AI discovery was - unsurprisingly - the hot subject at DotDev
We are a bit late with this week's edition, mainly because DotDev has been on over the last few days. We were not there ourselves, but a lot of our network and partners were, so before sending this we wanted to wait and see whether anything worth including came out of it.
It did, and it leads the issue. The theme of this year's event was, unsurprisingly, agentic commerce, and the sessions on AI discovery were among the most popular, with most of the substance returning to what we consider fundamental, the foundations of good product data.
Also in this issue: the collections rebuild we covered earlier this month has started reaching live stores, Google is merging its Shopping policies in a way that matters more for AI than it first appears, a Shopify speed change from April that most stores have missed, and a Google Ads security deadline in August.
One more thing before we start: there will be no #BlinkTank next week, as I am on annual leave and will be sparing your inboxes.
On to the news!
The AI discovery message from dot dev
Shopify's developer event, now called DotDev after several years as Editions.dev, was held in Toronto this week. We were not there, but a lot of our network and partners were, and the theme, unsurprisingly, was agentic commerce.
The most useful thread running through those sessions argued against treating AI discovery as an optimisation exercise. The part you control is the same product data work we talk about constantly: structured data, fuller and better product descriptions, fewer empty fields, and content that does not rely on JavaScript to be read.
Shopify shared its own figures to make the point, with the shops it classes as AI-discoverable carrying around 37% longer product descriptions and far fewer empty fields, 11% against 17%, than those that were not.
One idea worth pulling out was something Shopify called community micro consensus: the agreement that forms in niche communities - forums, subreddits, review threads, enthusiast groups - about which products are actually good. It is becoming one of the signals that shapes what an AI recommends, alongside the more familiar social proof and authoritative references.
This is worth paying attention to. The language those communities use, the qualities they care about and the comparisons they draw are exactly what your titles, descriptions and attributes should reflect, so that what you publish matches what your most engaged buyers already say about your category. Get the foundations of your product data right and you are giving the AI and the community the same, consistent story about your products, which is where we have always said has the biggest impact.
🔗 dot dev 2026 (Shopify)
The new collections model starts reaching live stores
A fortnight ago we led with Shopify rebuilding how collections work, retiring the split between smart and manual collections (yay) in favour of a new source-based model. At the time it was a developer preview in API version 2026-07, not something you could see in most store admins. That has started to change.
The new model is now rolling out to stores on the 2026-07 release, ahead of the redesigned merchant admin that Shopify says arrives over the coming weeks. The reassuring part for anyone running a big catalogue is that your existing collections carry over automatically, so there is nothing to delete or recreate. However, if your store uses third-party or custom apps that manage collections, that is worth a check, since they need updating to API version 2026-07 to work with the new capabilities.
We are already seeing it in dev stores across our clients, and the picture is changing day to day. As of this week you can build collections off variant metafields directly in Shopify's standard builder, which means much of the custom metafield filtering we have built over the years can be retired, and the storefront returns only the variants a collection selects rather than the whole product. The only issue is display - nothing yet shows those variants as separate tiles in the collection grid, because no theme supports it, so surfacing a green shirt and a blue shirt as two entries still needs custom front-end code for now.
Given that collections on Shopify are one of the most important parts of SEO, this is something that we'll be continuing to monitor closely.
🔗 Introducing a brand new Collections experience (Shopify)
Google is merging its Shopping policies into one set
From September, Google is consolidating its Shopping ads policies and its free listings policies into a single set of Shopping policies in the Help Center. Google is explicit that this is a tidy-up more than anything - no substantive changes, no more restrictive enforcement, and nothing you need to change in your feed.
The reason it matters is what free listings now feed. Google's AI Mode builds its shopping answers from the Shopping Graph, which is populated by Merchant Center free listings rather than by ad spend, so the policy set that governs your free listings is effectively the one that governs whether your products can surface in AI shopping results.
🔗 Merchant Center announcements change log (Google)
A Shopify speed change from April that went under the radar
Credit to Bas Lefeber for surfacing this one. Since 20 April, Shopify only serves the CSS from a theme's stylesheet tags that is relevant to the sections actually rendered on a given page, rather than loading the entire theme's CSS on every page. Shopify calls it automatic CSS subsetting.
