While most industries are worried about AI takeover, the e-commerce platform Shopify reported that artificial intelligence search tools are boosting customer traffic and merchant sales rather than displacing traditional search engines like Google.
Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, said AI is a “complement to search, rather than a substitute for it.”
During its second-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday, the company disclosed that AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify storefronts each tripled year-over-year.
Executives say conversational discovery tools as a complementary growth driver that connects shoppers directly with specialized sellers.
“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.
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The Shopify president told investors that new buyer orders coming from AI channels arrive at nearly twice the rate of other channels.
Additionally, conversion rates for searches powered by Shopify’s internal catalog are 80% higher than traditional organic search and double those using scraped web data.
Finkelstein also noted that 75% of AI-attributed purchases in the quarter came from outside Shopify’s top 100 product categories.
He cited niche items such as screen-less mobile phones for children, specific formulations of reef-safe sunscreen, and specialized harnesses for French bulldogs, as products surfaced effectively by conversational models.
Meanwhile, traditional search traffic continues to expand. Session volume from standard search engines grew 1.3 times over the last two years and still accounts for approximately one-third of overall storefront sessions.
The metrics suggest that generative search is capturing additional consumer demand by helping users express specific shopping preferences.
The underlying financial performance reflected broader gains across the platform.
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Shopify reported second-quarter revenue of $3.6 billion, up 34% from $2.68 billion in the prior-year period.
Gross merchandise volume rose 32% to $116 billion, while GAAP net income reached $1.5 billion, up from $906 million a year earlier.
Merchant adoption of internal AI features also accelerated during the quarter.
Daily active merchant usage of Sidekick, Shopify’s AI assistant, grew 3.6 times year-over-year, handling nearly 34 million user conversations in the quarter.
Looking ahead, Shopify projected third-quarter revenue growth to remain in the low-30s percentage range year-over-year, signaling continued reliance on AI integration across its commercial ecosystem.