How to find which app changed your Shopify SEO (when there's no audit log)
Something rewrote your meta titles, descriptions, or alt-text, you have several apps installed, and you want to know exactly which one did it — but Shopify keeps no audit log of which app wrote to an SEO field, so there's no native "who changed this." The good news: you can still narrow it down to one app from indirect evidence — when the change happened, what the change looks like, and which of your apps even has the feature to make it.
Step by step
Pin the date the field actually changed, then line it up against your apps. Since Shopify doesn't timestamp SEO-field edits, get the change date from where it surfaces: Google Search Console (Performance > filter to the page — the title/snippet flips a few days after a recrawl), the live Google result, or the Wayback Machine for the old <title>. Then open Settings > Apps and sales channels and match that window to an app you recently installed, updated, or one that runs on a schedule.
Shortlist by capability — an app can only have done it if it has both the feature and the access. SEO suites, image optimizers, and speed/booster apps usually request write access to products and ship an 'autopilot', 'bulk optimize', 'template', or 'AI' feature; those are your suspects. A reviews app or a shipping app that never touches meta fields is not — open each suspect and look for an on or scheduled 'optimize' toggle.
Read the fingerprint of the change. A human edit is one-off; an app edit is patterned — every product following the same template (like '{Product} - {Store}'), identical meta descriptions across pages, or alt-text that just repeats the product title. That pattern usually matches one app's default template. Also view your live page source (Cmd/Ctrl+U) and search the <head> for app names or app-embed scripts, and check the suspect app's own activity/job log for a bulk run on the date you pinned.
Confirm, then stop having to play detective. If a field keeps reverting, pause your top suspect and watch whether it stops — that's the cleanest proof. The reason this took forensics is that Shopify logs nothing, so going forward keep a daily snapshot of every SEO field (products and collections): a bulk change is then flagged the day it happens with the likely app named, and the previous values restore in one click instead of a timeline investigation.
Source: Shopify Help Center: managing apps and app permissions (Settings > Apps and sales channels); Google Search Console Help: Performance report; Shopify Community threads on SEO fields changing with no native audit log.
SEO Vault keeps a daily snapshot of every SEO field on your store — meta titles, descriptions, alt-text, tags, handles (products AND collections) — and emails you the moment something changes in bulk, with the likely app responsible. One click restores yesterday's state, just the SEO fields. Free to monitor and get alerted; $14/mo for 1-click restore.