Editorial evidence
Sources and Verification
We answer merchant questions with primary sources. We leave out announcements that do not change what a merchant should do.
What enters
A change enters only when it alters a merchant deadline, permission, supported path, cost, required action, or trustworthy interpretation of store data.
What stays out
Vendor launch language, unsourced predictions, duplicate coverage, developer changes with no merchant consequence, and metrics without a merchant question stay out. A release can be large and still require no guidance.
How a source passes
- Open the primary changelog, specification, policy, help page, or filing.
- Record the date it was checked.
- State exactly why a merchant is on the page and when not to start.
- Write the Official Path, Steps, Done condition, and Stop Point when work is required.
- State when paid help is worth it and what the merchant does not have to buy.
- Keep the source link on the published page so the reader can verify it.
How publication is controlled
Automated source monitoring only collects evidence and drafts. It cannot publish anything. A person reviews each draft, checks the sources, and publishes the English and Traditional Chinese versions together in one reviewed change. Nothing appears on this site because a monitor detected it.
How published content stays current
Every published item records a Source Check. Platform Changes must be checked again within 30 calendar days. Decisions and Steps must be checked within 90 calendar days. A stale or future-dated item fails the next site build. English and Traditional Chinese entries must have matching identifiers, dates, categories, Steps, and source evidence.
How lists are ordered
The complete guidance list, answers, and steps use the original publication date. Platform changes use the date when the change took effect. This keeps a later write-up from making an older change appear new.
Automation boundary
Published content accepts Markdown only. Raw HTML is rejected. Every external link must match an exact HTTPS URL in the validated source register. Every Answer states why you are here, when not to start, why it matters, what to do or not do, what you will see when it is done, what the result does not prove, when paid help is worth it, and what you do not have to buy. Each Answer links to evidence already declared in its source list.
Registered sources
Other sources may point to a change, but they do not replace its primary source. The registered sources and planned review cadence are:
- Shopify: Merchant changelog. Planned review cadence: daily. Merchant-facing launches, deadlines, defaults, and admin workflow changes.
- Shopify: Developer changelog. Planned review cadence: weekly. Commerce protocols and developer changes that alter a merchant-supported route.
- Shopify: Agentic storefronts help. Planned review cadence: weekly. AI-channel eligibility, checkout behavior, product support, privacy, and opt-out controls.
- Shopify: AI-powered tools help. Planned review cadence: weekly. Sidekick, official assistant connections, permissions, and merchant review boundaries.
- Shopify: Shopify Flow help. Planned review cadence: weekly. Workflow setup, testing, supported actions, and automation safety.
- OpenAI: Shopping with ChatGPT Search. Planned review cadence: weekly. Current shopping-result, merchant-ranking, price, review, and checkout behavior.
- OpenAI: Commerce policies. Planned review cadence: weekly. Prohibited products and practices that alter merchant eligibility.
- Google: Merchant Center announcements. Planned review cadence: daily. Merchant Center deadlines, reporting changes, new attributes, and AI commerce availability.
- Microsoft: Microsoft Advertising agentic commerce. Planned review cadence: weekly. Copilot Checkout eligibility, onboarding, fees, and merchant controls.
- Perplexity: Instant Buy help. Planned review cadence: weekly. Merchant responsibilities, eligibility, product data, and checkout mechanics.
- OpenAI: Powering product discovery in ChatGPT. Planned review cadence: weekly. How product data reaches ChatGPT shopping experiences.
- Shopify: ChatGPT agentic storefront. Planned review cadence: weekly. Shopify eligibility, catalog syndication, and checkout behavior in ChatGPT.
- Shopify: Connecting AI tools to a store. Planned review cadence: weekly. Official assistant connections, permissions, and access controls.
- Google: AI performance insights. Planned review cadence: weekly. Merchant Center AI visibility metrics, eligibility, and interpretation limits.
- Google: AI performance insights announcement. Planned review cadence: weekly. Dated availability announcement for the Merchant Center pilot.
- Ahrefs: llms.txt server-log study. Planned review cadence: monthly. Original empirical evidence about requests to published llms.txt files.
- Shopify: llms.txt, llms-full.txt, and agents.md customization. Planned review cadence: weekly. Shopify storefront support for machine-readable discovery files.
- OpenAI: Commerce product feed specification. Planned review cadence: weekly. Current production and draft product feed fields and submission requirements.
- Shopify: Agentic Storefronts in Shopify admin. Planned review cadence: weekly. Admin reporting and recommendations for agentic channels.
- Shopify: Spring 2026 merchant edition. Planned review cadence: monthly. Merchant-facing release details for agentic commerce reporting.
- Shopify: Agentic commerce audit. Planned review cadence: monthly. Shopify's free product-page audit and its stated interpretation limits.
- Google: Analytics default channel definitions. Planned review cadence: monthly. Google Analytics classification of traffic from AI assistants.
