Shopify's native Agentic Storefronts feature tags orders that go through its structured AI-channel checkout flow — genuinely useful, but narrow. The much bigger share of AI-driven sales happens the ordinary way: a shopper gets a recommendation in conversation, clicks a plain link, and checks out normally. That order shows up as unattributed "Direct" traffic — to Shopify, to Google Analytics, to everything. Trace is built specifically to catch that half.
Shopify's native Agentic Storefronts attribution only tags orders routed through its own structured AI-channel checkout. A shopper who gets a casual recommendation and clicks a plain link never passes through that flow — Trace is built specifically to catch that traffic instead.
Every visit is joined to its actual order using the checkout token — accurate order by order, not a rough estimate applied across your whole store.
Shopify's native attribution only connects to ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, and Meta — Perplexity and Claude aren't wired in at all, regardless of how a shopper arrives. Trace does.
Not a replacement for Shopify's native AI attribution — the two catch genuinely different orders. Most merchants need both.
Trace is built to survive what simpler trackers can't: a fail-closed consent check (never tracks when consent can't be confirmed, not the industry-standard fail-open default), an independent capture path that doesn't depend on a single fragile signal, and automatic reconciliation against Shopify's own native attribution — so you're never double-counting a sale Shopify's already tagged.
Knowing an order came from ChatGPT is nice. Being able to do something with that? That's the fun part.
Every AI-referred buyer gets stamped right in Shopify — ai-referred:chatgpt, ai-referred:perplexity, however you want to slice it. Build a segment. Fire off an email flow. Filter your customer list and actually see these people. Off by default, one click when you're ready.
Your dashboard now ranks it for you — which products keep showing up in AI-referred orders, and how often. No digging, no spreadsheets. Just the answer, right there in your dashboard.