Shopify says AI search drives more traffic and sales, not replacing Google

Shopify, the leading e-commerce platform, is seeing significant advantages as consumers increasingly rely on AI for product discovery.

During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein described AI as a powerful complement to traditional search rather than a replacement. This shift has particularly boosted the long tail of e-commerce, driving growth among the small and medium-sized merchants that form the core of Shopify’s user base. Consequently, the company attributed a portion of its earnings beat and revenue surge to the adoption of AI-driven search tools.

This outcome contrasts sharply with trends in online publishing, where AI-generated summaries have reduced click-through rates, leading to lower traffic and diminished advertising revenue.

Conversely, Shopify views AI as a major asset. The company reported that AI-driven traffic and orders to its stores tripled year-over-year during the second quarter.

Finkelstein clarified that this growth did not come at the expense of traditional search. “In fact, search remains one of our largest sources of buyer traffic to our merchants, and it’s still growing,” he stated. “Traditional search sessions are up 1.3x over the past two years, holding roughly a third of all storefront sessions.”

Shopify delivered robust financial results for the quarter, with revenue climbing 36% to $3.6 billion, surpassing Wall Street’s estimate of $3.4 billion. Gross operating profit increased by 31% to $1.71 billion, also exceeding analyst expectations of $1.63 billion.

The company provided deeper insights into why AI search is driving success for its ecosystem.

“While search engines rank by popularity against a handful of keywords, AI agents make multiple calls into Shopify’s catalog, working with richer structured data to match products with the buyer’s specific intent, rather than just keywords,” Finkelstein explained.

“When a buyer asks an AI assistant for the best car seat that fits three across a sedan, traditional search focuses on the keyword ‘car seat.’ An agent, however, understands the actual need, the dimensions, the vehicle type, and the fact that they need three. It searches across all of those constraints at once to find the product that actually works, not just the one that ranks highest,” he added.

Essentially, AI’s ability to evaluate multiple product attributes simultaneously is leading to higher conversion rates for merchants.

“Buyers’ shopping journeys are being compressed as half of all AI-referred sessions are landing directly on a product description page. That is 2.5 times more than what we see with traditional search,” Finkelstein noted.

Furthermore, Shopify highlighted that 75% of AI-attributed purchases in Q2 occurred outside the top 100 categories, a segment the company refers to as its “sweet spot.”

The company also indicated that Shopify is well-positioned to capitalize on AI’s expanding role in transactions, leveraging its trusted and seamless checkout experience.

Additionally, Shopify is actively integrating with AI tools and agents. The platform has built connectors for Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Manus, Replit, and Vercel, as well as vibe-coding platforms like Lovable, empowering merchants to build on Shopify in ways that suit their specific needs.