Re: Shopify Bug - Web Pixels Manager Sandbox
Shopify has a new bug - they are indexing tons of useless pages in Google again. Is there any way to stop this from happening? The code seems to only be editable by shopify since it's in the content_for_header.
Do a google search for:
inurl:/web-pixels-manager@
(https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3A%2Fweb-pixels-manager%40)
Each site has multiple versions of this page indexed. Peets.com for example has 20.
The pages look blank, but include something like this in the code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Web Pixels Manager Sandbox</title>
<script id="web-pixels-manager-setup">(function e(e,n,a,o,t){e&&(window.Shopify=window.Shopify||{},window.Shopify.analytics=window.Shopify.analytics||{},window.Shopify.analytics.replayQueue=[],window.Shopify.analytics.publish=function(e,n,a){window.Shopify.analytics.replayQueue.push([e,n,a])});var r,i,s,l,d,c,p,u,f=a+"/"+o+"."+function(){var e="legacy",n="unknown",a=null,o=navigator.userAgent.match(/(Firefox|Chrome)\/(\d+)/i),t=navigator.userAgent.match(/(Edg)\/(\d+)/i),r=navigator.userAgent.match(/(Version)\/(\d+)(.+)(Safari)\/(\d+)/i);r?(n="safari",a=parseInt(r[2],10)):t?(n="edge",a=parseInt(t[2],10)):o&&(n=o[1].toLocaleLowerCase(),a=parseInt(o[2],10));var i={chrome:60,firefox:55,safari:11,edge:80}[n];return void 0!==i&&null!==a&&i<=a&&(e="modern"),e}()+".js";r={src:f,async:!0,onload:function(){if(e){var a=window.webPixelsManager.init(e);n(a),window.Shopify.analytics.replayQueue.forEach((function(e){a.publishCustomEvent(e[0],e[1],e[2])})),window.Shopify.analytics.replayQueue=[],window.Shopify.analytics.publish=a.publishCustomEvent}},onerror:function(){var n=(e.storefrontBaseUrl?e.storefrontBaseUrl.replace(/\/$/,""):self.location.origin)+"/.well-known/shopify/monorail/unstable/produce_batch",a=JSON.stringify({metadata:{event_sent_at_ms:(new Date).getTime()},events:[{schema_id:"web_pixels_manager_load/2.0",payload:{version:t||"latest",page_url:self.location.href,status:"failed",error_msg:f+" has failed to load"},metadata:{event_created_at_ms:(new Date).getTime()}}]});try{if(self.navigator.sendBeacon.bind(self.navigator)(n,a))return!0}catch(e){}const o=new XMLHttpRequest;try{return o.open("POST",n,!0),o.setRequestHeader("Content-Type","text/plain"),o.send(a),!0}catch(e){console&&console.warn&&console.warn("[Web Pixels Manager] Got an unhandled error while logging a load error.")}return!1}},i=document.createElement("script"),s=r.src,l=r.async||!0,d=r.onload,c=r.onerror,p=document.head,u=document.body,i.async=l,i.src=s,d&&i.addEventListener("load",d),c&&i.addEventListener("error",c),p?p.appendChild(i):u?u.appendChild(i):console.error("Did not find a head or body element to append the script")})(null,null,"https://cdn.shopify.com/shopifycloud/web-pixels-manager/0.0.186","sandbox","0.0.186");</script>
</head>
<body></body>
</html>
See below - should I "Validate Fix" ?
I see a NEW thing, strings ending with .atom which appears to be a redirect.
A warning to me below?
I don't understand!
Hi Trevor, looking forward to the update. Can we expect to see a solution, or should we expect to only see an explanation of the events that transpired? The words "FAQ" and "help address" aren't inspiring confidence that this is going to be an issue that Shopify fixes on Shopify's side using Shopify's time and resources.
So far I've seen a lot of blame on Google which is weird because our traffic dropped before the core update. Our first major traffic drop was the 13th into the 14th. The google core update rollout was officially started between the 15th and the 22nd, finishing on the 28th.
