Shopify says referrals from AI services are becoming an additional commerce channel rather than replacing conventional search. During its second-quarter earnings call, the company reported that both AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores tripled from a year earlier.
The channel remains small compared with Shopify's $116 billion in quarterly gross merchandise volume, according to management. Its growth, however, is changing how products are discovered. New-buyer orders from AI channels arrived at roughly twice the rate seen across other channels.
Search remains the larger channel
Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said traditional search still accounts for about one-third of storefront sessions. Search sessions have increased 1.3 times over the past two years, undercutting the idea that assistants are simply taking traffic from Google and other search engines.
The distinction matters because publishers and retailers experience AI discovery differently. An answer generated by a search engine can satisfy a reader without sending a click to the original publication. A shopper still has to reach a merchant to inspect and buy a product.
Shopify says half of sessions referred by AI land directly on a product page, 2.5 times the rate for conventional search. It also reported that 75 percent of AI-attributed purchases came from outside its 100 largest product categories. That suggests conversational recommendations may be useful for matching narrow requests to products that would struggle to rank for broad keywords.
Structured catalogs favor specific queries
Finkelstein attributed the pattern to assistants making multiple calls against Shopify's structured catalog. Instead of matching one short keyword phrase, an agent can combine product dimensions, compatibility requirements, price and other constraints in one request.
Shopify is positioning its catalog and checkout infrastructure as the transaction layer behind those queries. It has built connectors for Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Manus, Replit and Vercel, along with development platforms including Lovable.
The company reported 34 percent year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter and an 18 percent free-cash-flow margin. Those figures do not isolate AI's contribution, and Shopify has not disclosed the absolute number or value of AI-referred orders. For now, the threefold growth rate describes momentum from an undisclosed base, not the size of the channel.
Sources
Shopify: Q2 2026 financial results
TechCrunch: Shopify says AI search is driving more traffic and sales, not replacing Google
