429 Rate Limited in Shopify Technote TN-W21

In late July 2026 scans of Shopify sites started showing 429 Rate Limited errors instead of the usual scan results. This is due to aggressive bot-protection by Shopify aimed at uncontrolled AI bots. This primarily affects stores on the Shopify Standard Plan but, in addition to AI bots, the bot-protection is blocking:

Shopify store customers using VPNs
Search engines crawlers like Googlebot
QA tools and link checkers
SEO and accessibility scanners

Symptoms in OnDemand

Scans of Shopify stores have far fewer pages than expected
If the Errors tab is turned on it shows 429 Rate Limited errors
If the Errors tab is turned off then no results are reported (the Diagnostics link on the report shows 429 Rate Limited errors)
The only content on the scanned pages is the text local_rate_limited
No other issues are detected

Resolution

Scans of Shopify stores now require Web Both Auth signatures to approve the crawler for the Shopify store (each store has it’s own unique signatures).

The Shopify - Crawling your store support page shows how to obtain the Web Both Auth signatures for your store.

To add Shopify signatures to an OnDemand site:

Go to Options… for the site being rate limited
Go to the Crawler tab in Scan Options
Select Web Bot Auth then enter your Shopify signatures
Click Save

Shopify automatically updates Web Both Auth signatures every 90 days so you must repeat this process every time the signatures are updated.

Applies To: OnDemand

Last Reviewed: August 4, 2026