Shopify finds AI search boosts sales as traditional traffic holds steady

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein told analysts that AI has evolved into a strategic complement to search, directly contributing to the company's Q2 revenue of $3.6 billion, which comfortably outpaced Wall Street forecasts. Unlike traditional search engines that rely on keyword popularity, AI agents query Shopify’s structured data to match specific user intent with catalog details. For instance, an agent can identify a car seat that fits three across a sedan by processing multiple constraints simultaneously, a task that often eludes basic keyword matching.

This precision is fundamentally changing how customers navigate storefronts. Half of all AI-referred sessions now land directly on product description pages, a rate 2.5 times higher than traditional search traffic. Crucially, this growth does not come at the expense of established channels; traditional search sessions have grown 1.3 times over the past two years and still account for a third of all traffic. With 75% of AI-attributed purchases occurring outside the top 100 product categories, the platform is effectively surfacing long-tail items that might otherwise be buried in standard search results. To capitalize on this, Shopify is deepening its technical ecosystem, integrating connectors for platforms like Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.