AI Already Ate 56% of Search — and Most Shopify Stores Are Invisible to It

A new study from Graphite — based on Similarweb traffic data validated against Google Search Console (with a 0.86 median correlation) — just upended every assumption about how much search activity has shifted to AI.

The headline number: AI sessions now represent 56% of search volume globally and 34% in the US.

That’s not a forecast. That’s what’s happening right now. And it’s 4-5x larger than previous estimates suggested.

Why Were Previous Estimates So Wrong?

The short answer: everyone forgot about mobile.

Previous analyses of AI search volume relied almost entirely on web traffic data — desktop and mobile browsers. But the Graphite study found that 83% of AI usage happens in mobile apps worldwide (75% in the US). When you only measure web traffic, you’re looking at roughly one-fifth of the actual picture.

This isn’t a minor measurement gap. It’s the difference between thinking AI is a growing niche and realizing it’s already the majority of how people find information.

Once you include app-based sessions, AI generates 45 billion monthly sessions worldwide and 5.4 billion in the US alone. The scale is staggering.

Google’s Market Share Dropped 18 Points in Two Years

Here’s the number that should stop every merchant in their tracks.

Google’s share of the search market dropped from 89% in 2023 to 71% by Q4 2025. Eighteen percentage points of market share — gone in two years. For context, Google spent the better part of two decades holding steady above 85%.

Where did those sessions go? Primarily to ChatGPT, which now accounts for 20% of search-related traffic globally (12% in the US) and holds an 89% market share among AI tools.

But here’s the nuance that matters: this isn’t purely a zero-sum game. The study found that combined search engine plus AI “asking” prompts grew 26% worldwide since November 2022. The pie got bigger. People are searching more than ever — they’re just doing it in new places.

The 52/48 Split That Changes Everything

Not all AI usage is search. The study found that only 52% of AI prompts are search-related “asking” queries. The other 48% are non-search tasks — writing, coding, analysis, brainstorming.

When you adjust for search-only prompts, AI represents about 28% of global search volume rather than 56%. Still enormous. Still far larger than anyone had estimated. But the distinction matters because it tells us something important about how people interact with AI: they’re not just replacing Google queries. They’re creating entirely new usage patterns that never existed before.

For merchants, this means AI isn’t just another search channel. It’s becoming the default interface for how people interact with information — including product information. The 48% of non-search usage today is the commerce usage of tomorrow. When someone asks an AI agent to “find me running shoes for wide feet under $120,” that’s not a traditional search query. It’s a buying intent expressed in a completely new way.

US Growth Is Accelerating, Not Plateauing

There’s a split in the data that’s worth paying attention to.

Globally, AI usage has plateaued since around July 2025. But in the US, growth is still accelerating — up 300% year-over-year. The US market is in a different phase than the rest of the world, still in rapid adoption while other regions have reached a temporary ceiling.

This matters for Shopify merchants because the US remains the largest e-commerce market. If you sell to American consumers, you’re operating in the market where AI adoption is growing fastest. The window to optimize is right now — not when the growth curve flattens.

What This Means for Shopify Merchants

Let’s put this data in context with what we see every day at ZipShop.

When we scan Shopify stores for AI readiness, 85-92% of them are effectively invisible to AI engines. They lack the structured data, the content formatting, and the machine-readable product information that AI tools need to understand, evaluate, and recommend their products.

Now pair that with Graphite’s findings:

• More than half of global search volume is already happening through AI
• Google has lost 18 points of market share in two years
• US AI usage is growing 300% year-over-year
• The total search pie is expanding, not shrinking

This means the merchants who aren’t optimized for AI aren’t just missing a new channel. They’re becoming invisible to the majority of how people discover products. And the problem is compounding: as AI usage grows, the gap between AI-optimized stores and everyone else widens.

Three things merchants should be doing right now

1. Understand where you stand. Before you optimize anything, you need to know how your store currently appears to AI engines. Do AI tools recommend your products? Can they even read your product data? Most merchants are operating blind here.

2. Make your products machine-readable. AI engines don’t browse your store the way a human does. They need structured data, clear product attributes, comprehensive descriptions, and proper schema markup. The bar for “good enough” product content just got a lot higher.

3. Think beyond Google. If you’re still measuring success purely by Google rankings and organic traffic from traditional search, you’re watching the wrong scoreboard. AI citation tracking — knowing whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini recommends your products — is becoming as important as tracking your Google position.

The Bottom Line

Graphite’s CEO Ethan Smith started this research expecting to find that AI usage was being overstated. He found the opposite. And the gap between perception and reality — a 4-5x undercount — should be a wake-up call.

The shift to AI search isn’t coming. It already happened. The question isn’t whether your customers are using AI to find products. The question is whether they’re finding yours.