What this check inspects
Shipwork reads the URLs from your sitemap, following up to eight same-host child sitemaps when it finds an index, and checks a set of pages. For each it records the status, title, meta description, canonical and whether that canonical points elsewhere, the number of H1 tags, a noindex flag and the html lang attribute. It then groups the pages it checked by title and by description to find duplicates.
What a failure means
Pages in the sitemap that return 404 or cannot be fetched are an error. Pages in the sitemap that are noindexed are an error: the two signals disagree. Duplicate titles across pages are an error, and pages with no title at all are an error. Canonicals pointing elsewhere, missing descriptions, missing H1s and long titles are warnings.
How to fix it
- Remove dead URLs from the sitemap instead of leaving them for a crawler to discover.
- Resolve noindex and sitemap conflicts in one direction: either the page belongs in the sitemap and should be indexable, or it should not be listed.
- Give every page a unique title and description. Template defaults that repeat across products are the usual source of duplicates.
- Add a single H1 to any page that is missing one.
A typical failure, worked through
The setupA Shopify store generates a sitemap index whose first child is a one-URL discovery file. A tool that reads only the first child sees one page and reports the catalogue as nearly empty.
What the check reportsThis check follows every same-host child, so it reads real products and collections, then reports that 4 of 12 pages checked share a title because the collection template appends only the store name.
The pointA sitemap index needs every child read, not just the first. The duplicate titles it finds are the real, fixable problem.