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Shopify Catalog

Shopify Catalog eligibility: store and product requirements

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The verbatim Shopify Catalog requirements

Shopify Catalog eligibility has six store-level gates and five product-level gates. Store: follow Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy, on the Starter plan or higher, not password-protected, ships to the United States or Canada, products published to the online store / Hydrogen / Headless. Product: has a title, at least one product image, a price over $0, a published identifiable URL, not set to Unlisted status, no sensitive content. All eleven must pass; missing any one disqualifies that product.

The requirements list is verbatim from Shopify's Catalog requirements page1. Hydrogen and Headless storefronts qualify but require the correct route format. Agentic-plan stores have an extra gate: external product URL on every product3.

The six store-level gates

The store-level gates apply to every product in the store. If the store fails one, every product fails Catalog. Most stores pass these in setup; the two gates that catch live stores are password protection (a development setting forgotten in production) and shipping country (a store shipping only outside the US and Canada).

  • Terms of Service + Acceptable Use Policy. The store must follow both. Stores selling categories Shopify explicitly disallows (mature content, certain regulated goods) fail this gate at the store level, not the product level.
  • Starter plan or higher. The Catalog requirements page1 calls this out directly — free trial and downgraded stores don't qualify.
  • Not password-protected. If the storefront has a password (Online Store > Preferences > Password protection), Catalog cannot crawl it. AI channels can't either.
  • Ships to the United States or Canada. One of the two countries is sufficient. Stores shipping only to (for example) the UK or Australia don't meet this gate.
  • Products published to the online store, Hydrogen, or Headless channels. A product published only to the Shop channel or a custom Sales Channel app fails this gate.
  • Hydrogen / Headless requires correct route format; Agentic plan requires external product URL. Two technical sub-gates on the same line.

The five product-level gates

The product-level gates apply per product. A store can have 90% of products eligible and 10% disqualified; the AI channels read only the eligible 90%. The most common single failure: missing or empty product title on an imported product. The second most common: a price of $0.00 on a free promotional product.

  • Has a title. Non-empty product title.
  • At least one product image. Imported products without images fail this gate.
  • Price over $0. Free products are explicitly excluded.
  • Published with an identifiable product URL. Draft or archived products fail this gate.
  • Not set to Unlisted status, not hidden from search engines. Per Shopify's hide-a-page doc5, Unlisted products are 'hidden from internet search, Shopify Catalog, and your store's sitemap.' Products with the seo.hidden metafield set to 1 are excluded too.

The sensitive-content clause — "Cannot contain sensitive content, such as mature content" — sits in the product list but applies to the whole Catalog (Shopify can pull the entire store if a meaningful portion violates Acceptable Use Policy). The catalog-not-eligible diagnostic walks the failure modes.

Edge cases

Three edge cases catch otherwise-eligible stores. Markets with US/CA disabled — a Markets configuration that excludes both countries at the international level. B2B-only stores that hide pricing behind authentication. Stores where the Online Store sales channel is disabled in favor of Headless without the corresponding correct route format.

Markets is the easiest one to miss because the Markets admin lives separately from Settings > Shipping. Stores using Markets to localize sometimes disable US and CA at the channel level while still appearing to ship there at the store level. Open Settings > Markets and confirm at least one of the two countries is enabled and active.

The eligibility checklist

Walk these in order on every store you operate. Most stores pass; the ones that don't typically fail on password protection, country shipping, or product status. Eleven checks total — five minutes per store.

  1. Plan is Starter or higher (Settings > Plan).
  2. Password protection is off (Online Store > Preferences).
  3. At least one Market includes US or CA (Settings > Markets).
  4. Shipping is configured to US or CA (Settings > Shipping and delivery).
  5. Products are published to Online Store / Hydrogen / Headless (per product, Sales channels panel).
  6. Each product has a non-empty title.
  7. Each product has at least one image.
  8. Each product has a price > $0.
  9. Each product is set to Active, not Draft or Archived.
  10. No product is set to Unlisted status (Online Store > Search engine listing).
  11. No product has the seo.hidden metafield set to 1.

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