Tip Start with Shop Catalog to understand where your catalog stands today, then move to Catalog Guardrails to configure the rules that match your quality standards. |
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Part 1: Shop Catalog
Shop Catalog is the main page for monitoring and optimising your catalog’s health and compliance. From here you can assess your catalog’s overall state, act on warnings, and navigate to Catalog Guardrails to configure your rules.
Shop Catalog — monitor and optimise your catalog’s health and compliance
Catalog Health Tracker
The Catalog Health Tracker is the primary section of the Shop Catalog page. It gives you an overview of your catalog’s readiness and helps you identify metadata gaps that hinder agent discovery.
The health status bar
A colour-coded bar at the top divides your products into four quality tiers:
Excellent
Products that meet all content and metadata standards.
Mediocre
Products with partial gaps — some content is present but incomplete.
Poor
Products with significant content or metadata missing.
Bad
Products that have no Shopify taxonomy category assigned.
Tip Click any tier label to filter the entire page to that segment. Click Clear filter to reset.
Use the Refresh scores button (top-right) to recalculate scores after you update products. Use Export Report to download the current data.
Catalog health breakdown
Three score cards below the status bar show what is driving your overall health:
Content Quality Score
Based on image count, description length, and title formatting. A low score here usually means images are missing or descriptions are too short.
Product Score
Based on category depth and attribute (metafield) completeness. A high score means products are well-classified and fully attributed.
Tags Score
Based on standardised tag usage and search optimisation. A score near 0% is a signal that tag hygiene needs immediate attention.
Note The weight of each score in the overall total can be customised in Catalog Guardrails → Scoring Weights.
Important Warnings Detected
When catalog-wide issues exist, a yellow banner appears below the score cards. Each warning card shows how many products are affected and includes a direct action link.
Important Warnings Detected — each card links directly to the affected products
Low Images
Products with fewer images than required. Click Upload images to filter to affected products.
Missing Descriptions
Products with no description at all. Click Clear filter to view them.
Short Descriptions
Descriptions that exist but fall below the minimum word count. Click Extend descriptions.
Short Titles
Titles that are too brief. Click Extend titles.
Missing Category
Products with no Shopify taxonomy category assigned. Click Assign category.
Tip Clicking an action link in a warning card automatically filters the Product Optimization Opportunities table below to show only those affected products.
Product Optimization Opportunities
This table lists every product with a compliance issue. Use it to review, prioritise, and take action.
Product Optimization Opportunities — review, filter, and take action on individual products
Reading the columns
Product
The product name and SKU.
Health
The current health tier (e.g. Mediocre, Poor).
Alerts
The number of open issues on that product.
Suggested guardrails
The specific issues identified — such as Deepen Category, Description Too Short, Low Images, Missing Description, or Over Tagged.
Action
Click Fix Now to open that product directly in Shopify admin.
Status
The Shopify product status (Published, Draft, etc.).
Filtering and searching
Search products by Product title — to find a specific item.
Status dropdown — filter by Published, Draft, or another product state.
All health dropdown — filter by health tier (Mediocre, Poor, etc.).
Taking action
Click Fix Now — on any row to open the product in Shopify admin.
Select multiple products — using the checkboxes to bulk-edit or apply a suggested action to all of them at once.
Part 2: Catalog Guardrails
Catalog Guardrails is where you define the content standards that Shop Catalog enforces. Open it by clicking the Catalog Guardrails button at the top-right of the Shop Catalog page. Click Save settings to apply any changes.
The page is divided into six sections: Category, Text Content, Product Images, Tags & Organization, Apply Rules To, and Scoring Weights. A Test Product Evaluation tool sits at the bottom.
Category
Controls how your product taxonomy is structured and validated.
Catalog Guardrails — Category section
Category Depth
Sets the maximum number of nesting levels allowed in your category structure. The default maximum is 4. Deeper, more precise structures improve agent discovery, but the cap prevents taxonomy that becomes too complex for customers.
Require category custom fields (Default: On)
When enabled, ensures every category has at least one value in its custom data fields. This keeps metafield completeness high across the board.
Accepted Category Types
Defines which Shopify taxonomy categories are valid for your products. Products assigned to any category outside this list will be flagged in Shop Catalog.
Accepted Category Types — building a multi-level category tree
Click Browse or Search — to find categories from the Shopify taxonomy.
Add a category — to build a multi-level tree up to your configured depth — for example, Electronics → Audio → Audio Components → Audio Amplifiers.
Expand a category — after adding it to see its available metafields and mark any as mandatory.
Click Change — next to any level to swap it for a different category.