I know you guys are doing what you can, but the sooner we get guidance the better. I have a client who has pretty much demanded I submit almost 50,000 301 redirects for them today, one for every page and every single version of WPM that was released, they're desperate and getting ready to furlough people due to the reduced traffic. I'm having to play defense for Shopify here and so far it has not been easy.
I've watched this client make a ton of sales on Shopify. They're one of my top clients as well. Lets get this fixed so we both don't lose an excellent customer.
Hi Kbarcant, can we connect? We both kind of having a similar situation and our google search console graph basically show the same pattern. I wish we can both sort this out. I will private message you in a short while. 🙂
We have same situation with drop but without "not indexed" increase(enormous "not indexed" was bit earlier) My guess because google was ignoring all params url in general. Right now they change logic and somehow make intact in SEO.
Wow, things have really changed since I last looked at this! On 4-18-23 I was a t 2.37M not indexed 21.6K indexed. Today, 4-26-23, I'm at 961K indexed and 6.76 indexed. I haven't seen these low numbers since before the exploits began for me in late November around Thanksgiving.
I do still have the following code in robots.txt but no removals in GSC:
<!-- Begin code to prevent spam URL exploiting search function -->
{%- if request.page_type == 'search' and search.performed and search.results_count == 0 -%} <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /> {%- endif -%}
<!-- End code to prevent spam URL exploiting search function -->
Hi,
I don't know how to DM you, but here's an overview of one of my sites.
Besides the enormous increase of the "web-pixels" and "wpm" URLs found in GSC, my index gets bloated by a large number of dynamic URLs coming out of "Product recommendation" switched on. Google sorted these out in the past, now these days Google started to index them and created many indexed content duplicates. I have to switch this functionality off as it does more harm than good.
We are continuing to see a rise in “not indexed” pages with every crawl.
404s look to have peaked in early April however, we keep seeing an increase in “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag” and “Crawled - currently not indexed” in GSC. Of note, the last crawl saw a big spike in “Crawled - currently not indexed” for the wpm@ pages.
We can also confirm the same pattern many store owners are reporting of a sharp decline in search impressions reported by GSC starting in mid-March.
- Is there anything for store owners to do at this juncture?
- Is this happening to EVERY Shopify store?
- Can Shopify interface with Google and let them know to ignore the @WPM pages while a fix is being implemented?
Hi @shadi1 ,
the dynamic product recommendation URLs contain the same pattern: "prod_strat".
In the past, they were "Discovered, but not indexed". Some weeks, or months ago I've seen that Google started to consider them more, I found some in 404, and many were in the "Discovered" section. This was telling me I have to exclude crawling them in Robots.txt.
But this didn't obviously help to prevent indexing them. To set "noindex" in Shopify is not so easy and in my case, it didn't help:
Hi Everyone,
We did another audit in GSC today to check-in on the level of non-indexed pages. They are still increasing. However, after the last crawl we noticed what appears to be new attempt by spammers to inject content. This time they are using the collections/all pathway.
For now, the pages are showing up as “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag” and “Crawled - currently not indexed” in GSC
Are other store owners starting to see this? Thankfully, the pages are not getting indexed but this could be yet another SPAM signal for Google that could affect ranking. ☹ For us, this started around April 26th
Screenshot attached…
Maybe this needs its own thread?
Thanks
Gentlemen, developers, due to the fact that you cannot solve this problem for six months, site owners on your platform are experiencing problems with Google. A huge number of non-indexed pages negatively affects the SEO of sites, respectively, we incur losses from a decrease in SEO traffic. But at the same time, VVSHV company regularly writes off the subscription fee from us. Question: for what? Platform malfunctions have led us to lost profits due to your slowness. We are forced to hire specialists to resolve the issue with indexing. But nothing changes. I demand compensation for the poor service of your platform. We pay money to make everything work, but in fact shopify led us to losses. Here is an example of three of my sites.
Another crawl and more collections/all SPAM URLs appearing around +/- April 30th. (sample links attached)
Spammy links are now also appearing in the "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" category in GSC
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