BASE Not in Search: Six Checks

A BASE shop opened two months ago: the Instagram posts show up in search, but the shop site doesn't. Right after a switch to a custom domain, the page that ranked first for the shop name disappeared from results. The title and description were written in the SEO Settings App, and nothing changed. Questions from BASE merchants take different forms, but the likely causes sit in a fixed set of places.

The causes split into two groups: the shop isn't indexed yet, or it is indexed but the pages hold nothing to evaluate. This article draws on four BASE articles and puts the checks in an order of six. Work down the list and the cause is almost always one of them.

1. The search engine visibility setting and whether the shop is indexed

BASE has a setting that controls whether the shop appears in search engines. Some shops turn it off during setup and forget it, and while it's off, no other fix will get the shop into search. Check the name and location of the setting in the admin panel. Next, verify ownership in Search Console and run URL Inspection on the top page and one product page. "URL is not on Google" means the page isn't indexed yet.

Fixes take time to show. If nothing changes after two weeks, recheck the visibility setting, the domain, and the sitemap.

2. Custom domain and shared domain mixed together

A BASE shop starts on a shared domain URL, and once you set a custom domain, the shop opens there too. That leaves one store with two addresses, and if the canonical direction is unclear, search performance splits between the two URLs. If a search for the shop name returns the shared domain, this is your problem. Check where the shared domain URLs redirect and whether the canonical points at the custom domain.

To a search engine, a switch to a custom domain looks like a brand-new site. Performance moves only when two things are in place: redirects from old URLs to new, and a declaration that the new URLs are canonical. Watch the items below for two weeks after the switch. A temporary drop in clicks is normal, and with correct redirects and canonicalization it usually recovers in 2–4 weeks.

3. Sitemap submission and the Pages report

A sitemap is a file that tells search engines which URLs the shop has. Check whether BASE generates sitemap.xml automatically, and if it does, submit that URL in Search Console. After submitting, compare indexed and excluded URL counts in the Pages report. A high count of "Crawled - currently not indexed" points to page content rather than settings, which is the next item.

• Check whether BASE generates sitemap.xml automatically

• Submit the URL from the Sitemaps section of Search Console

• Compare indexed and excluded counts in the Pages report

• After switching to a custom domain, resubmit the sitemap for the new domain

4. Whether product pages have text worth evaluating

Many BASE templates show product images large, and pages that put even the material description inside the image and leave the body short are common. Neither search engines nor AI search can reliably read text inside images, so however good the photos, the page is empty to a machine. The shop shows up for its name but not for a use or a product category. In an experiment tracking 81 pages on a high-authority domain for 30 days, about four in ten were never cited by AI search, and the dividing line was not quality but whether the page had machine-readable structure.

The minimum you can add in 10 minutes per product is the five sentences below. Aim for 150–300 characters, start with the top 10 sellers, and put a 2–3 sentence shop introduction on the top page.

Four things to avoid: putting the text inside the image, pasting the same description on every product, stacking keywords, and writing "in stock" or "sold out" inside the description.

5. What the SEO Settings App covers

The SEO Settings App lets you write the title and description that appear in search results, and that part is indispensable. But titles and descriptions only work after the page is shown in results. Before that, a crawler has to fetch the page, understand it, and index it, and the App plays no part in those stages. Leaving the App's defaults in place, or giving every product the same description, does nothing; unique wording per product is the premise.

6. Whether bots can fetch the pages

If settings and content are fine, look at bot fetches. Product descriptions that appear only after JavaScript runs may not be fetched as is. Slow-loading external apps and error responses are causes too. Use "Test live URL" in URL Inspection to see the HTML and screenshot Google fetched; if the product information isn't there, rendering is the problem.

Search Console won't tell you about GPTBot or PerplexityBot, though. After checking Google's fetch, confirm the AI side from bot logs. This is hard to investigate from the admin panel alone, and it's a condition shared across Japanese hosted carts: the layer bots read is hard to see.

• Use "Test live URL" in URL Inspection to check whether the fetched HTML contains the product description

• If it doesn't, suspect JavaScript dependence, slow external apps, or error responses

• Confirm GPTBot and PerplexityBot fetches in the server logs

Search OS adds a readable structure outside the App

Search OS uses your current platform, BASE included, without changing it. On top, it provides a separate layer that search engines and AI crawlers can read easily, with structure, metadata, structured data, and a sitemap. It confirms Googlebot and GPTBot fetches from bot logs and turns missed indexing, rendering failures, and canonical mismatches into a list of fix candidates. Pages with thin descriptions or image-only information are prioritized and sorted as well.

Questions to check first

• Is the search engine visibility setting on

• When you search the shop name, which appears: the shared domain or the custom domain

• Has sitemap.xml been submitted to Search Console, and what are the exclusion reasons in the Pages report

• Do the top 10 products have a 3–5 sentence description under the photo

• Are the SEO Settings App title and description unique for each product

• Does the HTML fetched by URL Inspection contain the product description

• Who checks GPTBot and PerplexityBot fetches, and in which log

Conclusion

When a BASE shop is missing from search or AI search, the cause is almost always one of these: the visibility setting, mixed domains, the sitemap, product text, a misreading of what the App covers, or bot fetches. Items 1–3 are settings and can be fixed the same day; item 4 is content work, writing product descriptions; item 6 is hard to check from the admin panel. After the shop appears in search, checking items 4 and 6 every time a product is added is ongoing work.

Related reading

• BASE: Why the Shop Isn't in Search and How to Fix It

• BASE: Keeping Search Performance Through a Custom Domain Switch

• BASE: Adding Text to Image-Only Product Pages

• BASE SEO Settings App: What It Can and Can't Do

References

• Google Search Central: URL Inspection Tool

• Google Search Central: Page Indexing report

• Google Search Central: Consolidate duplicate URLs

• Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes

• Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content

• Google Search Central: Control your title links in search results