# **Overview**

When connecting OTTO to your Shopify store, two issues commonly block a successful crawl: **theme compatibility problems** that prevent OTTO from reading your site structure, and **crawler IP blocks** that stop OTTO's bot from accessing your pages. This article walks you through diagnosing and fixing both.

# **Step 1: Connect Your Shopify Store to OTTO**

1. In Search Atlas, navigate to the OTTO SEO section.
2. Select or create the project for your Shopify store.
3. Follow the on-screen prompts to connect your Shopify store and authorise Search Atlas access.
4. Once connected, trigger an initial crawl from within the project.

If the crawl fails immediately or returns zero pages, continue to the sections below.

# **Step 2: Check Theme Compatibility**

OTTO is compatible with the vast majority of Shopify themes, including all themes from the official Shopify Theme Store. However, certain theme configurations can interfere with the crawl.

**Configurations that commonly cause issues:**

- **Password-protected storefronts** — If your store is in development mode or protected by a password page, OTTO's crawler cannot access any content. Disable the password under *Shopify Admin → Online Store → Preferences → Password protection*.
- **Heavy JavaScript-only rendering** — Highly customised headless or custom-built themes that render all content exclusively via client-side JavaScript may limit what OTTO can crawl. Standard Liquid-based themes are fully supported.
- **Geolocation or market redirects** — Themes configured to redirect visitors based on location can cause the crawler to land on a redirect loop or a localised page OTTO cannot index. Disable geo-redirects temporarily during the initial crawl.
- **Maintenance mode apps** — Third-party apps such as "Coming Soon" pages or maintenance-mode overlays will block the crawler just like a password page. Deactivate them before crawling.

If you are unsure whether your theme is causing the issue, temporarily switch to a default Shopify theme, run a test crawl, and compare results.

# **Step 3: Whitelist OTTO's Crawler IP Addresses**

The most common reason a crawl fails silently — returning no errors but also no pages — is that a security app, firewall, or Shopify bot-protection setting is blocking OTTO's crawler. You must whitelist Search Atlas crawler IP addresses to allow access.

To obtain the exact IP addresses you need to whitelist, please contact our support team (see below). Once you have the IPs, add them to your whitelist in each of the following places that apply to your store:

- **Shopify Bot Protection settings** — In your Shopify Admin, navigate to *Online Store → Preferences* and review any bot-protection or allowed-crawler settings.
- **Cloud**

If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type **human teammate** to be connected with a member of our team.