Allow or block Poseidon Research Crawler on Shopify: robots.txt.liquid, step by step

Add a robots.txt.liquid template to the theme (Online Store → Themes → ⋯ → Edit code → Add a new template → robots) and put a “User-agent: Poseidon Research Crawler” group with “Disallow: /” below the default rules.

This response

You are ClaudeBot (Anthropic). Citable recognised you as an AI agent, so this is https://getcitable.in/crawlers/poseidon-research-crawler/shopify with the UI removed — the content only. A browser asking for the same address gets the full designed page.

Poseidon Research Crawler, and where Shopify keeps the rule

Poseidon Research Crawler is a crawler run by Poseidon Research. It reads pages ahead of time, to train a model or to build an index.

Shopify generates robots.txt for every store. It is changed by adding a robots.txt.liquid template to the theme; there is no file to upload.

Step by step

What to paste

A group that names a crawler replaces the * group for that crawler; it does not add to it. Paths the * group closes are open to a crawler with its own group unless they are repeated there.

Refuse Poseidon Research Crawler:

User-agent: Poseidon Research Crawler
Disallow: /

Allow Poseidon Research Crawler:

User-agent: Poseidon Research Crawler
Allow: /

What trips people up

The template lives in the theme. Publish a different theme and the rule goes with the old one, unless the new theme has the same template.

Asked, or actually refused?

Shopify gives a site owner robots.txt and nothing stronger: there is no setting that refuses a request by its user agent. robots.txt is a request. A crawler that honours it stays out; nothing in the file stops one that does not. What is enforced is what the server or the edge in front of it refuses.

Check it yourself

A 200 means the name is let through; a 403 means something in front of the page refuses it. This tests the name from your own address. A platform that checks a crawler’s address as well may treat the real Poseidon Research Crawler differently.

The request:

curl -I -A "Poseidon Research Crawler" https://your-site.example/

Questions

How do I block Poseidon Research Crawler on Shopify?

Add a robots.txt.liquid template to the theme (Online Store → Themes → ⋯ → Edit code → Add a new template → robots) and put a “User-agent: Poseidon Research Crawler” group with “Disallow: /” below the default rules.

How do I allow Poseidon Research Crawler on Shopify?

A crawler that robots.txt does not name follows the * group, so Poseidon Research Crawler needs no rule to be allowed. To allow it by name, add the Allow block.

Can Shopify actually stop Poseidon Research Crawler, or only ask it?

Shopify gives a site owner robots.txt and nothing stronger: there is no setting that refuses a request by its user agent. robots.txt is a request. A crawler that honours it stays out; nothing in the file stops one that does not. What is enforced is what the server or the edge in front of it refuses.

Does a rule for Poseidon Research Crawler affect Googlebot or my Google rankings?

No. Googlebot goes by its own name and follows its own rules; a group or a firewall rule for Poseidon Research Crawler does not apply to it.

Checked against Shopify's own documentation on 1 October 2026

Related

About Citable

Citable strips the UI from a website for AI agents and serves them only the content.

When an AI agent — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or any of the 81 that Citable recognises — opens a page, Citable removes the theme, scripts, navigation and layout and serves only the content: the same facts, at the same URL, on the site's own domain. People and Google still get the full designed page.

How it works: https://getcitable.in/how-it-works · Summary for AI agents: https://getcitable.in/llms.txt


Source: https://getcitable.in/crawlers/poseidon-research-crawler/shopify · Citable · Run the free audit · llms.txt · getcitable@gmail.com