Destination not working

Merchant Center uses Destination not working when its crawler cannot land on a working product page. On Shopify, the URL in the feed is usually the online store product URL, including a `variant` query. The crawler has to get that URL, follow a short redirect chain, and end on the product itself.

Google documents the crawl failures behind this in Product crawl issues and How to fix: Product page unavailable. A 404 or a landing page that is not the product is the usual Shopify case.

Shopify causes

The product is not on the Online Store. Archived, draft, or unpublished products often return 404. If the Google & YouTube app is still submitting the item, Merchant Center keeps requesting a page that is gone. A 410 is the same class of failure: the URL has been removed on purpose.

The theme sends missing products to the home page. Some themes and apps redirect an unknown `/products/...` URL to `/`. Merchant Center treats a landing on the home page as a soft 404 and reports Destination not working.

The URL redirects to a collection. A product that now lives only as a collection link, or a redirect app that points the old handle at `/collections/...`, fails the same way. Google expects the product landing page, not the collection that contains it.

The redirect chain is too long. A handle change plus an app proxy plus a market redirect can exceed the hops Google will follow.

robots.txt blocks the crawler. A Disallow rule for Googlebot on `/products/` means the crawler is refused. That case is also described as Destination not crawlable.

What to change

1. Publish the product to the Online Store if it should stay in the feed. If it should not be advertised, remove it from the Google & YouTube channel so Merchant Center stops requesting it.
2. Open the exact URL, including `?variant=`, in a private window. You want a 200 response on that product, not a hop to `/` or to a collection.
3. Remove redirect rules that point product handles at the home page or a collection. Turn off any “unavailable product” redirect in the theme.
4. Shorten the redirect chain so the product URL reaches the product page in one or two hops.
5. If robots.txt disallows the path, remove that Disallow for Googlebot and for AdsBot-Google if you list it.

How PageCop detects it

The installed app requests each catalog URL with the PageCop user agent and records the status and the redirect chain. A 404, a 410, a home-page redirect, a collection redirect, a long redirect chain, or a robots.txt block is filed as Destination not working, with the product and the URL. A 5xx is filed as Product page unavailable.

The public checker on this site can look at one product URL. It does not see your Shopify catalog.

A bot wall can still answer our server with 403 while Google’s own crawler gets a 200. That result is a signal to investigate, not a Merchant Center decision.

FAQ

Does a 404 on one variant fail the whole product?

Yes, when that variant URL is the one in the catalog. Shopify puts `?variant=` on the online store URL. Merchant Center requests that URL. Fix the variant that the URL names, or stop submitting it.

Will fixing the page clear the disapproval the same day?

No. Google recrawls on its own schedule. Product crawl issues says products stay disapproved until the landing page can be crawled. This app does not submit a review request to Google.