Allow GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot on Shopify

If AI crawlers cannot fetch your pages, models cannot cite or recommend you reliably. Many Shopify themes and apps default to aggressive blocks.

This page owns the Shopify how-to. Entity facts for each crawler live under /bots. Broader robots strategy: robots.txt for AI crawlers. Security apps: Shopify security apps vs AI crawlers.

Bots that matter for AI visibility

• GPTBot / OAI-SearchBot / ChatGPT-User — GPTBot
• ClaudeBot / Claude-User — ClaudeBot
• PerplexityBot — PerplexityBot
• Google-Extended (training/grounding policies vary) — Google-Extended

Practical robots.txt approach

In Shopify admin → Online Store → Preferences → bots / robots, or robots.txt.liquid, allow AI user-agents on storefront paths while keeping checkout, carts, and account areas disallowed.

Example pattern:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /checkouts
Disallow: /cart
Disallow: /account

Verify (do not skip)

1. Fetch homepage + a hero PDP as each AI user-agent
2. Confirm HTTP 200 with real product HTML (not a challenge wall)
3. Review security/CDN apps for blanket bot blocks
4. Re-run a TopMention tech audit

After access works

Move to schema/Shopping (JSON-LD guide), citability, and measurement (methodology).

Category checklists: /guides → crawler-access.