Ole Thorup 🇩🇰

Original founder of Accentuate Custom Fields. Creator of Kairos – the ultimate solution for Shopify merchants to combat bots and fraudulent checkouts.

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

“Someone made an app that can stop bots from polluting Shopify Analytics”

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

Insightful article by @jordanhill11 However, using Kairos, it is possible to block bots outright, so they don’t pollute your analytics.

[Jordan Hill ⚙️ CRO for Shopify Brands @jordanhill11]

Bot traffic in 2026 is destroying your analytics.
Here's what you need to know.

If you've ever seen 'Council Bluffs, Iowa' showing up as a top traffic source in your Shopify analytics, that's bot traffic.

But that's not all of it. Shopify, Google, Facebook, Anthropic & Open AI all send automated crawlers to your site to the point that automated traffic officially overtook human traffic last year. 51% of all web traffic is now non-human.

This has got worse due to the rise AI (LLMs, agents, scrapers). There's a whole new category of automated traffic that didn't exist a few years ago.

And all of it lands in your analytics the same way. Every bot session counts as a visit. So your conversion rate, your bounce rate, all of it, is calculated against a denominator that was never going to buy anything in the first place.

The instinct is to use apps to block it all. Don't. Blocking bots entirely cuts off search engine indexing, mandatory crawls from ad platforms, and removes AI crawlers that are eventually sending actual buying traffic to Shopify stores.

Not to mention, adding bot detectors like CAPTCHA ruin the site experience and lead to higher browse abandonment.

Two things worth noting 👇

1- Your Shopify dashboard doesn't filter bot sessions, but if you go into Shopify Reports, open any report, and filter by 'Human session.' you'll get a clearer picture of your traffic. Shopify rolled out categorising bot traffic in late 2025. It's not perfect. Merchant reports suggest it misses a chunk of bot traffic from certain regions but it at least gives you a baseline.

2- GA4 automatically filters known bot traffic by default, like Google, Bing and SEO crawlers but again, this also isn't perfect. Fresh bots emerge daily and clever ones masquerade as legitimate browsers to slip past detection.

GA4's defaults are better than Shopify's but the reality is not every brand has GA4 configured correctly.  

Honestly, there's not much you can do about it. You can't block them outright. So you're stuck relying on how each platform chooses to categorise traffic.

But if you at least know how to view your numbers minus the bots, you're already ahead of every brand that doesn't.

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

This is 💯 - with analytics that are not inflated by bots.

[Dave @DaveDiederen]

This is absolute golden!

To quickly add to this as well, Shopify added a "Growth" setting most brands haven't found yet.

It breaks down your conversion rate by traffic source.

So instead of seeing "2.5% store CR", you see Klaviyo converting at 6%, TikTok at 0.4%, Google paid at 4.8%.

Completely changes where you focus your testing.

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@uvkewate Went with AffiliTrak and Ranksy

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@cfetter @PrakharS96 Wishlist for app pricing

- eligibility per merchant plan
- discount codes
- multi-store plans (same sub covers additional installs within same Plus org)

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@alexanderhupfer Yes please

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@kimurathomas Everyone pointing to new Shopify App Pricing, but tbf its a thin replacement for Mantle. What is there, works, but by no men’s s complete package

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@uvkewate @celispj @judgeme @jasonnmyers I disagree. I think @stuartchaney nailed it

[Stuart Chaney @stuartchaney]

please let me break down the vibe coding fallacy from a Shopify app perspective.

and how this has played out with home built tools well before AI was even a thing.

Disclaimer: SaaS guy defending SaaS

Instead of paying $15/pm for a Shopify app - you vibe your own.

It works! One shotted this sucker right away - took 2 mins. RIP SaaS!

Fast forward 4 months...

Shopify deprecates the API version you were using (They change version every quarter)

Someone slacks you:
"Hey, the [xyz] app isn't working, can you take a look?"

"Sure, should only take 2 seconds..."

4 hours debugging a new issue that only happened because of the changes to the API version, and the docs weren't fresh enough that the LLM one-shotted it.

Fast forward another 3 months to BFCM...

Slack blows up:
"Dude, no one is getting emails from the [xyz] app, can you check it out - its urgent!"

Fuck - the LLM didn't consider volume spikes, we've hit rate limits on our email sending, the Shopify rate limit is getting hammered and we're left holding the bag with no one to help on the busiest day of the year.

Now, you've lost time, money and sales. All of which is worth far more than $15/pm.

I have been down this road before myself.

For example: Before AI - I probably spent over 100 hours trying to build in-house reporting tool because one didn't exist.

Then Mantle came along - i paid them per month and never thought about it again.

Are there shitty apps in the ecosystem? yes.

Are there apps that are VC backed and inflate the cost of the tool? yes.

From my almost 20 years in this game:

As a SaaS company, you do not get paid for the actual code.

You get paid for the support, maintenance and someone who is constantly shipping updates.

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@yeramianm @hohomelodic @heymantle @ShopifyDevs Billing API being deprecated

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@Swetamohanty94 @heysandy801 Following

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@GoranCulibrk @Philo01 Indeed. Thought their helpdesk would be nice, but it was too weird. Back to Help Scout.

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@uvkewate Migration. Not sure what to do about my affiliate programs.

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

When you install Kairos and see your @shopify store’s actual conversion rate

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@noorsabaxmkg Sounds about right given the quality seen recently

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

4 new Shopify Plus agencies joined as Solution Partners for https://t.co/kJ2S3UMmR3 just today 🤗

Value for merchants is immediate - no bogus traffic, clean analytics, no inflated ad spend, protected checkout.

DM for solution partner perks.

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@uvkewate Broke $100k/mo as a solo dev

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

5-15% of your @Shopify store traffic is automated junk traffic. Your conversation rate will get an immediate boost if you did something about it. Easy 1-click solution using Kairos.

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@uvkewate Will stick with our newest category from this year - security/fraud. Maybe not a crowd pleaser just yet, but will be more and more important over time

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@hohomelodic @leteyski Yeah, LinkedIn requirement an immediate blocker

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@SkinnyWaterApps @DsMatie Vanity score? Seems like an arbitrary tool’s opinion on your work. Why would you care?

[Ole Thorup 🇩🇰 @olethorup]

@uvkewate Subscribed. Interested in sponsoring