Indexing
Indexing troubleshooting
Products missing, stale prices, failed jobs.
The four problems that account for nearly every indexing support ticket, in the order they occur.
A product isn't in search results#
- Is it active and published to the Online Store channel? Draft and unpublished products are not indexed. This is the answer roughly half the time.
- Did the last index run finish? Check Indexing for a completed job whose count is close to Shopify's product count.
- Is it in the failed list? Failures are listed with a reason — usually a spec metafield the indexer could not parse.
- Search for its exact SKU. If the SKU finds it but the title doesn't, that is a relevance problem, not an indexing one — see ranking.
Prices or stock are stale#
On Starter, the index is up to six hours old by design; press Reindex or consider Growth if this matters commercially.
On Growth and above, staleness means webhooks aren't arriving. Check the webhook status on the Indexing screen: it shows the last received event per topic. If a topic has gone quiet, reinstalling the app re-subscribes it — and tell us, because a silent webhook is our bug, not yours.
Fitment is missing on products that should have it#
In order:
- Was there a reindex after the source was connected? Mapping sources resolve at index time.
- Did the source's import report skip those rows? Unknown SKUs and unresolved vehicles are listed individually.
- Does the vehicle resolve? Check that the make and model spellings in your file match the taxonomy, and add synonyms where they don't.
- Is the SKU on the variant? Row-level mapping matches variant SKUs; a product whose variants share one SKU cannot be mapped per variant.
Products failed with a spec error#
The reason is on each failure. The common ones:
| Error | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
Non-numeric value | 6 inch or 20 in. in a decimal field | Store the number; the unit is implied by the field |
Metafield type mismatch | Field mapped as decimal but holding text | Correct the mapping type |
Unparseable bolt pattern (wheels) | 6 X 135 or 6/135mm in an unexpected shape | Fix the value, or ask us to widen the parser |
Value out of range | A typo like +350 offset or a 0 diameter | Fix the product |
Failures never block a run. The product is indexed without the offending field, so it stays searchable and simply loses that facet.
If thousands of products fail with the same error, it is almost always one supplier import that wrote a whole column in the wrong format. Fix it at the import, not product by product.
When to just reindex#
If you have changed several things and want a clean baseline, press Reindex. It is safe at any time, your storefront keeps serving the current index while it runs, and it costs nothing but a few minutes.
Support is answered by the people who wrote this code — not a ticket queue.