How to Stop Shopify .atom URLs from Wasting Crawl Budget (Fix in 5 Minutes)

Shopify Store Owners: Fix This SEO Issue Right Now – Stop Thousands of .atom URLs from Wasting Your Crawl Budget

If you run a Shopify store and care about organic traffic, there’s one small technical SEO issue you should fix immediately – especially if you’ve noticed strange .atom URLs appearing in your crawl reports or Google Search Console.

Many Shopify store owners don’t realize that Shopify can generate thousands of .atom pages that search engines end up crawling unnecessarily. While these URLs may not directly hurt rankings, they can create crawling inefficiencies, waste crawl budget, and clutter your SEO reports.

The good news? You can fix it in under five minutes.

In this guide, we’ll explain what .atom URLs are, why they matter for Shopify SEO, and exactly how to block them using Shopify’s robots.txt file.

What Are .atom URLs in Shopify?

.atom URLs are feed-based URLs generated automatically by Shopify. They exist to help syndicate content updates using an XML-based web feed format called Atom.

For example, Shopify may create URLs such as:

• /collections/shoes.atom
• /blogs/news.atom
• /products/product-name.atom

These feeds are not designed to rank in search engines or provide SEO value to shoppers. Instead, they serve technical purposes for content distribution and updates.

However, search engine bots such as Googlebot can still discover and crawl them.

This becomes a problem when your Shopify store contains hundreds or thousands of unnecessary .atom URLs being crawled repeatedly.

Why Crawling .atom Pages Is a Shopify SEO Problem

Many ecommerce websites already struggle with crawl inefficiencies due to:

• Filtered URLs
• Collection parameters
• Internal search pages
• Duplicate product variations
• Faceted navigation

Adding thousands of .atom URLs into the mix only increases the noise.

1. Wasted Crawl Budget

Search engines allocate a finite amount of crawling resources to your website.

This is commonly referred to as crawl budget, the number of URLs search engines are willing to crawl within a timeframe.

If Google spends time crawling useless .atom pages, it may delay discovering or refreshing important pages like:

• Product pages
• Category pages
• Collection pages
• Blog content
• Seasonal landing pages

For large Shopify stores, this inefficiency can become a serious technical SEO bottleneck.

2. Google Search Console Gets Cluttered

If you’ve checked crawl reports in Google Search Console and noticed unexpected URLs ending in .atom, you’re not alone.

Many ecommerce SEO professionals regularly find:

• Crawled but not indexed .atom URLs
• Duplicate pages
• Excluded feed URLs
• Indexing noise

This makes SEO auditing more difficult and can hide more important technical issues.

3. No SEO Value

Here’s the key point:

.atom URLs are not landing pages for customers.

They:

• Don’t drive conversions
• Don’t improve rankings
• Don’t target keywords
• Don’t generate meaningful traffic

Allowing Google to crawl them offers little to no SEO benefit.

The Quick Shopify SEO Fix: Block .atom URLs in robots.txt

The easiest solution is to stop search engines from crawling these URLs.

You can do this by updating your Shopify robots.txt.liquid file and adding a simple disallow rule.

Add This Rule to robots.txt

You want to include:

Disallow: /*.atom

This tells search engine crawlers not to crawl any URL ending in .atom.

Full Shopify robots.txt Code Snippet

If you are customizing Shopify’s robots file, use this implementation:

{% endcomment %}
{% for group in robots.default_groups %}
 {{- group.user_agent -}}
 {% for rule in group.rules %}
 {{- rule -}}
 {% endfor %}
{%- if group.user_agent.value == '*' -%}
{{ 'Disallow: /*?q=*' }}
{{ 'Disallow: /*/sandbox/*' }}
{{ 'Disallow: /*.atom' }}
{{ 'Disallow: /*.oembed' }}
{%- endif -%}
 {%- if group.sitemap != blank -%}
 {{ group.sitemap }}
 {%- endif -%}
{% endfor %}

This setup blocks:

/*?q=*

Prevents internal search query pages from being crawled.

/*/sandbox/*

Blocks sandbox-related URLs that don’t provide SEO value.

/*.atom

Stops unnecessary Atom feed crawling.

/*.oembed

Prevents search engines from crawling embedded media-related URLs.

Together, these rules help clean up crawl paths and improve Shopify technical SEO.

How to Add This in Shopify

Here’s how to implement the change:

Step 1: Open Shopify Admin

Go to:

Online Store → Themes

Step 2: Edit Code

Click your active theme and select:

Edit Code

Step 3: Find robots.txt.liquid

Look for:

robots.txt.liquid

If it doesn’t exist, create it.

Step 4: Add the Code

Paste the code snippet into the file and save changes.

Step 5: Test Your robots.txt

Visit:

yourdomain.com/robots.txt

Check that the following appears:

Disallow: /*.atom

Once live, search engines will gradually stop crawling these unnecessary feed URLs.

Will Blocking .atom URLs Hurt SEO?

No – in most cases, it improves technical SEO efficiency.

Blocking .atom pages does not affect:

• Product indexing
• Category rankings
• Blog visibility
• Customer experience

Instead, it helps search engines focus on URLs that actually matter.

That said, every ecommerce store is different. If your store relies on a specialized feed integration or syndication workflow, review dependencies before implementing changes.

Other Shopify SEO Issues You Should Fix

While you’re optimizing robots.txt, also check for these common Shopify SEO problems:

Internal Search Pages

Block:

Disallow: /*?q=*

Search result pages create duplicate content and thin URLs.

Filter & Parameter URLs

Watch out for:

• Sorting parameters
• Color filters
• Size filters
• Duplicate category variations

These can explode index bloat.

Duplicate Collection URLs

Shopify often creates duplicate product paths such as:

/products/product-name

and

/collections/category/products/product-name

Proper canonicalization matters.

Thin Tag Pages

Blog tags and collection tags sometimes create weak, low-value pages that dilute SEO performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

If you have a Shopify store, this is one of those small technical SEO fixes that can make a surprisingly meaningful difference over time.

Blocking .atom URLs won’t suddenly double your traffic overnight, but it helps reduce crawl waste, improve technical cleanliness, and allow search engines to focus on pages that actually drive revenue.

The best part?

It takes less than five minutes.

So if you’ve been seeing .atom URLs in Google Search Console and haven’t addressed them yet, now is the time.

Your crawl budget will thank you.