The way people search online is changing – and for ecommerce businesses, that change is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
For years, getting found online has largely meant one thing: Google. Businesses have invested in SEO, content and paid search to make sure their products appear when potential customers are looking for them.
That isn't disappearing. But there is now another rapidly growing route to discovery: AI search.
Instead of searching Google for “best running shoes for wet weather” or “gift ideas for someone who loves cooking”, people are increasingly asking AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot for answers and product recommendations.
And behind the scenes, AI systems are already consuming a significant amount of web content.
According to Cloudflare's 2025 data, AI bots accounted for around 4.2% of all requests for HTML pages across websites using its network. That's not the same as saying 4.2% of your website visitors are AI – these are machine requests rather than human visits – but it gives us an indication of just how actively AI systems are accessing information across the web.
More importantly for ecommerce businesses, we're beginning to see that activity translate into shopping behaviour.
Shopify reported that AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores grew 8x year-on-year in Q1 2026, while orders attributed to AI-powered searches grew nearly 13x.
That's a pretty compelling reason to start paying attention.
Because as people increasingly use AI to research products, compare options and decide what to buy, there's a new question businesses need to consider:
When someone asks AI for a product like yours, can it find and understand yours well enough to recommend it?
What can you do to optimise your Shopify store for AI?
Shopify is already developing ways for products to be discovered through AI shopping experiences. But having your products available is only the starting point.
There are a number of things we can do within your Shopify store to give AI platforms clearer, richer and better-structured information about your products.
Here are six areas we're currently focusing on.
1. Check what product information AI is receiving
Your product title and description might look perfect on your website – but is that the information being supplied to AI shopping channels?
Through Shopify Catalog Mapping, we can review where key information such as product titles and descriptions, is being pulled from and adjust the mapping where necessary.
This is particularly important for stores where product information is held across different fields or metafields.
Why does it matter? Because we want to make sure AI platforms are easily receiving the best and most relevant information about every product you sell.
2. Optimise product categories and metafields
Correct product categorisation is becoming increasingly important.
Within Shopify, selecting the appropriate category for each product can unlock category-specific metafields – additional fields designed to describe the characteristics of that particular type of product.
These can then be populated with further product information, giving Shopify and other platforms more structured information to work with.
This needs to be considered at product level, rather than simply applying a broad category across an entire catalogue.
The more accurately a product is described and categorised, the easier it becomes for machines to understand exactly what it is.
3. Give AI answers to the questions customers might ask
This is where things get particularly interesting.
Shopify's Knowledge Base app allows businesses to provide additional questions and answers that AI shopping agents can use when responding to customers.
We're not talking about standard FAQs such as “How long does delivery take?” or “What is your returns policy?”
Instead, we can develop a focused set of educational questions that help AI understand your products and advise customers.
For example:
“Which product is best for a small bathroom?”
“Can this product be used outdoors?”
“What's the difference between these two models?”
“Which olive oil is best for dipping?”
Creating a carefully considered set of questions and answers gives AI more useful information to draw on when somebody is researching what to buy.
4. Make your website easier for AI bots to understand
There are also opportunities beyond the information held within Shopify itself.
One is an llms.txt file – an emerging approach designed to provide AI systems with a clearer, more accessible representation of important website content.
Using specialist SEO tools, this file can be enhanced to help AI crawlers navigate and understand the information available across your website.
It's another way of making your website more machine-readable as search continues to evolve.
5. Improve your structured data
Structured data is code sitting behind your website that helps search engines and AI systems understand what the information on a page actually means.
For example, rather than simply seeing a number, structured data can help a machine understand that the number represents a price. It can distinguish a product name from a description, identify availability, understand reviews and recognise other important product information.
There are specialist Shopify SEO tools that can help enhance this information and strengthen the structured data available across a store.
Again, much of this isn't something your customers will ever see. But the machines crawling and interpreting your website can.
6. Build trust with independent reviews
AI doesn't just need to understand what you sell – it also needs signals that help establish whether your business and products are credible and trustworthy.
Reviews from established third-party platforms can provide independent information about your products, customer experiences and overall reputation.
Making sure your review data is accurate, accessible and properly connected to your Shopify store can give search engines and AI systems additional signals to consider when interpreting your products and business.
This is particularly valuable because the information isn't simply coming from you. It's supported by real customer experiences on recognised review platforms.
The stronger and more consistent your trust signals are across the web, the more evidence AI systems have to understand the credibility and reputation behind your products.
And that's just the beginning
AI optimisation is developing incredibly quickly.
The important thing is that simply having a Shopify store doesn't mean your store is fully optimised for AI discovery.
Product mapping, categories, metafields, AI knowledge, structured data and the technical information behind your website can all influence how clearly machines can understand what you sell.
And these are just some of the areas we can work on.
Traditional SEO remains important too. The goal isn't to replace SEO with AI optimisation – it's to make sure your website is prepared for both the way people search today and the way they're beginning to search tomorrow.
Is your Shopify store ready for AI?
At Thrive, we're now helping Shopify businesses enhance their websites for AI search and product discovery.
We can review your existing Shopify setup, look at the information currently available to AI platforms and identify opportunities to make your products easier for AI systems to find and understand.
From product-level optimisation and Shopify Catalog Mapping to AI knowledge, structured data and technical improvements, there are already numerous ways we can enhance a Shopify store for this new era of search.
AI search is already changing how people discover products. Now is the time to make sure your Shopify store is ready for it.
Want to know how AI-ready your Shopify store is?
Talk to Thrive about an AI Search Optimisation Review.
We'll review your store, identify the opportunities and recommend the improvements we can make to enhance its visibility and understanding across AI search.
Get in touch with us to find out more.