- Shopify: Perplexity shopping integration. Planned review cadence: monthly. Shopify Catalog syndication and checkout mechanics for Perplexity.
- Anthropic: Anthropic crawler controls. Planned review cadence: monthly. Crawler identities, purposes, and robots.txt behavior.
- Shopify: Storefront MCP cart tools deprecation. Planned review cadence: weekly. UCP migration deadline for integrations using Storefront MCP cart tools.
- Shopify: Global Catalog MCP. Planned review cadence: weekly. Documented agent access to Shopify's cross-merchant catalog.
- Shopify: WebMCP for Liquid and Hydrogen. Planned review cadence: weekly. Built-in WebMCP availability and production status by storefront stack.
- Shopify: Test workflows in Shopify Flow. Planned review cadence: monthly. Workflow test behavior, supported data, and action limitations.
- Shopify: Sidekick-generated Flow test cases. Planned review cadence: monthly. Sidekick support for generating Shopify Flow test cases.
- Shopify: Products in agentic storefronts. Planned review cadence: weekly. Product eligibility and discovery controls for Shopify agentic storefronts.
- OpenAI: Stable commerce product feed reference. Planned review cadence: weekly. Production-supported fields and formats for OpenAI product feeds.
- OpenAI: Draft commerce product feed reference. Planned review cadence: weekly. Planning-only fields under consideration for a future OpenAI product feed.
- Shopify: Editing product variants. Planned review cadence: monthly. Standard Shopify variant fields and editing behavior.
- Shopify: Cart MCP. Planned review cadence: weekly. Current UCP-conforming cart tools and migration target.
- Shopify: robots.txt.liquid template reference. Planned review cadence: monthly. How a theme template replaces Shopify's generated robots.txt, and the robots.default_groups Liquid pattern.
- Shopify: Editing robots.txt.liquid. Planned review cadence: monthly. Merchant path to add, edit, and delete a custom robots.txt.liquid, and how deleting it restores the default file.
- Shopify: Edit theme code. Planned review cadence: monthly. Admin navigation to the theme code editor, permanent file deletion, and theme-edit warnings.
- Universal Commerce Protocol: UCP 2026-08-25 release notes. Planned review cadence: monthly. Dated protocol releases, breaking changes, and per-capability versions that Shopify's agent surfaces adopt.
- Universal Commerce Protocol: UCP announcements. Planned review cadence: monthly. Official protocol announcements and the current stable specification version.
- Shopify: Claude for commerce examples. Planned review cadence: monthly. Shopify's reference shopping and merchant agents for Claude, built on UCP and Sign in with Shop.
- Shopify: Script tags deprecation. Planned review cadence: monthly. Dates when app script tags stop being created and stop running on storefronts, and the named replacements.
- Shopify: Theme app extensions. Planned review cadence: monthly. App embed blocks that replace script tags and how a merchant turns them on in the theme editor.
- Shopify: Storefront MCP server. Planned review cadence: weekly. Tools currently documented on a store's Storefront MCP server and any removal notice.
- Google: Merchant Center reporting changes. Planned review cadence: monthly. Reporting definition changes, restated date ranges, and new interaction types in Merchant Center performance reports.
- Cloudflare: Bot Preference Sync. Planned review cadence: monthly. How Cloudflare writes an AI-bot block into a zone's robots.txt from dashboard settings, and how to turn it off.
- Cloudflare: AI crawler default controls. Planned review cadence: monthly. Default blocking of training and agent crawlers from September 15, 2026, which plans it applies to, and how to opt out.
- Shopify: Managing agentic storefronts. Planned review cadence: monthly. The Allow Shopify to manage for me default, per-channel Catalog access and direct checkout controls, the 7-day sharing wind-down, Shop as a channel, and listing quality signals.
- Shopify: Data sharing and privacy for agentic storefronts. Planned review cadence: monthly. What product and order data each AI channel receives, what stays private, and what each channel setting combination allows.
- Shopify: Selling on Google AI Mode and Gemini. Planned review cadence: monthly. Merchant Center product discovery, US merchant and buyer conditions for direct checkout, checkout behavior, and unsupported features.
- Shopify: Selling on Microsoft Copilot. Planned review cadence: monthly. Catalog product discovery and sharing controls, US sales eligibility and buyer location for direct checkout, and unsupported features.
- Shopify: Selling on Meta. Planned review cadence: monthly. Catalog discovery and sharing controls, eligible-store direct checkout for United States buyers, the Facebook and Instagram feed requirement for shoppable ads, and attribution.
- Shopify: Shopify Catalog. Planned review cadence: monthly. What Shopify Catalog is, the no-guarantee statement on placement and ranking, and the boundary that a store cannot opt out of the Catalog itself.
- Shopify: Requirements for being included in Shopify Catalog. Planned review cadence: monthly. The complete store and product eligibility list for automatic Catalog inclusion, plus the account-standing conditions Shopify reviews over time.
