How to add robots.txt, llms.txt and schema to a Shopify store

Before you start

You need three things:

1. Access to the theme code editor, under Online Store > Themes > ... > Edit code, as the store owner or a staff member with theme permissions.
2. A copy of your theme. Duplicate the live theme before you edit code, so you can roll back. Shopify notes that uploading a theme in the Themes section won't import robots.txt.liquid, so keep a copy of that file too.
3. A decision about AI bots. Decide whether you want to be found in AI answers, kept out of AI training, or both. Our guide on allowing AI search bots but blocking AI training explains each bot.

Step 1: Add AI crawler rules with robots.txt.liquid

Create the template

From Shopify's help page on editing robots.txt.liquid:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store.
2. For your live theme, click ... > Edit code.
3. Click Add a new template, then select robots.
4. Click Create template and save your changes.

Changes are live straight away, but crawlers may take a while to notice. Shopify Support can't help with this file, and Shopify asks you to remove older workarounds, such as rules set in a proxy like Cloudflare, before you edit it.

Keep the defaults, add your rules after them

The new template starts with Liquid that prints Shopify's default rule groups. Keep that loop, so Shopify can keep the defaults up to date, and add your AI rules underneath. This example keeps OpenAI's search crawler in and keeps two training crawlers out:

{% for group in robots.default_groups %}
  {{- group.user_agent }}
  {%- for rule in group.rules -%}
    {{ rule }}
  {%- endfor -%}
  {%- if group.sitemap != blank -%}
    {{ group.sitemap }}
  {%- endif -%}
{% endfor %}

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

OpenAI's crawler overview explains that GPTBot collects training data and OAI-SearchBot finds pages for ChatGPT search, and that each one follows its own robots.txt rules. Shopify's developer guide to customizing robots.txt.liquid shows how to add or remove rules inside the default groups, and strongly recommends the Liquid objects over replacing the whole file with plain text.

Which way to go

robots.txt rules are a request, not a lock. Shopify says they're "directional and advisory" and not every crawler follows them. Bot management at the network level is handled by Shopify for you.

Step 2: Check, then decide whether to touch llms.txt

What's already there

Open https://yourstore.com/llms.txt and https://yourstore.com/agents.md. According to Shopify's agents.md.liquid documentation, every store gets a Shopify-managed agents.md that tells AI agents how to browse and buy from it: its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoints, read-only product and collection URLs, and its published policies. /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt show the same content unless you override them.

This changed in May 2026. If you set up your own llms.txt earlier through an app, a redirect or a proxy, check what the URL serves now. A Shopify Community thread from merchants who were caught out by the change is worth reading. Headless Hydrogen stores may not get these files by default.

When to override it

Shopify looks for templates in this order, and uses the first one it finds:

To add your own llms.txt, open the code editor, right-click the Templates folder, choose New File and name it llms.txt.liquid. It takes Markdown and Liquid, but only the request and agents objects work there. Standard objects such as shop and collections render blank, so type in your store details or use values like {{ agents.store_name }} and {{ agents.sitemap_url }}. Shopify also warns against putting private data such as contact emails in these files, because they're cached and served to every agent.

A short example that keeps the agent endpoints and adds the pages a shopper asks about:

# {{ agents.store_name }}

> Example Coffee roasts and sells speciality coffee beans in Porto and ships across the EU.

## Shop
- [All coffee](https://example.com/collections/all): beans, roast levels and prices
- [Shipping](https://example.com/policies/shipping-policy): delivery times and costs
- [Returns](https://example.com/policies/refund-policy): how to return an order

## For agents
- Full agent instructions: {{ agents.store_url }}/agents.md
- UCP discovery: {{ agents.ucp_discovery_url }}
- Sitemap: {{ agents.sitemap_url }}

Keep expectations realistic

There's no proof that a custom llms.txt helps. Google's AI optimization guide says you can ignore AI text files like llms.txt for Google Search, and an Ahrefs study of 137,210 domains found that 97% of published llms.txt files got zero requests in May 2026. On Shopify the managed default already covers the basics, so for most stores leaving it alone is the sensible choice. More background in what is llms.txt.

Step 3: Check and fix product schema

See what your theme outputs

Open a product page, view the source and search for application/ld+json. Many themes already print product structured data. Shopify's Liquid has a structured_data filter for this:

<script type="application/ld+json">
  {{ product | structured_data }}
</script>

It outputs a schema.org Product for a product without variants and a ProductGroup for a product with variants, including name, brand, image, price, currency, availability and URL. It also works on blog article objects.

Where to add what's missing

Every value in your markup has to match what a shopper sees. An AI assistant that finds one price in your schema and another on the page has a reason to trust neither.

Step 4: Know what robots.txt doesn't control

Shopify's agentic storefronts are active by default for eligible stores and send product data to AI channels such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot through Shopify Catalog. Shopify says blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt "affects only open-web discoverability" and doesn't stop that feed.

So there are two separate switches:

Eligibility rules differ by channel. For ChatGPT, for example, Shopify lists selling to US customers and having your terms of service, privacy policy and refund policy filled in under Settings > Policies.

Step 5: Check everything on the live store

1. robots.txt: open https://yourstore.com/robots.txt and check that your new groups appear after Shopify's defaults, and that the Sitemap: line is still there.
2. llms.txt and agents.md: open both in a private window. If you added a template, check it rendered and that no Liquid shows up blank.
3. Schema: paste a product URL into the Schema Markup Validator and Google's Rich Results Test, and make sure there's only one Product block.
4. Outside check: run the free Web2Agents AI check to see how AI bots are treated by your robots.txt and how your homepage scores.

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