How to Check Your Shopify SEO: A 20-Minute Test with a Score

The 10 checks at a glance

#	Check	Where to look	Pass if	Minutes	Pass / Fail
1	Search Console and sitemap	Search Console → Indexing → Sitemaps	/sitemap.xml shows Success	2
2	Best sellers indexed	Search Console → URL Inspection (paste 3 best-seller URLs)	All 3 say URL is on Google	3
3	What Google shows	Google: site:yourstore.co.uk and site:yourstore.myshopify.com	Only real products, collections, pages and posts; no .myshopify.com results	2
4	Duplicate product URLs	Your store: open a collection and click a product	Address bar shows /products/product-name	1
5	Collection title tags	Shopify admin → Products → Collections → Search engine listing (top 5 collections)	Each has its own descriptive title and a meta description	3
6	Collection page text	Your store: top 3 collections	Each has a few sentences of your own about the range	1
7	Original product descriptions	Google: one sentence from a best seller, in quote marks	Only your store appears	2
8	Price and stock in Google	Rich Results Test: paste a product URL	Product snippets or Merchant listings found, price in GBP, no errors	1
9	Core Web Vitals	pagespeed.web.dev, Mobile tab: homepage, a collection, a product	All 3 show Passed	3
10	Non-brand traffic	Search Console → Performance, with your brand name filtered out	Non-brand clicks are flat or rising over 6 months	2

Part 1: Can Google find and index your store?

This’ll come first as nothing else will matter if Google can’t already see your products.

Check 1: Is your store in Search Console with a sitemap? (2 minutes)

Where to look: open search.google.com/search-console and go to your property → Indexing → Sitemaps. Shopify will create a /sitemap.xml automatically when the website is created. This is an index that links to separate sitemaps for different pages, such as products, collections, and blog posts (Go Fish Digital).

• Pass: if /sitemap.xml shows Status Success.
• Fail: if you don’t have Search Console access, it hasn’t been set up, or the sitemap is showing errors.
• What it costs: not having Search Console means you won’t be able to run checks 2 or 10, and you can’t see the problems that Google has spotted.
• If someone does your SEO and you don’t have access, ask for owner access.

Check 2: Are your best-selling products indexed? (3 minutes)

Where to look: In Search Console → Indexing → Pages. Note the number on the indexed count, and then compare it with your product count seen in Shopify admin → Products. Once that is done, paste the URLs of your top 3 best sellers into the URL Inspection bar at the top of Search Console. Here are the other statuses you’ll see in Search Console:

1. Alternate page with proper canonical tag: this is normal on Shopify. These are the duplicate collection versions of your product URLs, such as /collections/candles/products/lavender-candle. Google is correctly ignoring them in favour of the main /products/ URL.
2. Crawled – currently not indexed: Google has visited this page but chose not to include it. This is typically because there is thin, or duplicated content, or weak internal links which means that Google isn’t favouring the page or finding it helpful (Yoast).
3. Discovered – currently not indexed: Google is aware that this page exists, but has not visited it yet.

• Pass: if all 3 best sellers show that the “URL is on Google.”
• Fail: if any of the best sellers are not indexed, or a large share of products are sitting under the two “not indexed” statuses.
• What it costs: not having the product indexed means Google can’t find it at all, regardless of how good the rest of the site’s SEO is.

For more information, read our blog on why products aren’t showing on Google.

Check 3: What does Google show for your store? (2 minutes).

Where to look: search site:yourstore.co.uk on Google, then search site:yourstore.myshopify.com. The result count isn’t exact, but the URLs show what Google has picked up. Scroll the first 3 pages of results looking for:

1. URLs containing /collections/…/products/…
2. ?variant=, /search? or filter and tag URLs
3. Old test products, the password page or a “Coming soon” page
4. Results from your .myshopify.com address

• Pass: if the results are showing your real products, collections, pages and posts.
• Fail: if junk URLs are making up a noticeable part of the first 3 pages, or the .myshopify.com address is showing any results.
• What it costs: Google spends time on pages that will never rank, instead of showing the ones that will sell.

Check 4: Do collection pages link to the duplicate product URL? (1 minute)

To find this, open any collection page on your live store, click into a product, and then look at the address bar on the page. Shopify gives every product a second address for each collection that it is in, such as /collections/candles/products/lavender-candle. A canonical tag points Google at /products/lavender-candle. But canonical tags are suggestions, not rules, and Google can ignore them (Gel Studios). So 500 products, each in one collection, create at least 1,000 URLs for Google to crawl.

• Pass: if the address shows /products/product-name.
• Fail: if it shows /collections/…/products/…
• What it costs: your internal links could be pointing towards duplicate pages that Google crawls twice, splitting the signals between two URLs, meaning rankings are diluted.

Part 2: Will Google want to rank your pages?

Check 5: Are your collection title tags written for search? (3 minutes)

To find this, start by going to Shopify Admin, then click into products, then collections. Open each of your top 5 collections and scroll to the section that says “Search engine listing”, this is likely at the bottom of the page.

