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.
If you didn't already have a backup, those old values are gone — Shopify keeps no history.
The steps below recover what you can. To make the next time a 1-click undo instead of hours of CSV work: a daily snapshot of every SEO field. Free to monitor, no card — and SEO Vault only reads your store unless you click restore.
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.