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CDN Propagation

Why a re-check can briefly show the same score after you apply a fix, and how to force fresh storefront content.

If you apply a fix and immediately run Check again, Colter may still see the old version of your storefront for a few minutes. This is usually CDN propagation: your origin changed, but edge caches are still serving the previous response for files like robots.txt, llms.txt, or /.well-known/*.

What To Do

  • Wait 2 to 5 minutes, then run Check again.
  • If you control your CDN, purge the affected paths before re-checking.
  • If only one file changed, purge that file instead of the full site.

Purge Tips

  • Shopify: Theme and asset changes can take a short time to propagate. If a storefront setting or theme asset changed, wait a few minutes and re-check. For stubborn cached files, republish or update the affected asset so Shopify issues a fresh version.
  • Cloudflare: Use Caching > Cache Purge and purge the exact URL you changed, or purge everything if multiple storefront artifacts changed.
  • Fastly: Purge the specific URL or surrogate key for the changed file, then re-check once the purge completes.

Colter sends Cache-Control: no-cache and Pragma: no-cache on probe requests, but it still depends on the merchant CDN honoring revalidation correctly.