Default session views now focus on human visitors, and bot/system traffic is classified more consistently. Legitimate shopping activity without a standard page view still appears. Session counts and conversion rates may look different, but orders, sales, and customer counts are unchanged.
Metrics that use sessions as a denominator or unit, such as sessions, conversion rate, add-to-cart rate, and bounce rate, may look different after the update.
The announcement states that this does not necessarily mean traffic, orders, or customer behavior has changed. Orders, sales, and customer counts are unaffected by this update.
Order counts aren't affected by the session measurement update.
Sales figures remain directly comparable.
Customer counts don't change either.
| Item | Before 2026-09-21 | From 2026-09-21 |
|---|---|---|
| Default session view | — | Human-focused Focuses on human visitors where the Human or bot filter is available |
| Bot/system classification | Inconsistent | More consistent Classified more consistently |
| Purchase behavior without page views | — | Still shown Continues to be shown as valid journeys |
| Session metrics | Old baseline | New baseline Use caution with before/after comparisons |
| Orders, sales, and customer counts | No change Directly comparable before and after | |
If the comparison period includes 2026-09-21, the baseline for session metrics has changed.
Read session metrics (new baseline) separately from orders, sales, and customer counts (unaffected).
As the article instructs, treat session metrics from 9/21 onward as a new baseline when comparing periods.
Session metric time series may show a step change. Adding a "measurement change" annotation to dashboards and weekly reports helps prevent false anomaly alerts and misguided decisions.
Metrics like CVR use sessions as the denominator. Since order counts (the numerator) don't change, a shift in the rate may come from the denominator's definition change rather than actual traffic.
The focus on human visitors applies only where the filter is available. You'll need to check each report in the admin to confirm what it covers (no list of affected reports is provided).
The article states that valid purchase journeys without standard page views will continue to appear. This isn't simply a change where bot exclusion lowers the numbers (the direction of change isn't stated).
Because figures in external tools such as GA4 are not affected by this update,the gap with Shopify Analytics may shift around 9/21. If you monitor this gap, it's safest to reset your comparison baseline to the period after 9/21. How this is handled in the API / ShopifyQL isnot mentioned in the article.