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Optimise Shopify for AI search

How do I optimise a Shopify store for AI search?

Shopify puts more of this in the theme code than the other builders do, which sounds worse than it is: it is one file and a duplicate theme as your undo. Three things are worth your afternoon, and one is already done for you.

1. Duplicate your theme before anything

The code editor edits the live store, including checkout traffic, with no staging step between you and a customer. Online Store, Themes, the three dots, Duplicate. Thirty seconds, and it turns a bad afternoon into a click.

2. Add structured data

It goes just before the closing head tag in layout/theme.liquid. Your theme writes structured data for products; yours describes the business, so the two sit alongside each other rather than competing. View your homepage source first: if the theme already names the store in an Organization block, add to it rather than pasting a second business. The steps.

3. Check your crawler access

Shopify's default robots.txt does not block the AI answer crawlers, so a stock store usually passes without you touching anything. Read your own file before adding a template. When the file is clean and the finding still fires, it is an app or a firewall. How to tell which.

4. Rewrite your product and collection copy

Ecommerce copy is written to persuade, which is a different job from being quotable. An engine asked what something costs lifts the sentence that says so. What to change. Each product and collection also has its own search engine listing to write: where it is.

The one already done

Since May 2026 Shopify serves an llms.txt on every store by itself, so that check already passes and no app is needed. Shopify’s version is written for shopping assistants rather than about your business, and a theme template can replace it with your own words. What it says, and how to replace it.

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