Shopify AI Search Triples Traffic, Doesn't Replace Google

Shopify's second-quarter earnings call, held this week, gave a rare data point in the debate over what AI search is doing to the web. President Harley Finkelstein told analysts that AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores tripled year-over-year in the quarter, and the company pointed to that surge as one driver behind its earnings beat. Revenue climbed 36% to $3.6 billion, above Wall Street's $3.4 billion forecast, while gross operating profit rose 31% to $1.71 billion, also ahead of estimates.

That result cuts against the pattern showing up elsewhere online, where publishers have watched AI-generated summaries chip away at click-through rates and, with them, ad revenue. Shopify's leadership argued its business is running in the opposite direction, with AI search adding to the traffic mix rather than siphoning it off. The company's customer base skews toward smaller merchants, the kind of long-tail sellers that Finkelstein said have benefited most from this shift. He also pushed back on the idea that AI is cannibalizing Google-style search traffic, setting up his own account of how the two are coexisting on Shopify's platform.