Shopify says AI-driven discovery and shopping are increasing traffic and sales to its merchants rather than displacing traditional search in the way some news publishers have experienced. The company reports that AI-referred traffic to Shopify stores triples year over year in the second quarter. Orders tied to those AI channels also triple over the same period, according to Shopify’s president, Harley Finkelstein.
Shopify’s position is that its AI search experience is not cannibalizing search traffic in the broader sense. Instead, the company frames the change as an “agentic” shift in how shoppers find products, with more users reaching stores through AI recommendations and related pathways instead of starting from a search bar. Shopify further says new buyer orders coming from AI channels arrive at nearly twice the rate of orders from other channels.
Across the reporting, both outlets present Shopify’s metrics as evidence that AI engagement is translating into incremental commerce for merchants, while Shopify maintains that this activity does not replace Google-style search as a dominant driver of traffic.
