The 1-minute test for your website

Pick one shoe that’s on your wall right now. You’ll use it for every check. Each one takes about a minute, and each tells you something your theme’s dashboard won’t.

Check	How to run it	Good result	Bad result
1. Search your own shoes	Google site:yourstore.com plus the shoe name	Your product page shows up	Nothing, or only a collection page
2. Copycat copy	Search one product sentence in quotes	Your page is the only one, or close to it	Dozens of stores with the same words
3. Look under the hood	View page source, search for the price	Price, stock and Product markup in the HTML	Placeholders, no price, no markup
4. Mobile speed	PageSpeed Insights, mobile tab	Core Web Vitals pass, score 90 or above	Failing vitals, score under 50
5. Ask the AI	Ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity where to buy running shoes in your town	Your store is named	Other stores named, or none

Check 1: Can Google find your product pages?

How to run it. In Google, type site:yourstore.com followed by the shoe name and model number, for example site:yourstore.com ghost 18. Use your real domain and a shoe you actually stock.

What good looks like. The product page for that shoe shows up, with your title and a sensible description.

What bad looks like. No results, only a collection or brand page, or an old URL for a version you sold out of last year.

Google says the site: operator doesn’t always return every indexed URL, so a miss here is a warning, not proof. For the definitive answer, open Google Search Console and paste the product URL into URL Inspection. It shows whether the page is indexed, and a live test shows what Google sees when it fetches the page.

How to fix it.

1. Make sure the product is available to your online store sales channel and not set to draft or hidden.
2. Check that the product is linked from a collection page, so Google can find it by following links.
3. Confirm your sitemap is submitted in Search Console. Shopify generates one automatically at yourstore.com/sitemap.xml.
4. In URL Inspection, request indexing for the product once it’s fixed.

Check 2: Are you using the same words as every other store?

How to run it. Copy one full sentence from that shoe’s product description. Paste it into Google inside quotation marks.

What good looks like. Your page, and maybe the brand’s own page.

What bad looks like. Pages and pages of other retailers using the exact sentence. That’s the brand’s product copy, pasted into every store that carries the shoe.

This isn’t a penalty. But Google’s guidance on creating helpful content asks whether a page provides original information and avoids simply copying or rewriting other sources. When your page says exactly what the brand site and Amazon say, Google has little reason to show yours instead. AI assistants have nothing new to quote from you either.

How to fix it. You don’t need to rewrite your whole catalog. Start with your top 20 sellers and add a short section in your own voice above or below the brand copy:

1. Who it’s for. “A neutral daily trainer for runners who want more cushion than the [last model].”
2. How it fits. Runs true, runs short, narrow heel, roomy toe box, available in wide. This is what your fitters say on the floor every day, and no brand page has it.
3. What to compare it with. The two or three shoes on your wall a runner should also try on.
4. What changed from the last version. Runners search for this, and they ask your staff about it constantly.

Ten minutes per shoe from a fitter’s notes beats any rewrite tool.

Check 3: Can machines read your price and stock?

How to run it. Open the shoe’s product page on a computer. Right-click and choose View page source (or type view-source: before the URL). Press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F and search for:

1. The price, for example 140.00.
2. "@type": "Product" or "@type":"Product", the start of product structured data.
3. availability, which should say InStock for something on your wall.

What good looks like. The price, the product markup and the stock status are all in the source, and they match what the page shows a shopper.

What bad looks like. No price in the source, empty placeholders, or a price in the markup that doesn’t match the price on screen.

The page source is the HTML your server sends before any JavaScript runs. That matters for three reasons:

• Google recommends putting Product structured data in the initial HTML and warns that markup generated by JavaScript can make Shopping crawls less frequent and less reliable.
• Merchant Center’s price check crawls the HTML your server returns. Google says prices loaded by JavaScript after the page loads will trigger a mismatch error, and mismatched products may be disapproved.
• Google’s own JavaScript SEO guide notes that not all bots can run JavaScript, and that rendering at Google can wait in a queue.

For a second opinion, paste the URL into Google’s Rich Results Test or run a live test in Search Console’s URL Inspection, which lists any structured data Google detects on the page.

How to fix it.

1. If the price and markup are missing, ask your theme developer to output the product’s price, availability and Product markup in the HTML the server sends. Check whether a recent app or theme customization changed your product template.
2. If the markup price doesn’t match the shown price, look for apps that change prices on the page, like currency converters or discount widgets.
3. Make sure the markup includes a GTIN when the shoe has one. Google’s merchant listing documentation recommends the most specific GTIN that applies. The UPC on the box is it.

Check 4: Is your site fast enough on a phone?

How to run it. Go to PageSpeed Insights, paste your product page URL, and look at the Mobile tab. Then run your homepage too.

What good looks like. Two parts of the report matter:

• Core Web Vitals assessment (field data). This is real Chrome users on your site. Google’s Web Vitals guidance sets the good thresholds at Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of visits.
• Performance score (lab data). PageSpeed Insights calls 90 or above good, 50 to 89 needs improvement, and below 50 poor.

Many independent stores won’t see field data for a single product page. When a URL lacks enough real-user data, PageSpeed Insights falls back to your whole site, and if the site lacks enough data too, it shows only the lab test. That’s fine. Use the lab numbers.

What bad looks like. A failed Core Web Vitals assessment or a lab score in the red. Common causes are a huge hero image or video on the homepage, a stack of apps each loading their own scripts, and pop-ups that shift the page as it loads.

How to fix it.

1. List every app you’ve installed. Remove the ones nobody uses. Shopify notes that some apps leave code in your theme after you uninstall them, so ask the app’s developer how to clean it up.
2. Compress and resize hero images. A homepage banner doesn’t need to be a print-quality file.
3. Replace an autoplay hero video with an image on mobile.
4. Give image and banner slots fixed dimensions so the page doesn’t jump while loading. That’s what CLS measures.
5. Re-run PageSpeed Insights after each change so you know what helped.

Check 5: Do AI assistants name your store?

How to run it. On your phone, in your town, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity: “Where can I buy running shoes in [your town] today?” Then ask “Where can I get a gait analysis in [your town]?”

What good looks like. Your store is named, with the right hours and a link to your site.

What bad looks like. Other stores named and not you, big box and Amazon only, or your store with an old address.

Assistants search the web, map data and reviews when someone asks. The first four checks decide whether they can read your site at all. Your Business Profile and reviews decide most of the rest. Our guide on how AI assistants decide which running store to recommend explains where each one gets local information and a fuller monthly test.

How to fix it. Read the sources the assistant cites. If it cites a competitor’s fit page, write yours. If it cites a “best running stores” list you’re missing from, contact the author. If it pulls old hours, fix your Business Profile and every directory listing. The local SEO guide covers the listing side.

What should you fix first?

Fix in this order:

1. Check 1 (indexing). A page Google hasn’t found can’t rank or be quoted.
2. Check 3 (readable price and stock). It also affects Merchant Center and your Shopping listings, covered in our Merchant Center guide.
3. Check 4 (speed). It affects every visitor, not just search.
4. Check 2 (your own copy). Start with your 20 best sellers.
5. Check 5 (AI). Re-run it a month after the rest.

Segments’ Get Found setup includes a full catalog pass that fills in product types, vendors and GTINs, plus a structured data baseline for your Shopify site, which covers the markup side of check 3. The free Storefront Report also checks your phone speed and whether AI assistants name your store.