Growth & retention

Agent-influenced arrival

Definition

A new subscriber whose path to signup included an AI assistant's recommendation, comparison, or summary - on-site (a Brand Agent conversation) or off-site (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, or Amazon's Alexa for Shopping). Distinct from organic browsing, where the shopper found and evaluated the brand unassisted.

Defined in Welcome Flow Rewrite for the Agentic Era.

Related terms

AI Overviews: The AI-generated summary Google shows at the top of some regular search results pages, with links to the sources it draws on. Search Console treats an AI Overview as a single position on the results page: every link inside it gets that same position.
Brand Agent: Microsoft's AI shopping agent for a merchant's own storefront, announced in January 2026 and installed through Microsoft Clarity plus Microsoft's waitlist — not a Shopify feature, and not limited to Shopify Plus. Brand Agents was in beta as of Microsoft's July 2026 documentation, for Shopify and WooCommerce sites.
Alexa for Shopping: Amazon's built-in AI shopping assistant, renamed from Rufus on May 13, 2026, which answers product questions directly inside the Amazon app and site using Amazon's own catalog and review data.
Google AI Overviews: AI-generated summary panels shown above traditional results in Google Search, which can cite and link to product pages the way a human-written snippet used to.
Owned channel: A communication channel where you hold the relationship directly, such as email and SMS lists built on explicit consent, as opposed to rented reach (ads) or mediated reach (assistant shortlists). No algorithm re-ranks who receives your message.
Zero-party data: Information a customer intentionally and proactively shares with you, such as preferences, intentions and context, as opposed to data observed from behaviour or bought from third parties. It is consent-clean and usually more accurate than inference.

All 164 terms

What is AI invisibility costing you?

Revenue at risk from AI shopping channels, with the formula shown so you can check the maths.

Open the calculator Agentic Commerce Setup