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Shopify says AI-driven traffic and orders tripled year over year in Q2
Shopify president Harley Finkelstein told the company’s Q2 earnings call that AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify merchant stores tripled year over year, with half of AI-referred sessions landing directly on product pages — 2.5 times the rate of traditional search. Traditional search sessions remained up 1.3x over two years, per Shopify, which framed AI as a complement to search rather than a substitute, per TechCrunch.
Why it matters: It's the first large e-commerce platform to report AI referral traffic as pure growth rather than cannibalization, cutting against the traffic-decline story publishers have been telling all year.
Via TechCrunch AI ↗
Posted to the wire August 5, 2026.