Shopify reported that AI search is bringing in more traffic and sales rather than replacing Google.
During its second-quarter earnings call, President Harley Finkelstein stated that artificial intelligence acts as a complement to standard search, not a substitute. He noted this shift particularly helped the long tail of e-commerce, including the smaller merchants that form the majority of the customer base. The company credited this AI search activity for beating earnings estimates and driving soaring revenue.
This stands in contrast to online publishing, where AI summaries have caused a measurable drop in click-through rates, lowering traffic and eating into advertising revenues.
Shopify believes AI is a boon for its business. AI-driven traffic and orders to its stores tripled year-over-year in the second quarter.
Search has not lost share. Finkelstein told analysts that search remains one of the largest sources of buyer traffic and is still growing. Traditional search sessions rose 1.3x over the past two years, holding roughly a third of all storefront sessions.
Revenue rose 36% to $3.6 billion from a year earlier, outstripping Wall Street’s forecast of $3.4 billion. Gross operating profit rose 31% to $1.71 billion, ahead of analysts’ expectations of $1.63 billion.
The company explained why AI search works for its model.
“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 said.
“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.
AI’s ability to search across many dimensions to find the best product results in better conversions 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.
Seventy-five percent of AI-attributed purchases in Q2 happened outside the top 100 categories, or what Shopify called its “sweet spot.”
Shopify suggested it stands to benefit from AI playing a larger role in transactions thanks to its trusted checkout experience.
The company is also working with AI tools and agents. It has built connectors to Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Manus, Replit and Vercel. It also supports vibe-coding platforms like Lovable that let merchants build on Shopify however they choose.
What it means
For people building stores, this means AI tools can find specific products better than keyword lists. Buyers arrive further down the funnel, ready to buy immediately. Revenue comes from niche categories where traditional search struggles.