Tip Add only the categories you actively use. Avoid top-level verticals you don’t sell in, or flagging becomes noisy and loses meaning.
Text Content
Enforce writing style and content length requirements across product descriptions and titles.
Text Content rules — description, title, and image standards
Product Description rules
Prevent ALL CAPS descriptions (Default: On)
Flags any description written entirely in uppercase.
Description cannot be empty (Default: On)
Hard-stops products with no description from passing guardrail checks.
Ensure unique descriptions (Default: On)
Flags a description that is identical to another product’s description in your catalog.
Check description quality (Default: On)
Alerts you when a product’s description text does not appear to match its image content.
Minimum word count (Default: 300)
Descriptions shorter than this value will be flagged as Short Description.
Maximum word count (Default: 2,000)
Descriptions longer than this value will also be flagged.
Note Adjust the minimum and maximum word counts to match your actual standards. Technical products may need more words than simple accessories.
Product Images
Enable image validation (Default: On)
Enforces minimum image counts and accessibility (alt-text) standards. Products below the image threshold appear as Low Images warnings in Shop Catalog.
Tags & Organization
Keeps your tags clean and organised to help customers and agents search effectively.
Tags & Organization and Apply Rules To sections
Enable tag validation (Default: Off)
Turn on to activate tag enforcement. No tag rules apply while this is off.
Usage Limit Threshold (Default: 3)
Warns when a single tag is applied to more products than this number, preventing over-tagging and tag dilution.
Tip Start with tag validation off while you audit your existing tags. Once you know your distribution, set a realistic threshold and turn it on.
Apply Rules To
Choose which products must follow the configured guardrails.
Click Select product statuses — .
Choose a scope — such as All products, Published, or Draft. Only matching products are evaluated against the guardrails.
Note Scoping to Published only is useful when you want strict enforcement on live listings while leaving draft work-in-progress products unaffected.
Scoring Weights
Controls how much each quality dimension contributes to the overall catalog health score. The three sliders must always sum to 100%.
Scoring Weights — adjust sliders and see the point allocation preview update live
Classification (Default: 50%)
Covers Allowed Category, Mandatory Metafields, Category Depth, and Metafield Completeness.
Content Quality (Default: 30%)
Covers Title Format, Description length and quality, and Images.
Tags & Organization (Default: 20%)
Covers Tag Usage standards.
Point allocation preview
Below the sliders, the point allocation preview shows exactly how many points each individual check contributes at your current weights. This updates live as you drag the sliders.
Allowed Category
15 pts at default weights
Mandatory Metafields
15 pts
Category Depth
10 pts
Metafield Completeness
10 pts
Title Format
13.5 pts
Description
13.5 pts
Images
10.2 pts
Tag Usage
20 pts
Tip Drag Classification up if category accuracy is your most critical issue. Drag Content Quality up if thin content is your primary concern. The preview updates live.
Test Product Evaluation
Preview how any product will score under your current settings — including unsaved changes — before committing.
Test Product Evaluation — enter a product ID to validate your configuration before saving
Find your product ID — in Shopify admin, it appears at the end of the product URL: admin/products/789012345678.
Paste the numeric ID — into the Test Product Evaluation field.
Click Test — to run the evaluation.
Review the results — which show which guardrails pass or fail and how many points the product earns in each dimension.
Adjust settings if needed — then re-run the test before clicking Save settings.
Tip Test a representative product from each of your major categories before saving, to ensure weights and thresholds behave correctly across different product types.
Recommended Workflow
Follow this sequence when setting up Products Audit for the first time or reviewing an existing configuration.
Open Products Audit — and go to Shop Catalog to understand your baseline scores and warnings.
Note the three health scores — and the warning cards.
Open Catalog Guardrails — and work through each section in order: Category → Text Content → Product Images → Tags & Organization → Apply Rules To → Scoring Weights.
Adjust defaults — to match your actual content standards.
Run Test Product Evaluation — on two or three real products to validate your configuration.
Click Save settings — .
Return to Shop Catalog — and click Refresh scores to see your catalog re-evaluated against the new guardrails.
Use the Product Optimization Opportunities table — to assign Fix Now tasks and track progress.
Quick Reference
Refresh scores
Recalculates all health scores after product updates.
Export Report
Exports the current Shop Catalog data.
Fix Now
Opens the product directly in Shopify admin for editing.
Test Product Evaluation
Previews scoring under your current guardrail settings, including unsaved changes.
Save settings
Saves your Catalog Guardrails configuration and makes it active.
Restore defaults
Resets all Catalog Guardrails settings to factory defaults.
Back
Returns from Catalog Guardrails to the Shop Catalog page.
For additional help, reach out to your account team or use the support option inside the app.