Shopify’s AI Traffic Triples as Shoppers Skip the Search Bar

The agentic shopping shift is most visible at Shopify. Artificial intelligence (AI)-referred traffic to Shopify stores tripled year over year in the second quarter, and orders through those AI channels tripled right along with it. New buyer orders from AI channels are arriving at nearly twice the rate of other channels, President Harley Finkelstein said on the earnings call Wednesday (Aug. 5). The company posted another strong quarter, with revenue up 34% year over year, according to company materials.

Search on Shopify still works the way it always has. Traditional search sessions rose 1.3 times over the past two years and continue to hold roughly a third of all storefront traffic. What’s changed is what happens after a shopper leaves a chatbot or AI assistant instead of a search bar.

Those AI-referred sessions land directly on a product page, skipping the browsing and comparison steps that used to precede a purchase. Half of all AI-referred sessions on Shopify now go straight to a product description page, a rate 2.5 times higher than sessions arriving through traditional search, Finkelstein told analysts during the call.

AI Shoppers Buy Twice as Often on Shopify

Shopify’s product catalog functions as a structured index of merchant inventory, built so AI systems can query it directly rather than scraping web pages for product details. The company has invested in that index for nearly two years, organizing data on more than a billion products so external AI systems can access accurate, complete listings.

That structure produces measurably better outcomes than unstructured data. Finkelstein said AI search powered by Shopify’s catalog converts at twice the rate of AI search relying on scraped product data. He attributed the gap to context: a catalog entry carries complete specifications, while scraped listings often arrive incomplete or without the attributes a shopping agent needs to match a buyer’s request.

Shopify also pointed to Sidekick, its AI assistant built into the merchant dashboard, as a second layer of AI infrastructure. Daily active merchants using Sidekick grew 3.6 times year over year, and the tool handled nearly 34 million conversations in the quarter. Merchants used Sidekick to build more than 36,000 custom apps, up from 12,000 in the first quarter.

Small Merchants Gain the Most From AI Discovery

AI search is reshaping which merchants get found, and the shift favors Shopify’s core customer base of small and specialized sellers. The company said its share of sales outside major product categories has held steady since 2025, even as AI systems surface niche listings that broader keyword search tends to bury under higher-volume competitors.

Finkelstein pointed to specific examples surfaced through AI search this quarter, including a car seat sized for three-across sedan installation and reef-safe sunscreen formulated without a white residue. Both are Shopify merchant products that gained visibility through AI query matching rather than keyword ranking.

Shopify’s identity and payments network, Shop Pay, surpassed $400 billion in lifetime accelerated gross merchandise volume (GMV) in June. Shop app’s native GMV grew more than 70% during the quarter. Cart Sync, a feature that preserves a shopping cart as a buyer moves between a merchant’s site and the Shop app, representing more than 30% of Shop app GMV.

Shopify Also Grew Payments, B2B and AI Partnerships

Shopify launched its first local payment method offering in Mexico while expanding managed markets to Canada and the U.K.

Shopify expanded native B2B capabilities beyond its Plus tier for the first time, letting more merchants manage wholesale and direct-to-consumer sales from one admin dashboard.

Enterprise brands including Guess, Aritzia, e.l.f. Cosmetics and Claire’s moved onto the platform during the quarter, part of a trend of larger retailers migrating away from legacy commerce systems.

Shopify connected its AI toolkit to external coding and agent platforms including Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Replit, letting merchants build storefronts using tools outside Shopify’s own interface.

Shopify’s Second-Quarter Numbers and Third-Quarter Outlook

Shopify reported second-quarter revenue of $3.6 billion, up 34% year over year, or 33% on a constant currency basis. GMV reached $116 billion, up 32% year over year, marking a fifth consecutive quarter of GMV growth above 30%. Merchant solutions revenue grew 37%, driven by GMV strength and payments penetration, which reached 68% of global GMV. Subscription solutions revenue grew 22%.

Gross profit rose 31% to $1.71 billion. Merchant solutions gross profit grew 39%, while subscription solutions gross profit grew 19%, and gross margins were just under 80%. Operating expenses fell to 34% of revenue, a nearly two-point improvement from the prior year.

For the third quarter, Shopify guided revenue growth in the low 30% range year over year and gross profit growth in the mid-to-high 20% range.

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