Shopify’s analytics capabilities have moved quickly in early 2026. Three developments are worth paying attention to if you manage a Shopify store: Sidekick’s expanded AI analytics capabilities, a new attribution channel for AI-sourced orders, and a cookie migration deadline that Hydrogen store owners must action before April 30.
1. Shopify Sidekick: AI That Writes ShopifyQL Queries
Sidekick — Shopify’s built-in AI assistant — has been available since late 2024 as a conversational tool for store management questions. In Q1 2026, its analytics capabilities expanded significantly.
What Sidekick Can Now Do
ShopifyQL query generation: ShopifyQL is Shopify’s proprietary query language for the analytics editor (available to Shopify Plus merchants). Previously, using it required knowing the syntax. Sidekick now translates natural-language requests into ShopifyQL queries:
“Show me revenue by product variant for the last 90 days, excluding test orders”
Sidekick generates the query, runs it, and displays the result as a chart or table. You can then ask follow-up questions or refine the query further.
Chart and visualisation generation: Ask Sidekick “make a line chart of weekly orders for the past year compared to the year before” and it creates the chart in the analytics editor. The chart is saveable as a custom report.
Natural-language insights: Sidekick monitors your store data and can proactively surface anomalies: “Your average order value dropped 18% this week — it’s primarily in your Accessories category. Would you like me to analyse which products drove this?”
Who Has Access
ShopifyQL and Sidekick’s advanced analytics features are Shopify Plus features. Standard plan merchants have access to Sidekick’s general Q&A capabilities but not to ShopifyQL query generation.
For standard plan merchants who want equivalent capability, the GA4 Analytics Advisor combined with Looker Studio dashboards provides similar natural-language analytics access without a Plus subscription.
Reference: Shopify Sidekick documentation
2. AI Traffic Attribution: Orders From ChatGPT and Perplexity Are Now Tracked
We covered how to track AI referral traffic in GA4 in a previous post. Shopify has now added its own AI traffic attribution layer in the orders and analytics dashboards.
What This Shows
In Shopify Admin → Analytics → Reports → Sales by traffic source, AI chatbot referrals now appear as a distinct attribution source rather than being lumped into “Direct” or “Other referral.”
Orders attributed to AI sources show:
- Which AI platform the customer came from (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.)
- First-touch vs. last-touch attribution for AI-assisted sessions
- Revenue and order count from AI-referred sessions
How Shopify Attributes AI Orders
Shopify uses the HTTP referrer header to identify AI-sourced sessions — the same mechanism GA4 uses. When a user clicks a link in a ChatGPT response, the browser sends Referer: https://chatgpt.com/... with the request. Shopify captures this and stores it with the session.
For orders where the referring session came from a recognised AI platform, Shopify flags the order with AI attribution.
Important limitation: As covered in our GA4 AI traffic guide, users who copy-paste URLs from AI responses (without clicking a link) arrive with no referrer. These orders appear as Direct and are not attributed to AI — so Shopify’s AI attribution figures are also an undercount.
What to Do With This Data
- Identify which products AI platforms recommend: If a specific product consistently appears in AI-attributed orders, that product’s content may be well-optimised for AI citation. Double down on it.
- Track AI attribution trend month-over-month: Is AI-sourced revenue growing? At what rate? This tells you whether optimising for AI discoverability is worth the investment.
- Compare AI vs. other referral sources: If AI-referred customers have higher AOV or better repeat purchase rates, that changes how you prioritise AI-optimised content.
3. The April 30 Cookie Migration Deadline for Hydrogen Stores
This is the most time-sensitive item in this post. If you run a Shopify Hydrogen storefront, you must migrate your analytics tracking cookies before April 30, 2026.
What’s Changing
Shopify is updating how analytics tracking works in Hydrogen storefronts. The current cookie-based tracking implementation uses a legacy approach that Shopify is deprecating. After April 30, 2026, the old cookies will no longer be set by Shopify’s infrastructure — any analytics or tracking that depends on them will stop working.
What breaks if you don’t migrate:
- GA4 sessions may lose attribution data (sessions appear as Direct instead of their actual source)
- Shopify’s own analytics may undercount sessions and conversions
- Any custom tracking that reads Shopify’s analytics cookies directly
What the Migration Involves
Shopify Hydrogen uses the @shopify/hydrogen package for analytics. The migration requires updating to the new analytics API introduced in @shopify/hydrogen v2025.01 or later.
Check your current version:
npm list @shopify/hydrogen
# or
cat package.json | grep hydrogen
If you’re on a version from 2024 or earlier, you need to update.
Migration steps:
- Update the hydrogen package:
npm install @shopify/hydrogen@latest
- Update your analytics integration in your Hydrogen app. The old pattern:
// Old pattern — being deprecated
import { useAnalytics } from '@shopify/hydrogen';
export function App() {
const { publish } = useAnalytics();
// ...
}
New pattern:
// New pattern — required after April 30
import { Analytics } from '@shopify/hydrogen';
export function App() {
return (
<Analytics.Provider
cart={cart}
shop={shop}
consent={consent}
>
{/* your app */}
</Analytics.Provider>
);
}
- Update your GA4 pixel integration to use the new
Analytics.CustomDataor customer event API pattern.
Full migration guide: Shopify Hydrogen Analytics migration
If you’re not sure whether this applies to you: Check if your storefront is built with Shopify Hydrogen (React-based headless storefront framework). Standard Shopify Online Store 2.0 themes are not affected — this is Hydrogen-specific.
4. Renamed Payments Metrics in Shopify Analytics
A smaller but potentially confusing change: Shopify renamed several payments-related metrics in the Analytics dashboard in Q1 2026 to improve clarity.
| Old name | New name |
|---|---|
| Total sales | Gross sales |
| Net sales | Net revenue |
| Returns | Refunds |
| Payment processing fees | Processing fees |
If you’ve built Looker Studio dashboards or custom reports that reference Shopify data by metric name, check whether any field mappings need updating after this rename.
5. Influencer Analytics in Shopify Collabs
Shopify Collabs — the creator/affiliate platform — added more granular analytics in Q1 2026:
- Revenue per creator: Which influencers drive the most sales, not just clicks
- Conversion rate by creator: Identifies high-traffic/low-converting vs. low-traffic/high-converting creators
- First vs. repeat customer split: Are influencer-referred customers new to the store or existing customers using the affiliate code?
This data lives in Shopify Admin → Apps → Collabs → Analytics, not in the main analytics dashboard. For brands running influencer programs, this provides the attribution data needed to move beyond CPM/CPC metrics toward actual revenue attribution per creator.
Action Items by April 30
If you run a Hydrogen storefront: prioritise the cookie migration — this is a hard deadline with real breakage if missed.
For all Shopify stores:
- Check the new AI attribution data in your analytics and note your baseline AI-sourced revenue
- If you’re on Plus, explore Sidekick’s ShopifyQL capabilities — natural-language analytics is genuinely useful for teams who don’t use ShopifyQL regularly
- Update any Looker Studio or external dashboards that reference old Shopify metric names
For questions about Shopify analytics implementation — GA4 integration, checkout tracking, or Hydrogen analytics migration — book a free consultation.