Docs / for Shopify / FAQ

AEO Ultimate for Shopify

Questions people actually ask

If something is going wrong, Troubleshooting is the better page. This one is about how the app works and what it will and will not do.

Does this replace my SEO app?

No, and it is not trying to. Classic SEO apps optimise for ranking in a list of links. This optimises for being the merchant an assistant names when someone asks a shopping question — different signals, different goal.

Most stores run both. If your SEO app already publishes something correct, publishing a competing copy would make things worse, not better.

Will it slow my storefront down?

Signals are published into the page Shopify already delivers rather than loaded afterwards by a script. That is deliberate: anything injected by JavaScript is invisible to crawlers that do not run scripts, which includes several AI crawlers — so a script-based approach would be both slower and less effective.

Do I need to change my theme?

Only for crawler control. Shopify generates robots.txt from a template in your published theme, so editing bot access means editing that template — the app does it for you, but there has to be a published theme to edit.

Everything else works without touching your theme.

Why does the audit want me to paste page source?

Because that is what a crawler sees. The app checks the HTML your store actually delivered, not the page after your browser has run every script on it.

Use View Page Source (Ctrl+U, or ⌘+⌥+U on a Mac), not Inspect Element. Those show different things, and only one of them is what an answer engine reads.

What is IndexNow and do I need it?

It tells search engines a page changed rather than waiting for them to notice. Useful when you change prices or stock often, since a stale price in search results costs you a click and some trust.

It is not required. Everything else works without it.

Why won’t it fetch some manufacturer images?

Because it verifies a brand’s official website through Wikidata before fetching anything from it. If there is no verified official site, it stops and asks you rather than guessing at a domain and pulling an image from somewhere unrelated.

That is a deliberate refusal. Publishing the wrong manufacturer’s image on your product page is a worse outcome than publishing none.

Am I billed for AI usage?

AI features use a key you supply and control, billed to you by that provider at their rate. There is no credit meter and no surcharge. The app is usable with no AI configured at all.

Does the visibility check prove I am being cited?

It asks the engines directly and records what they answered, which is as close to proof as exists.

What it does not do is turn that into a share-of-voice percentage. Ask the same question twice and answers vary, so a percentage from a handful of samples would imply a precision the data does not have. Other tools will show you that number; this one declines, and you should be suspicious of the ones that do not.

Run it once before you change anything. Without a baseline you cannot tell later whether the work helped.

Where does the app store my data?

It reads your store through Shopify’s API using the permissions you granted at install. AI provider keys you enter are yours; requests go directly to that provider and are billed to your account.

The app refuses to fetch from private or internal network addresses — if a URL redirects to one, it stops rather than following.

Something is not answered here

Ask. Questions that reach me become documentation, so asking one helps whoever hits the same thing next.