AI Search and the New Buying Journey..or is it?

There’s been plenty of talk about AI changing the way we search.

Depending on which headline you read, Google is finished, SEO is dead and before long we’ll all be asking ChatGPT what to buy instead of searching for it ourselves.

But new data from Shopify tells a much more interesting story.

AI search is growing quickly, but it isn’t necessarily replacing traditional search. Instead, the two seem to be doing different jobs and that could have some important implications for ecommerce brands.

Shopify found that AI-referred sessions to stores grew 197% year on year in Q2 2026. That’s a huge increase, but it comes from a relatively small starting point. Over the same period, organic search grew by 12% and still sends significantly more traffic to Shopify merchants than the AI platforms Shopify tracked combined.

So people haven’t stopped Googling products.

They’ve simply found another way to research them…..and that’s where things get interesting.

Think about how you actually use AI

Imagine you’re buying something that requires a bit of thought.

Maybe it’s a new coffee machine (bit random but we need one)…. Something where there are enough options, specifications and opinions to make choosing the right one slightly painful.

A few years ago, that journey probably started with Google.

You’d search for the best options, open a few tabs, read a buying guide, compare specifications, search again, check some reviews and eventually narrow it down.

AI changes that process because you can have the whole conversation in one place. Only then do you click through to the retailer.

That difference matters.

Shopify found that when AI-referred shoppers reached a product page, they converted around 80% better than shoppers arriving through organic search. For products that involve more research, specifications or comparison, AI-referred visitors converted at roughly twice the rate.

Shopify describes this as buyer journey compression.

Essentially, part of the shopping journey that used to happen on the your website is now happening before the customer ever gets there.

And that changes the job your website has to do.

Your product page might be their first impression

One of the most interesting findings in Shopify’s research was that 50% of AI-referred sessions landed directly on a product page.

Meaning that customer might never have seen your homepage.

They haven’t necessarily read the story behind your brand or browsed your collections. They might know almost nothing about you.

Suddenly, your product page isn’t just somewhere to display a few images, a description and an Add to Cart button.

It has to introduce the product, answer the customer’s remaining questions and give them enough confidence to buy from a business they may only have discovered thirty seconds ago.

That means the details we’ve always talked about become even more important: good photography, useful descriptions, clear specifications, reviews, delivery information, returns, FAQs and the little trust signals that reassure somebody they’re making the right decision.

And then there’s the less glamorous bit: product data

AI might be the exciting part of this conversation, but underneath it sits something much less exciting.

Product data.

Because before an AI assistant can confidently recommend your product, it needs to understand what that product actually is.

Shopify’s research found that shoppers referred by AI using structured Shopify Catalog product data converted at twice the rate of AI visitors coming through scraped or third-party product feeds.

In our opinion that’s a fairly compelling reason to look at what’s sitting behind your storefront.

If important information about a product is missing, inconsistent or buried in a paragraph of copy, it becomes harder for customers to understand and harder for the systems helping those customers to make sense of it too.

So what should you actually do?

We don’t think the answer is to panic about “AI optimisation” or start ripping up your SEO strategy just yet.

Shopify’s own data shows organic search is still growing, AI is simply becoming another route into the store.

Instead, we’d recommend you focus on getting the fundamentals right:

• Review your product data. Make sure things like materials, sizing, dimensions, compatibility, specifications and use cases are complete, accurate and structured properly.

• Treat your PDPs like landing pages. Assume the person arriving there may never have seen another page on your site. Does the page explain the product and give them enough confidence to buy?

• Answer the questions customers actually ask. FAQs, reviews, comparisons, delivery information and returns can remove the uncertainty that’s left after someone has done their initial research.

• Keep investing in SEO. AI search is growing, but organic search remains a much bigger source of traffic. This isn’t an either/or decision.

• Start watching AI referral traffic. You don’t need an enormous AI strategy, but you should understand whether these visitors are appearing in your analytics and how they behave when they arrive.

Search is changing. The fundamentals aren’t.

That’s probably our biggest takeaway from Shopify’s research.

We don’t think you need to suddenly build your entire strategy around AI search. We do think you need to recognise that the journey to your store is changing.

Customers might discover a product on Google, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit or ChatGPT. They might spend twenty minutes researching your category without ever seeing your website.

And when they eventually arrive, they could land directly on one product and decide within a few minutes whether they trust you enough to buy it.

The brands that do well in that world will be the ones that make their products easy to find, easy to understand and easy to buy, regardless of where the journey started.

Whilst AI is new and this feels like a new approach, it has definite parallels with how Google Ads / Google shopping works already.

The majority of people already searching via Google / Google shopping will almost always end up directly on a product page.

The difference now being that instead of relying on a product feed which can be edited and enriched, its now all one page which should make for a better user experience too.

Not sure where to go from here?

There’s a lot of noise around AI and ecommerce at the moment, and working out what actually matters for your store isn’t always straightforward.

If you’re wondering what AI search means for your Shopify store, whether your product data and PDPs are doing enough, or simply where you should be focusing your time and budget, we can help you work it out.

At Squashed Pixel, we can look at where your store is today, identify the opportunities that are actually worth pursuing and help you build a clear plan for what comes next. Get In Touch

Source: This article was inspired by Shopify's Q2 2026 commerce data and its article, “AI and organic search are doing different jobs: What Shopify's data shows.” Shopify's original research and analysis can be read on the Shopify Enterprise blog.