Shopify rankings dropped after a theme change — what to check and recover

A new theme can change heading structure, alter or remove schema markup, and shift internal linking — all of which affect SEO. Combined with any handle or metafield changes during migration, rankings can slide.

Step by step

Compare the new theme's headings (H1/H2) and structured data against the old one — themes often drop or change product/breadcrumb schema.
Verify meta titles, descriptions and alt-text survived the migration; restore any that were blanked from a snapshot.
Check for new 404s from changed handles and add redirects.
Keep a daily snapshot of SEO fields across theme changes so you can prove and revert exactly what moved.

Source: Shopify Community: theme migration / SEO threads

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