FAQ
Common questions about how Product Pelican works.
Getting started
Do I need to change my theme to use Product Pelican?
No — not for the audit, the GEO score, AI generation, stitching or merchandising. All of those write to your Shopify product data directly.
You only need a theme change for two things: displaying product FAQs on the storefront (one app block), and rendering stitched product links (a developer task).
Why is my GEO score so low when I just installed?
Almost every catalogue starts in Poor or Needs work, because Shopify leaves several scored fields empty by default — the native product category, the SEO title and meta description, and category attributes. None of them are required to sell, so most stores never fill them in.
Setting categories alone typically moves the average substantially, because it scores on two pillars at once. See GEO score.
Will the app change my products without asking?
No. Every AI suggestion appears as a draft you review, edit and accept. Nothing is written to Shopify until you click Apply or Accept Selected, and bulk writes ask for confirmation first.
The only things that write automatically are ones you explicitly configure to do so: stitching rules with auto-sync on publish enabled, and merchandising rulesets with a schedule set.
Auditing and scoring
Why aren't my draft products showing up?
Only active products are audited by default. Widen the status filter on the audit page to include drafts — they are fetched on demand rather than loaded up front.
My catalogue is bigger than my plan's limit. What happens to the rest?
Products beyond the cap are not audited or scored, and don't count toward your store average. They are otherwise untouched — nothing is hidden, changed or removed in Shopify. See Plans & billing.
A product passed the audit but still scores badly. Why?
The audit and the score use different thresholds in a couple of places. The clearest example is descriptions: the audit flags anything under 100 characters as short, but the score only awards full marks at 200 characters. A 150-character description passes the audit and still costs you points.
How often does the score update?
The score itself is recalculated every time you open the app, so a fix shows immediately. The history — the trend chart and the 30-day change on the dashboard — comes from a daily snapshot, so trends appear from the following day.
AI generation
The descriptions sound generic. How do I fix that?
Two things, in this order:
Edit the description prompt on the AI Prompts page. Give it your voice, your length limit, and an explicit list of words to avoid.
Give it more to work with. Tick your product metafields in the context picker, and turn on image analysis. Generic output is usually a symptom of thin input — if the AI only has a title and a product type, there is nothing specific for it to say.
Can I regenerate a suggestion I don't like?
Yes — generate again for the same product. Suggestions are not saved until accepted, and re-running replaces what's on screen.
What does "Show thinking" do?
It reveals the AI's reasoning for that suggestion. Useful when a result surprises you, when you're tuning a prompt, and especially when a generation fails — the transcript is returned even then, and usually explains why.
My description generated but the images were skipped. Why?
You have used up this month's image allowance. Generation falls back to text-only for the rest of the month and the panel tells you it happened. The allowance resets on the 1st. See Image analysis.
Does image analysis cost extra?
No. Each plan includes a monthly allowance of image analyses. There is no per-image charge and no overage — when the allowance runs out, generation continues without photos.
FAQs and storefront
I created FAQs but nothing shows on my product page.
The Product FAQs app block needs adding to your product template in the theme editor. See Installation.
Can one FAQ be used on many products?
Yes. Each FAQ is a metaobject that products reference, so "Do you ship internationally?" can be attached to your whole catalogue and edited in one place. When you edit a shared FAQ, the app asks whether to update it everywhere or make a separate copy for that product.
Stitching
My stitching rule matched almost nothing.
The pattern isn't reading your data the way you assumed. Run a dry run and look at the unmatched count, then check a few real SKUs against the pattern. Remember that SKU matching uses the first variant's SKU, and that products with no SKU are skipped entirely.
My stitching rule put everything in one giant group.
The capture group is grabbing something every product shares. Tighten the pattern so it captures the part that differs between product families, and dry-run again before syncing.
The links are written but nothing appears on my product page.
Product Pelican writes the linked products to a metafield; it does not render them. Displaying them is a theme change — your theme needs to read that metafield and output the swatches or thumbnails.
Billing and data
What happens to my content if I uninstall?
It stays. Everything Product Pelican generates is written to your own Shopify data — native product fields, metafields and metaobjects. Descriptions, categories, alt text, FAQs and stitched links all survive uninstalling the app.
Is there a free trial?
There is no trial, because the Free plan has no time limit. It covers 50 products, 10 image analyses a month and FAQ generation for up to 10 products, for as long as you want.
I've been a customer for a while. Does my price change?
No. Existing subscriptions keep their agreed price. In most cases the same price now covers more products and more image analyses than when you signed up. See Plans & billing.
Still stuck?
Contact support — the contact button is in the app on every page.
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