The Truth About Shopify Analytics

If you’re running a Shopify store in 2025 and your conversion rate (CVR) looks slightly or alarmingly down YOY, you’re not alone.

For stores advertising on Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Google, TikTok, or similar ad networks, this dip is widespread. But here’s the important part: it’s likely not your fault - and it may not even reflect reality.

What’s really happening to your Shopify conversion rate?

In short: ad bots.

Ad platforms use bots to track campaign performance, and Shopify Analytics currently can’t tell the difference between bots and real shoppers. These ad bots show up as “sessions” in Shopify and, across the 80+ stores we monitor, they make up anywhere from 10% to as much as 60% (!!) of total traffic but since they never buy anything, they drag your conversion rate down.

Full Report by Google Gemini Research: Shopify Analytics Bot Traffic Deception. #1

Real Customer Examples:

Real client example - top sessions by location in 2025 (YTD) compared YOY 2024

Real client example - live sessions by location in 2025

Real client example - bots affecting add-to-cart and check-out events

Because Shopify calculates CVR as:

[number of converted sessions] ÷ [total number of sessions],

if your sessions are bloated by bots, your CVR will naturally sink. 📉

How to check if your store is affected

1. Go to Shopify Analytics → Sessions by Location

2. Look for unusual traffic from cities like:

   • Ashburn, VA

   • Luleå, Sweden

   • Clonee, Ireland

   • Council Bluffs, IA

   • Buffalo, NY

   • Forest City, NC

   
   

(These aren’t just random towns - they host massive Google, Meta, and TikTok data centers that generate bot traffic among other things. See references: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7)

3. Go to Analytics → Total Sales by Billing Location

4. Filter by these cities and check sales for the date range.

   
   

Chances are you’ll see $0 sales or very low sales relative to the high traffic from that location - classic signs of ad bot activity.

How to fix your reporting

Unfortunately, Shopify doesn’t let you filter these sessions in-app. But you can:

✅ Export your session + sales data to CSV/excel and manually exclude these cities

✅ Recalculate your CVR: # of converted sessions ÷ (sessions - bot sessions)

✅ Use Google Analytics to exclude traffic from known bot locations

✅ Update your store's Robot.txt file to exclude bot traffic

✅ Adjust Meta audience to exclude known ad bot locations

What does this mean for your business?

If you're on Shopify and running ads:

1. Your reported traffic is artificially inflated

2. Your reported conversion rate is artificially deflated

3. Your true conversion rate may actually be higher year-over-year than Shopify analytics shows.

4. Even if revenue is down YOY, your revenue per session may be up - especially if underlying (non-bot) traffic is lower YOY.

5. If, after stripping out bot traffic, your revenue per session or CVR is still trailing down YOY, it’s a clear signal that your site’s merchandising isn’t fully optimized - and that’s exactly where 1:1 personalization from Frenzy AI can unlock powerful, measurable gains.

   
   

So before panicking over a declining CVR, clean the data - you may find performance is stronger than you think.

What about Frenzy AI customers?

Among 80+ Shopify stores using Frenzy AI, 92% are seeing higher revenue year-over-year. While their Shopify CVR sometimes appears down, Frenzy’s own analytics exclude bot sessions, giving them a true picture:

✔️ Increased revenue per session YOY

✔️ Higher real conversion rates YOY

✔️ Better performance trends even when real traffic (with ad bots removed) is flat or down