9 ecommerce search trends that actually matter in 2027

The way people search for products is changing fast, and it’s not always clear which shifts actually matter. In product search, ecommerce brands are being pulled in a dozen directions at once, trying to figure out where to focus.

Some of these changes are already reshaping how customers find and buy products. Others are getting a lot of hype but haven’t moved the needle much yet.

Here are nine ecommerce SEO trends worth paying attention to in 2027, and what they could mean for your traffic and revenue.

1. Consumers are increasingly relying on Google search to discover products

There have been a lot of headlines that Google search and traditional SEO are dying.

To find out what’s actually happening in Google search, I analyzed the search volume data for 2,000 “transactional” keywords in Ahrefs. These are high-purchase-intent queries someone would search in Google when looking to buy a product (protein powder, air fryer, microwave oven, weighted blanket, etc.).

As you can see, Google Search continues to grow year after year. In the last 12 months alone, search volume is up 2.2%.

So it doesn’t appear that the rise of ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI search engines has slowed down the growth of Google search. People are still using Google to search for products at higher rates than ever before.

2. Traditional SEO is still a major revenue driver for ecommerce

But what about actual traffic and revenue? Yes, Google search volume is increasing, but aren’t click-through rates falling?

To answer this question, I pulled Google Analytics data from a panel of 75 ecommerce stores for the past 12 months. These are ecommerce stores mostly doing between $1 million and $20 million in annual revenue.

I then cross-referenced the organic search data in Google Analytics with Google Search Console to see the actual breakdown between branded and non-branded search queries.

Here’s the traffic and revenue across the main traffic channels for the past 12 months, sorted from highest revenue to lowest.

Based on the data, non-branded organic search is still one of the top-performing revenue channels for ecommerce, second only to paid search.

Non-branded organic search is directly impacted by traditional SEO efforts, indicating that SEO is still a major traffic and revenue driver for many ecommerce stores.

Dig deeper: 7 organic content investments that drive ecommerce ROI

3. Increasing AI Overviews for ecommerce queries

Google first added “AI Overviews” to the Google search results on May 14, 2024.

Initially, ecommerce brands were relatively immune to these AI Overviews since they were primarily appearing for informational queries, things like “how to clean a weighted blanket” or “weighted blanket benefits.”

But a lot has changed in the past few months, and these AI Overviews are now creeping into shopping searches.

• November 11, 2025 – AI Overviews appear in 1.2% of shopping queries.
• March 16, 2026 – AI Overviews appear in 14% of shopping queries.
• September 3, 2026 – AI Overviews appear in 24% of shopping queries (fresh data from Ahrefs).

Using Amazon.com as a proxy, we can see that the rapid rise in AI Overviews across shopping queries began in early November 2025, and then spiked up again in late May 2026.

However, the presence of AI Overviews has started to decline in the past few weeks, indicating that Google may be rolling back AI Overviews for some product search queries.

It’s safe to assume that every time an AI Overview is present in the search results, clicks to the “10 blue links” will likely decrease.

So if you’ve noticed a drop-off in organic search traffic despite growing keyword rankings, it’s very possible that Google has started rolling out AI Overviews for some of your top keywords.

4. AI Mode is everywhere in Google’s products, but still has very little adoption

You may have noticed that Google has been pushing AI Mode more and more over the past year or so.

As of now, there are buttons for AI Mode on both the Google homepage and Chrome search bar.

But with AI Mode becoming more prominent within Google products, what does adoption actually look like?

A Datos study of more than 10 million desktop users found that AI Mode adoption is only about 0.13% of web traffic, down from its peak of 0.16% in March. To put this in perspective, AI Mode has about 1.3% of the usage of the standard Google search experience.

AI Mode still has a way to go before it becomes a meaningful traffic source within search. The recent downtick indicates that Google users are likely relying more on AI Overviews within Google search results instead of using the dedicated “AI Mode” experience.

However, in the EU and UK, AI Mode has continued to grow at a steady rate since late 2025.

With AI Mode becoming more prominent within Google’s products, some people have been wondering if AI Mode will ever become the default search experience. Google added some clarity to this back in May, stating that there are no plans to make AI Mode the default experience and that the 10 blue links aren’t going away any time soon.

Rather than pushing AI Mode even further and making it the default search experience, the adoption data suggests that Google may instead focus more on rolling out AI Overviews across more search results. After all, it’s much easier to bring AI to where the user is already searching than to push the user to a new product like AI Mode.

For the foreseeable future, we can expect traditional Google Search to remain a major driver of traffic and revenue for most ecommerce websites. But this is one trend definitely worth keeping a close eye on since AI search is changing rapidly.

