Skip to content
metryn

A ten-minute monthly check for your online store

A short routine for store owners: robots.txt, sitemap, one product page and a private window. What to look at, what to write down, and what it can't tell you.

By Metryn · Updated 17 October 2026 · 4 min read

Stores change without anyone deciding to change them. An app updates, a theme gets swapped, someone adds a rule to be safe. A month later a crawler is getting something different from what you tested at launch. A short routine, done on the same day each month, catches most of it.

You need a browser and ten minutes. No account on anything.

Minutes 1 to 3: robots.txt

Open yourstore.com/robots.txt. Read it. You're looking for a Disallow line you don't recognise, a sitemap line with the wrong address, and any rule aimed at a crawler by name. On Shopify, an unexpected rule usually means a robots.txt.liquid template has been added; Shopify says deleting it brings back the default.

OpenAI and Perplexity both say changes to robots.txt can take around a day to be picked up, so don't judge a fix too fast.

Minutes 4 to 6: the sitemap

Open yourstore.com/sitemap.xml. Shopify says the main file links to separate sitemaps for products, collections, blogs and pages, and that they update automatically. Open the products one. Is something you added last week there? Is something you deleted gone?

Google says a single sitemap file is limited to 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed. Most stores are far under that. Our free checker at https://getmetryn.com/tools/sitemap-checker shows the type, URL count and the status of child sitemaps if you'd rather not read XML.

Minutes 7 to 9: one product page

Pick the product you changed most recently. View the source and search for its price and for application/ld+json. If you changed the price last week and the markup shows the old one, that's worth chasing. Google's merchant listing documentation recommends Product markup in the initial HTML and says markup generated with JavaScript can make shopping crawls less frequent and less reliable.

Minute 10: a private window

Open the store in a private window. Check there's no password page, no unexpected cookie wall that hides the content, and no interstitial. It's the closest quick check to what a stranger gets.

Write it down

Three lines in a note: the date, what looked different, what you did. Next month you'll have something to compare against, and that's most of the value. A routine with no notes just repeats itself.

When to do an extra check

Right after you change theme, install an app that touches SEO or security, move domain, or turn private mode off. Those are the moments things shift.

What it can't tell you

None of this shows whether anyone visits, whether Google has indexed a page, or whether an AI assistant mentions you. It shows what a crawler is able to read on the day you look. For indexing, Search Console is the place; for the rest, nothing here can say.

Questions people ask

Can I automate it?

Partly. A calendar reminder is the honest first step. Metryn doesn't offer monitoring or alerts today, and this guide doesn't pretend to replace them.

What if I find something odd and don't know the cause?

Change one thing at a time and look again after each. If the cause is a theme or app, ask its vendor what it changes in robots.txt, the sitemap or the product markup.

Is ten minutes enough for a big catalogue?

For checking the plumbing, yes, because you're looking at the same few files and one sample page. It won't find a problem that only affects a single collection.

What to do this week

  • Put a recurring reminder in your calendar for the first Monday of the month.
  • Do the routine once now and write your three lines.
  • Save your robots.txt text in a note, so next month you can compare it.

Check your own site

Paste your address below. The free scan looks at robots.txt, your sitemap, access for the main AI crawlers and structured data, and shows what it found in seconds. It tells you what a machine can fetch and read. It doesn't predict rankings or citations.

Free scan · No account needed · Results in seconds

Sources

Keep reading

Running a store? See Metryn for online stores for what the scan checks and the other guides written for store owners.

Want to check one file yourself? Try the free AI crawler robots.txt checker or the llms.txt validator, or read how the score is built.