Question 1

Products rank on page one and get almost no clicks.

Accepted Answer

A migrated or agency-built store typically ships with the SEO title, SEO description and product type empty on 90 to 100% of products. Google falls back to the raw product title and its own guess at the category.

We dump the catalogue to measure the real gap, then write a product type and a title and description to the actual character budget for every product — reading and keeping any copy a human already wrote.

2,377 of 2,686 products had no SEO title on Hey Jimmy (heyjimmy.in).

Question 2

An audit says the catalogue is 100% healthy when it is empty.

Accepted Answer

A presence filter matches the empty string. Ask Shopify how many products have a product type and it answers with the whole catalogue, whether the values are filled or blank.

We sample real values instead of trusting counts, and verify by re-dumping the catalogue and diffing it row by row after every write.

A coverage query reported all 2,686 products typed. Four samples proved every value blank.

Question 3

Google Shopping disapproves products for non-product data.

Accepted Answer

“Buy X Online in India” style SEO titles. Shopify's Google channel sends the SEO title as the Merchant Center product title, so promotional phrasing that is harmless on a collection page gets offers rejected on products.

We rewrite promotional product titles to product data, and keep the promotional phrasing on collections where it belongs and where the feed never sees it.

38 live “Buy …” titles rewritten on one store before they were flagged.

Question 4

Fixing descriptions silently wipes the titles you just wrote.

Accepted Answer

Shopify replaces the SEO object wholesale rather than merging it. Send a description on its own and the title becomes null.

Our apply script refuses a partial SEO object before it makes a network call, so the failure cannot happen twice.

Caught after it nulled the titles on 15 products.

Question 5

Traffic collapses after a migration and never recovers.

Accepted Answer

Nobody built a redirect map. The old platform's URL pattern differs from Shopify's, so nothing matches by accident and every ranking page 404s.

We rebuild the map from the old URLs that still earn clicks, matching on model tokens rather than fuzzy similarity, and hand back the ones that genuinely need a human decision.

675 dead URLs on Hey Jimmy still earned 67% of every click the site had recorded, at nearly double the click-through rate of the live pages that replaced them.

Question 6

Merchant Center reports missing GTINs on a catalogue that looks complete.

Accepted Answer

Automated import tools populate barcode and SKU with generated junk rather than leaving them empty. The tell is a 13-digit timestamp. It looks filled in the admin, so a merchant checking their own store concludes the data is fine.

We read the destination record in Merchant Center before prescribing anything, clear the junk, and tell you honestly whether real identifiers need sourcing from the brand — that changes a cheap fix into a project, and you should know before you commit.

78% of one migrated catalogue carried placeholder barcodes and SKUs.

Question 7

Brand pages that used to rank now 404.

Accepted Answer

The old site had brand or category URLs that the new store has no equivalent for, and nothing replaced them.

We build brand collections as automated collections on the vendor field, add a Brands menu, and redirect the old paths to them.

15 brand collections covering 370 products, built for Pro Audio Brands (proaudiobrands.com).

Question 8

Shopping listings never win a price comparison.

Accepted Answer

A feed price below the page price is caught and disapproved. A feed price above it often passes with no issue code and no dashboard signal, while losing every comparison. Feed plugins commonly send the regular price on a catalogue that sells at a sale price.

We sample feed items against the live page's structured data and compare directly, rather than waiting for an error that never comes.

14 of 14 sampled items overstated by 21 to 89% on one store where 96% of products were on sale.

Question 9

A tripod gets struck for a guns and parts policy violation.

Accepted Answer

Not a Google bug. An empty or bare-numeric Google product category leaves the classifier nothing to go on, and monopods are genuinely also sold as shooting sticks.

We set the real category first, then check description wording if the strike does not clear — re-evaluation is automatic, so waiting longer never helps.

One strike cleared within minutes of the category being set; a second needed the word “shooting” thinned out of the description.

Question 10

Shopping listings show your domain instead of your brand.

Accepted Answer

Merchant Center rejects the submitted store name and falls back to the bare domain when it disagrees with the schema markup the theme emits.

We align the store name with the Organization name in your structured data, after checking whether the theme appends it to page titles.

Question 11

Abandoned-cart emails are on, and recover nothing.

Accepted Answer

Shopify only emails marketing-subscribed contacts. Most abandoners have an email on file but are not subscribed, so adding more automations sends more mail to the same handful of people.

We measure how many abandoned checkouts were never emailed before building anything, then fix the consent path rather than the automation.

51 of 68 abandoned checkouts never emailed, and ₹0 recovered, on a store whose automations had been running for months.

Question 12

An automation reads Active but has never sent an email.

Accepted Answer

Active refers to the workflow, not the message. The message row underneath can be Draft or Paused, and a draft message sends nothing. The discount block also ships with its title, amount and requirements hidden, so the email renders a bare button with no code.

We open every automation and check the message row and the discount block, not the status list.

Question 13

Conversion is low for no obvious reason.

Accepted Answer

“Require customers to sign in before checkout” switched on, with Shopify's own warning showing.

Unchecking it restores guest checkout. The single biggest lever we have found on an otherwise healthy store.

Question 14

Out-of-stock products keep taking orders.

Accepted Answer

When inventory tracking is off, Shopify never consults the quantity or the out-of-stock policy. A store can be set to stop selling at zero stock and still accept orders on every untracked variant.

We diagnose on the tracking flag rather than the backorder setting, then enable tracking and seed quantities in the same sitting so nothing flips to Sold out unexpectedly.

102 variants across 58 products were untracked on a store that was already set to deny.

Question 15

Meta descriptions you wrote appear cut off in search results.

Accepted Answer

The theme chains a truncate filter onto the whole description expression, so written descriptions ship cut at 152 characters with an ellipsis.

One snippet change. Your descriptions then ship as written.

Question 16

Product titles are cut short in Google.

Accepted Answer

The theme appends the shop name to every page title, spending around 13 of the 60 characters Google displays.

We drop the suffix on product pages only, keeping it on collections, blog and home, which returns that budget to every product.

13 characters returned to 2,686 product titles with one condition in the theme.

Question 17

Images do not appear in Google Images.

Accepted Answer

A bulk alt-text app run with the wrong locale. Alt text is invisible in the admin unless you open each product's media, and the storefront API does not expose it at all.

We read alt through the Admin API, fix by media ID so shared images are corrected once, and leave genuinely empty alts alone rather than inventing descriptions.

47 images across 12 products carrying German alt text on an Indian store.

Question 18

A theme edit is verified, published, and the old markup renders.

Accepted Answer

Duplicating a theme is asynchronous. Write during the copy window and the verification passes, then the background copy lands and silently overwrites your change.

We poll until the duplicate is complete, verify twice, and preview before anything is published. You publish, not us.

What We Find in Shopify Stores That Were Already Built

Two catalogues, rebuilt

Hey Jimmy — camera and imaging retailer

Pro Audio Brands — pro-audio equipment dealer

675 dead URLs, still earning 67% of the clicks

The catalogue of findings

Product data that was never filled in

Damage left behind by a platform move

Google Shopping problems with no dashboard warning

Checkout and recovery that quietly does nothing

Theme faults that eat the work you paid for

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