How to find copies of your products on Shopify

Choose a product with a recognisable photograph, original illustration or distinctive design. Save its public product URL, a clear image and a short phrase from the description that you wrote yourself. Starting with one item makes it easier to learn which searches are useful before repeating the process across your catalogue.

If you sell a supplier’s standard product, another shop may legitimately sell the same item or use the same supplier photography. Write down which part is your work: your own photograph, your packaging, your illustration or your original text. That distinction matters when you assess a result.

Google Lens lets you upload an image or use an image URL. Try your main product photograph, then a separate crop that centres the distinctive design. Keep the original file unchanged. Google’s results can include similar images and websites using them; follow its instructions below for the current controls.

Open promising product pages and compare them with your original. A search thumbnail can conceal a changed image, an unrelated product or an authorised stockist. Record the destination page, not just the image-search result. If one photograph produces only irrelevant results, try a second angle rather than treating the first search as conclusive.

Run three different text searches: the product name, a plain description of what it looks like, and a distinctive sentence fragment in quotation marks. A copied description may keep wording that the listing title no longer uses. Common phrases such as ‘perfect gift’ are unlikely to help.

Hypothetical example: you sell a tea towel called ‘Midnight Garden’, illustrated with white moths and blue flowers. Try the collection name, ‘white moth blue flower tea towel’, and a distinctive phrase from your own description. Repeat with a different product type if the artwork could have been placed on a tote bag or mug.

A search such as site:myshopify.com followed by your product description can be an extra check. It is not a search of every Shopify store. Shopify explains that merchants can use custom domains, so a shop at its own .com or .co.uk address may still use Shopify.

Run the same searches without that domain restriction. Google also says site: results are not necessarily exhaustive. Neither an empty restricted search nor a short list of results establishes how many copies exist.

If a result needs reporting, confirm the service hosting the listing before choosing a complaint route. A similar theme or a Shopify-related image link alone is not a reliable conclusion about the whole site. Keep ‘platform not yet confirmed’ in your notes when you are unsure.

Compare photographs for specific details: identical shadows, folds, reflections or props. For artwork, compare line shapes and the arrangement of elements. Save differences as well as similarities. A product listing tells you what the seller advertises; it does not prove what a customer would receive.

Check your stockist and licensing records. If the result remains concerning, save the original URL, the other listing URL, screenshots and the date checked. Describe what you can see without guessing sales figures, ownership or intent.

Keep a small record of products checked, searches used and decisions made. Revisit important products on a schedule you can maintain, and keep authorised sellers in your notes so you do not repeatedly investigate the same legitimate shop.

Copywatch imports products from a public Shopify catalogue and runs recurring visual and product-name searches for the products you select. It brings possible matches into a review queue. It searches the open web rather than a complete private directory of Shopify stores, and does not guarantee that every copy will be found.