- Shopify: Mapping product data sources for Shopify Catalog. Planned review cadence: monthly. Which product fields can be remapped, when mapping is worth changing, and the statement that mapping changes are processed with a delay.
- OpenAI: ChatGPT Ads global expansion announcement. Planned review cadence: monthly. The August 31, 2026 self-service opening of ChatGPT Ads across India, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, the statement that ads do not influence ChatGPT answers, and the advertiser-side capabilities OpenAI names.
- OpenAI: Ads Manager availability by country. Planned review cadence: monthly. The current country list for self-service ChatGPT Ads, the difference between account creation and self-service access, and the sales-team route for countries not listed.
- OpenAI: OpenAI crawlers and user agents. Planned review cadence: monthly. OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, and OAI-AdsBot purposes, which one decides ChatGPT search inclusion, and which ignore robots.txt.
- Anthropic: Anthropic crawler article. Planned review cadence: monthly. ClaudeBot, Claude-User, and Claude-SearchBot purposes and the stated effect of blocking each in robots.txt.
- Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers. Planned review cadence: monthly. PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User purposes, the statement that PerplexityBot does not crawl for foundation models, and robots.txt behavior.
- Google: Google common crawlers. Planned review cadence: monthly. Googlebot user agents and the Google-Extended token, including the statement that it does not affect Search inclusion or ranking.
- Google: AI features and your website. Planned review cadence: monthly. How AI Overviews and AI Mode source pages, the Googlebot robots.txt control, and the preview controls that limit AI features.
- Meta: Meta web crawlers. Planned review cadence: monthly. Meta-ExternalAgent, Meta-ExternalFetcher, and facebookexternalhit purposes and their robots.txt behavior.
- Amazon: Amazonbot and Amzn-SearchBot. Planned review cadence: monthly. Amazonbot and Amzn-SearchBot purposes, Alexa search eligibility, and Robots Exclusion Protocol behavior.
- Google: JavaScript SEO basics. Planned review cadence: monthly. Google's crawl, render, and index phases, rendering queue delay, and the statement that not all bots can run JavaScript.
- Google: Generate structured data with JavaScript. Planned review cadence: monthly. Google's processing of JavaScript-generated markup and its warning that dynamic Product markup makes Shopping crawls less frequent and less reliable.
- Google: Merchant listing structured data. Planned review cadence: monthly. Required Offer price and currency properties, the price-greater-than-zero rule, and page eligibility for merchant listings.
- Shopify: Ajax API product endpoint. Planned review cadence: monthly. The public /products/{handle}.js response, its price and availability fields, and the 250-variant limit.
- Shopify: Liquid product object. Planned review cadence: monthly. The product object's price, price_min, available, and selected variant properties that a theme prints into HTML.
- Shopify: Sidekick. Planned review cadence: monthly. What Sidekick can do in the admin and the statement that it presents changes for review before applying them.
- Shopify: Best practices for AI-powered tools. Planned review cadence: monthly. Shopify's review-before-accepting practice, the statement that results vary between requests, and that the merchant is responsible for accepted changes.
- Google: Universal Cart announcement. Planned review cadence: monthly. The May 19, 2026 Universal Cart announcement: the surfaces it spans, the US rollout timing, named retailers including Shopify merchants, and the merchant-of-record statement.
- Google: Universal Commerce Protocol update, May 20, 2026. Planned review cadence: monthly. The May 20, 2026 UCP update: checkout rollout to Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, the merchant-of-record statement, and new categories.
- Microsoft: UCP-ready feeds general availability. Planned review cadence: monthly. The April 21, 2026 general availability of UCP-ready feeds in Microsoft Merchant Center in the US and the Copilot Checkout statements it carries.
- Shopify: Meta is now an AI channel. Planned review cadence: monthly. The September 8, 2026 merchant announcement that Meta joined the AI channels in Agentic Storefronts and what Shopify Catalog shares by default.
- Anthropic: Claude Commerce Agents. Planned review cadence: monthly. What the Claude commerce agent blueprint is, the shopping and merchant agent shapes, and its stated support status.
- Anthropic: Commerce agents blueprint. Planned review cadence: monthly. The open blueprint's agent definitions, its licence, and its statement that nothing in it places an order or takes payment.
- European Commission: Article 50 transparency FAQ. Planned review cadence: monthly. Who counts as a provider or deployer under Article 50, the chatbot disclosure duty, extraterritorial reach, application dates, and the marking grace period.
- European Commission: AI Act regulatory framework. Planned review cadence: monthly. The AI Act application timeline, the AI Omnibus amendments and which obligations they moved, and the transparency risk category.
- Google: Search generative AI control. Planned review cadence: monthly. The Search Console control that includes or excludes a property from Search generative AI features, its rollout, and what it does not affect.
- Cloudflare: Agents Week review. Planned review cadence: monthly. What Cloudflare shipped during Agents Week in August 2026, including the WebMCP preview offered to any website.