Dig deeper: Why ecommerce SEO audits fail – and what actually works in 30 days

5. Major AI assistants are gaining popularity, but the adoption rate is slowing down

There have been many headlines about AI assistants like ChatGPT disrupting Google Search. The same data study by Datos looked into this by examining the adoption rates of other popular AI assistants.

Here are a few interesting takeaways from the data.

• ChatGPT is the clear leader across all major AI assistants, but Gemini and Claude are catching up. ChatGPT had been steadily growing through Q4 2025, but usage seems to be flattening out, or possibly even declining.
• Claude adoption spiked in early 2026, just a few months after the release of Opus 4.5, and the growth has continued over the past few months.
• Gemini has been steadily gaining traction over the past few years, although growth may be slowing down as of mid-2026.

Other AI assistants, like Copilot and DeepSeek, see very little use in the United States. Their adoption seems to be declining, especially as Gemini and Claude gain in popularity.

Takeaway: Don’t worry about your presence on Claude, Perplexity, and other AI assistants when it comes to AI search. Realistically, Google and ChatGPT are the only search platforms with meaningful adoption.

6. Traffic and revenue from AI assistants are still very low

Across the same panel of 75 ecommerce sites, only about 1.6% of total search traffic and revenue is coming from AI assistants.

However, the big unknown is how much of the non-branded organic search is actually coming from AI Overviews instead of the “10 blue links” on page 1. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide a way to break this out in Google Analytics or Google Search Console, so it’s difficult to know for sure how much traffic and revenue are originating from AI Overviews.

In either case, it’s clear that organic Google search is still driving much more traffic and revenue than AI assistants like ChatGPT.

Dig deeper: How ecommerce brands actually get discovered in AI search

7. AI traffic converts much better than organic search

Using that same panel of 75 ecommerce sites, I also analyzed the conversion data of AI search vs. non-branded organic search.

Over the past six months, traffic from AI assistants has a 19% higher conversion rate than non-branded organic search (1.82% vs. 1.53%).

Even if AI search is sending less traffic than organic search, the traffic is more qualified and tends to convert better.

This is likely because AI assistants are very effective at condensing the research phase from hours to minutes. 

Rather than having to read comparison articles, product reviews, and feedback on Reddit, the AI assistants can prequalify the products with helpful product recommendations.

Dig deeper: How to make ecommerce product pages work in an AI-first world

8. Organic Google Shopping is a major revenue driver

Google Shopping is often overlooked as a traffic and revenue driver in ecommerce.

By separating organic Shopping from organic search, we can clearly see that it’s a major traffic and revenue driver for many ecommerce brands.

Organic Shopping sends a disproportionate amount of revenue when compared to its relative traffic. This is because organic Shopping typically has a much higher conversion rate than both non-branded organic search and AI referrals.

Our sample of 75 ecommerce brands showed that organic Shopping converted 60% higher than non-branded organic search.

• Non-branded organic search: 1.53% conversion rate
• Organic Shopping: 2.4% conversion rate

The massive increase in organic Shopping conversion rate suggests that many searchers may prefer purchasing products from the Google Shopping product grids instead of the standard “10 blue links” on page 1.

Don’t sleep on organic Shopping since it’s already a very strong revenue driver for many ecommerce brands. It can be helpful to understand the primary signals to better optimize your products for Google Shopping.

9. Agentic commerce hasn’t gained any real traction

There’s been a lot of talk about agentic shopping in the world of AI search, with mentions of technical protocols that allow for instant checkout within AI search. Two of them matter.

• Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP): Co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe, ACP powered ChatGPT’s “Instant Checkout.” However, OpenAI ended Instant Checkout in March 2026 after only about 30 merchants ever went live. Now the official ACP documentation on OpenAI’s website has been reduced to guidance on traditional shopping feeds instead of the complete agentic checkouts and payments it once covered.
• Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP): Led by Google and Shopify to enable instant purchases within AI Mode and Gemini. Since February 2026, U.S. shoppers have been able to buy from a small group of retailers inside AI Mode and Gemini without leaving Google. So should you add “agentic shopping” to your to-do list?

Should you add “agentic shopping” to your to-do list and start adding these protocols to your ecommerce website? Probably not. Or at least not yet.

There have been only a few sightings of instant checkout buttons in AI assistants, and they’ve been limited to major online retailers like Wayfair, Etsy, Target, and Home Depot.

So far, I’ve yet to see or hear about instant checkout actually live for ecommerce brands on Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and other major ecommerce platforms.

Dig deeper: Why agentic commerce will matter more than ChatGPT ads

What these trends mean for 2027

Search platforms will keep changing, and there will always be hype around new trends that claim to change everything overnight. Most won’t, but a few will.

The ecommerce brands that come out ahead aren’t the ones that jump on every new trend or guess right every time. They’re the ones paying close enough attention to identify a real shift from a passing headline and refocusing only once it’s proven to have a meaningful impact on sales.