Shopify taps Google Vertex AI Discovery AI for semantic search in enterprise tier
Shopify's enterprise tier now uses Google Cloud's Vertex AI Discovery AI for semantic product search, with early adopters reporting up to 15x more orders tied to search sessions. This shift replaces brittle keyword matching with vector-based intent understanding, making queries like “running shoes for winter” map to relevant items even without exact term overlap, as detailed in this [WebProNews deep dive](https://www.webpronews.com/the-semantic-shelf-how-shopifys-google-cloud-pact-reorders-the-retail-hierarchy/). For backend and data teams, the change centers on catalog vectorization, latency-aware retrieval, and continuous relevance tuning, plus analytics to connect query intent to conversions and inventory health.