• Pass: if each collection has its own unique title that describes the range in the words buyers type when searching. It should be around 50-60 characters and include your store name at the end.
• Fail: if the title is just the name of the collection and the store name. For example, “Candles – Store Name”, or the meta description field is blank.
• What it costs: collection pages are the ones that should rank for searches like “black trainers”. A default title gives Google little to go on.

Check 6: Do your top collections have their own written text? (1 minute)

Start by opening your top 3 collections on your live Shopify store and look above the products, and below the products.

• Pass: if each collection has a few sentences of descriptive text covering the range of products on display, which’ll help shoppers choose, and help the page rank.
• Fail: if there’s no text on display, or the same text is appearing on several collection pages and not providing unique value.
• What it costs: a grid of products without descriptive text gives Google little reason to rank your store above competitors who have added content with relevant search terms.

Check 7: Are your product descriptions your own? (2 minutes)

To figure this out, start by copying one sentence from a best seller’s description and search it in Google inside quotation marks.

• Pass: if only your store appears in the search results.
• Fail: if other websites appear for the same sentence, as it usually indicates that it is manufacturer’s text.
• What it costs: multiple stores are sharing the same description, and the site doesn’t offer a unique reason for Google to display it in search results over others.

For more guidance, read our post on writing product descriptions that rank.

Check 8: Does Google see your price and stock? (1 minute)

To find the answer to this, paste a product URL into Google’s Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results).

• Pass: if it detects product snippets or Merchant listings that display your price in GBP and availability, with no errors.
• Fail: if there are no product items detected, there are errors, or two different product items appear. If two items appear, it typically means that an app is adding schema on top of the theme’s auto generated schema.
• What it costs: Google and AI shopping tools are less likely to display your price and stock in search results.

Part 3: Is it fast, and is it working?

Check 9: Do your pages pass Core Web Vitals? (3 minutes)

To find this, open pagespeed.web.dev and test your homepage, a collection page, and a product page in the mobile tab. Read the Core Web Vitals Assessment line at the top: it says Passed or Failed.You’ll see three measures. To pass, loading (LCP) needs to be 2.5 seconds or less, responsiveness (INP) 200 milliseconds or less, and layout shift (CLS) 0.1 or less. If it says there isn’t enough real-user data to generate the report (common for smaller sites), go to Search Console → Experience → Core Web Vitals instead, or use the performance score as a rough guide.

• Pass: if all three pages pass.
• Fail: if any of the pages fail, especially the product pages.
• What it costs: slow product pages mean you’ll lose shoppers before they buy (as it causes frustration), and you’ll lose rankings (as Google likes a quick site).
• Common Shopify causes of this are: too many apps, uncompressed images, video and slideshow sections.

For more information, read our post on Core Web Vitals.

Check 10: Is non-brand search traffic growing? (2 minutes)

To find this, go to Search Console → Performance → Search results. Set the date to the last 6 months (or 16 months if you’re a seasonal store).

1. Click + Add filter → Query.
2. Choose Custom (regex) → Doesn’t match regex.
3. Type your brand name, and any misspellings separated by |.
4. Click Apply and look at the clicks line.

• Pass: if you’re getting clicks from searches that don’t include your brand name, and the line is steady or rising.
• Fail: if almost all of the clicks you’re receiving are from your brand name, or if non-brand clicks are falling.
• What it costs: branded search comes from people who already know your business exists. Non-branded searches are new customers, and they’re what SEO is for.

Bonus check: does ChatGPT know your store? (not scored)

• Go into ChatGPT or Google AI Mode and type “Where can I buy [your main product] in the UK?”
• Read the results given and note whether you’re mentioned, and if you’re not, which stores are.
• Keep this section unscored. AI answers can vary each time a search is done, so it’s a signal, not a test.

Indexed collections with their own relevant text, product schema and reviews make you more likely to be mentioned.

What’s your score?

Fails	What it means	What to do next
0–2	Your foundations are sound. Google can find your products, and your pages give it reasons to rank them.	Fix any single fail this month, then re-run the full check every 3 months. Run checks 2 and 10 monthly so you spot a drop early.
3–5	Specific problems are costing you visibility, even if sales look steady.	Fix them in order. Start with checks 1–4, because a product Google can’t index can’t rank at all. Then work through checks 5–8 (titles and content), then 9 (speed).
6 or more	The basics need work before new content or links will pay off. Anything you publish now is held back by the problems underneath.	Pause new blog posts and app installs. Fix indexing and duplicate URLs first (checks 1–4), then collection titles and text (checks 5–6).

Paying someone for SEO? What to ask them

• Take your score to the next call and tell them about the tests you’ve run, and ask about each fail.
• Questions to ask:
  • Can I have owner access to Search Console?
  • Which of my products aren’t indexed, and what’s the plan for them?
  • How many non-brand clicks did we get last month, compared with 6 months ago?
  • What changed on the site this month because of SEO?

A good, transparent provider will welcome these questions and be able to provide you with the answers you’re looking for.

FAQs