Shopify automatically generates and maintains your sitemap — you don't need to install anything or write any code. But automatic doesn't mean perfect. Many Shopify stores have sitemaps pointing to duplicate URLs, redirect chains, or pages with thin content that drag down crawl efficiency. This guide covers what Shopify's sitemap contains, how to check whether it's healthy, and how to submit it to Google.
Where to Find Your Shopify Sitemap
Your sitemap is always at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Open it in your browser — you'll see an index file that lists links to several sub-sitemaps rather than a single long URL list. This is a sitemap index, which is Shopify's way of staying under Google's 50,000 URL per-file limit.
The sub-sitemaps Shopify generates are:
/sitemap_products_1.xml— all published products/sitemap_collections_1.xml— product collections (categories)/sitemap_pages_1.xml— static pages (About, Contact, FAQ, etc.)/sitemap_blogs_1.xml— blog posts (if you're using Shopify's blog)
Each sub-sitemap gets a numeric suffix (_1, _2, etc.) if the number of URLs exceeds the per-file limit.
What Shopify Includes (and Doesn't)
Shopify automatically excludes hidden products and password-protected pages from the sitemap. Everything else — all published products, active collections, and visible pages — is included.
Things to be aware of:
- Product variants don't get their own sitemap entries — only the parent product URL is included. This is correct behaviour.
- Collection pages with filters (e.g.
/collections/shoes?color=black) are not included — Shopify only includes canonical collection URLs, which is what you want. - You can't remove individual URLs from the sitemap without unpublishing or hiding the product/page. If you want to exclude a page from indexing without removing it from the store, add a
noindexmeta tag via your theme'stheme.liquidfile or a Shopify SEO app.
Common Shopify Sitemap Issues
Redirect chains in the sitemap
When you change a product handle or page URL in Shopify, the old URL automatically redirects to the new one — Shopify records this in URL Redirects. But if Shopify's sitemap still lists the old URL, search engines follow a redirect every time they crawl that entry.
To check: run a crawl of your sitemap URLs and filter for 3xx status codes. For each one, check whether the redirect destination is what you intended. If you've changed a product handle, Shopify usually updates the sitemap within 24 hours — if it's still showing the old URL, try republishing the product.
Duplicate URLs (www vs non-www)
If your store is accessible on both yourstore.com and www.yourstore.com, verify your sitemap consistently uses one. Go to Shopify Admin → Domains and confirm your primary domain is set — Shopify redirects all others to it and generates the sitemap using that canonical domain.
Out-of-stock products in the sitemap
Out-of-stock products that are still published remain in your sitemap. This is generally fine — you want Google to know the page exists. But if you have hundreds of permanently discontinued products with thin content, consider either unpublishing them (removes from sitemap) or adding richer content to justify their presence.
How to Submit Your Shopify Sitemap to Google
- Open Google Search Console and verify your Shopify domain if you haven't already. Shopify makes this easy — go to Admin → Preferences → Google Analytics for the HTML tag method, or verify via DNS.
- In Search Console, go to Sitemaps.
- Enter
sitemap.xmland click Submit. You only need to submit the index file — Google follows the links to the sub-sitemaps automatically.
Once submitted, Google will show you the number of submitted URLs vs. indexed URLs in the Sitemaps report. A significant gap between submitted and indexed is worth investigating — it usually means some pages have thin content, are near-duplicate of other pages, or have a noindex tag set somewhere.
Keeping Your Shopify Sitemap Healthy
Shopify stores change frequently — products are added, removed, or updated constantly. A periodic sitemap health check is worth doing quarterly at minimum. Crawl your site, check URL status codes, and look for redirect chains, 404s from deleted products that still have inbound links, and pages that were accidentally set to draft. A clean sitemap means Google focuses its crawl budget on your real, indexable content.