This matters because CSS is render-blocking - the browser cannot paint anything until it has downloaded and parsed the stylesheets, so a page carrying styles for sections that are not even on it is paying a speed cost for nothing. Collection and product pages tend to gain the most here, since they usually run fewer sections than the homepage but were loading all of its CSS anyway. On a well-built Online Store 2.0 theme it happens with no work from you, and a theme update alone can be enough to pick up the benefit.
The one caveat is that it relies on a theme's CSS being self-contained. If a section's stylesheet defines classes used by elements that live in other files, those styles can be left off pages where the defining file is not rendered.
🔗 Automatic CSS subsetting for stylesheet tags (Shopify)
Google updates its crawl budget guidance
Google has rewritten its “Optimize your crawl budget documentation”. Most of it is clarification, but one newly line is worth noting if you run a large catalogue: every site starts on the same default, conservative crawl capacity limit, and Google only raises it over time if there is demand to crawl more and the site stays healthy.
That is not really new - it is Google stating how it already works - but it is a useful reminder of the deal on a store with hundreds of thousands of URLs. Crawl capacity is earned through server speed and site health rather, so faster responses and proper HTTP caching (returning a 304 when a page has not changed) buy you more crawling directly.
The document also spells out that capacity is shared across all of Google's crawlers, so heavy demand from one - the AI crawlers included - can eat into what is left for the rest.
So, the practical point is to help Google spend its crawl where it counts. Fast pages, clean structure, and not burning capacity on parameter and filter URLs that were never meant to be indexed.
🔗 Optimize your crawl budget (Google)
Google Ads will require a passkey for sensitive actions
Google is making passkeys mandatory for certain sensitive actions, and the email going round puts the date at 19 August. Reporting when this first broke pointed at an earlier July date, so Google appears to be rolling it out in waves with account-specific timing - the date to trust is the one in your own account's email.
Google's own guidance notes a newly created passkey can take up to seven days to become fully operational, so the sensible move is to set one up now rather than the day you are locked out of an action you need to complete.
🔗 Use a passkey to complete sensitive actions (Google Ads Help)
Some tools from the Blink team
Andy Russell on our team has published two more free Chrome extensions this month.
They are both small and specific, but they came out of the kind of work we do day-to-day, so they may be useful to others doing the same. Tab Renamer lets you rename any browser tab by hand, which helps when you have a wall of near-identical Shopify admin, Search Console and analytics tabs open. Ruler is an on-screen pixel measurement tool for checking spacing and element sizes, handy for theme and layout QA.
🔗 Tab Renamer (Chrome Web Store)
🔗 Ruler - Pixel Measurement (Chrome Web Store)
Network shout-out: eCommerce MasterPlan
Chloë Thomas is opening up the summer recording session for the eCommerce MasterPlan podcast, and she is looking for guests. The brief will apply to a lot of people on this list: senior people at ecommerce or DTC brands turning over seven figures or more, based in the UK, Europe or the US, with something worth sharing.
I have been on the show a few times and rate it highly - Chloë is a brilliant host and it is one of the best-run shows in this space, with a large and highly relevant audience. If you run a store that fits, or you have a client who would make a strong guest, it is well worth putting your name forward.
🔗 Apply to be a guest (eCommerce MasterPlan)
🔗 eCommerce MasterPlan podcast
As ever, thanks for reading.
If you found this useful, I would love it if you could share it with someone you think would find it interesting - whether that is someone managing a large-catalogue Shopify store or anyone else who follows this kind of thing.
See you in a couple of weeks.
Sam
Who am I and what does Blink do?
I'm Sam Wright, Managing Director and co-founder of Blink SEO. We're a search marketing agency that works exclusively with large-catalogue Shopify stores - the kind where the challenge isn't just visibility, but helping customers find the right product in the first place.
We specialise in SEO and PPC for merchants managing hundreds or thousands of products. Most of our work starts with taxonomy: how a store is structured and categorised, and what that means for organic performance, paid efficiency, and on-site discovery.
If you found this useful and aren't already subscribed, you can sign up at blinkseo.co.uk/blinktank.
If you run a large-catalogue Shopify store and want to talk about organic or paid performance, reply to this email or find me at blinkseo.co.uk.