Bot disclosure
SOptim Audit Bot
A small, polite crawler we run from soptim.app to benchmark publicly-accessible Shopify storefronts. This page tells you exactly what it does and how to opt out.
Identity
| User-Agent | SOptim Audit Bot (+https://soptim.app/bot) |
|---|---|
| Source IP range | Static IPs on audit-origin.soptim.app (Cloudflare-proxied to a fixed DigitalOcean NYC1 droplet) |
| robots.txt | Respected. We skip any store that disallows our UA or *. |
| Rate per shop | Max 1 audit per shop per 7 days. 1 concurrent request per domain. |
| Pages visited | Home + 1 sample product detail page. Never /checkout, /account, or any form-submitting URL. |
What we measure
- Lighthouse Performance score + Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP, FCP, TBT, TTFB)
- Theme name (matched against our public theme signature catalog)
- Installed Shopify apps (matched against our public app signature catalog — same data anyone could read from your storefront HTML)
- Industry classification (inferred from your shop title and meta description via a small AI model)
What we do NOT do
- No login attempts, no checkout flow, no cart manipulation
- No collection of customer-facing PII (emails, names, addresses)
- No publication of individual shop names or domains in our public Hub — only aggregated cohorts of 10+ shops
- No data sold or shared with third parties
Opt out
Email [email protected] with subject "SOptim Audit Bot opt-out" and your shop URL. We will:
- Confirm receipt within 1 business day.
- Add your domain to our opt-out list within 24 hours of confirmation.
- Delete any audit history we hold for your shop within 7 days.
Alternative: block our User-Agent in your robots.txt. We re-check robots.txt on every audit run.
Why we do this
The Shopify ecosystem lacks objective, data-driven benchmarks for theme performance, app speed impact, and industry cost averages. SOptim Hub aims to publish that data — based on real public storefront measurements, aggregated to protect individual shops. Merchants reading the Hub can compare their store against industry norms; vendors can see how their themes/apps perform. Everyone wins from transparent benchmarks.
For the full disclosure of how we use aggregate benchmark data in published research, see our Privacy Policy (sections on aggregate research data) and Terms of Service.
Questions
Email [email protected]. We reply within one business day.