404s as they are not on the sitemap. However, this will also remove real 404s because they are not on the sitemap either, thanks to Shopify’s automatically updated sitemap. Therefore, you need to find another way to check your real 404s. When I first discovered this, I had to fix a lot of bad internal links that were hurting my SEO.
Another problem with the Google Search Console report is that it only shows you a sample of the 1,000 most recently crawled 404s, not the most recently discovered ones. This means that even if a new issue arises, it may not show up on the list if Google has recrawled other pages since then. Once you have over 1,000 404 errors, your report is officially inaccurate. For example, we have 11k 404 errors, and we only see 9k of them, which is 9% of our total errors. Those odds are not great. If you have just over 1,000 errors, your report would be more accurate.
Solutions for Different Scenarios
Depending on how many 404 errors you have, you may need different solutions to handle them.
If your store has under 1,000 404 errors
You can use the Google Search Console report to filter out the wpm errors and fix the real ones. To do this, go to your 404 report, filter by URL, and put “Does Not Contain” and put the [email removed] sign. This will remove all wpm errors from the report. The remaining errors are real 404s. Fix them as necessary by setting up redirects or updating links, and then manually submit the URL to Google for reindexing it. Google will see that it is a 301 redirect and it will remove it from your report.
If your store has over 1,000 404 errors
You will need to pay for an SEO app that tracks 404 errors. These apps only start working from when you install them, so you will need to wait for data to start rolling in. I will not recommend any specific app, as I do not want to endorse any product or service. You can manually resubmit these URL’s the have them marked as fixed.
Why Real 404 Errors Matter
Monitoring the 404 report is very important for your SEO. If you make a typo in an internal link, this is where you would see it. But there are other problems that can arise as well. For example, if you delete a collection, most store owners who self-develop would just write a 301 redirect for the collection URL, such as /collections/old ► /collections/new.
However, nested product URLs (such as /collections/old/products/exampleproduct) may also need to be redirected, and without proper access to a 404 report you would never know. There are many other examples like this and preventing customers from seeing 404 errors is a well-established best practice for SEO.
This report is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to common errors made by the exact kind of people Shopify advertises to - those with little web development experience. I think that Shopify needs to develop an indexing management tool that allows us to see what pages are serving as 404s, and preferably a better 301 redirection option with wildcards or patterns available.
Summary
Using the ‘submitted pages’ filter results in no usable data. If you have far over 1,000 404 errors, pay for a 404-tracking app until Shopify either fixes this or launches their own 404 tracker and watch for your real 404s in there. If you have under 1,000 errors, congratulations, you get to keep your money. Filter out the wpm errors with [email removed]