Has anyone else noticed a significant drop in organic search traffic in the Shopify App Store in the recent months?
It seems that the amount of merchants using the Shopify App Store has dropped significantly since around May or June 2026 and the trend doesn’t seem to be improving.
When checking the Shopify admin dashboard, I can see that it is now a lot harder for merchants to find or see any link which would lead to the Shopify App Store from the Shopify admin. In the past, there used to be promoted apps, recommended apps, etc. which all lead merchants to the Shopify App Store.
Thanks for sharing! That could well be it. I imagine Sidekick is heavily influenced by reviews, so all the apps gaming the review system will be absolutely loving this.
Same here, first decline observed in march. Also a sharp decline since July but that’s because our app overlaps with the collection release that happened in July and less merchants need it now.
Sidekick search sucks btw, it returns apps that have nothing to do with the request. It just pulls the most popular apps. When I ask for exactly what our app does, and it’s the only relevant app that does it, it’s not appearing in the list.
Shopify does not give a sh*t about partners, they just do their thing and you adapt or die. That’s why I’m claiming that shopify is a toxic company to work with. Don’t expect things to improve. Shopify knows it and if they intended to help us they would have done it already. I think their strategy is to go 100% sidekick and merchants do what they need with the AI and and Flow + custom vibe-coded apps rather than paying for apps on the store.
Also take a look back at what happened earlier. They fired most of the partner-related employees and they’re greatly neglecting the communication with partners. In their recent releases partner’s consideration has only been an afterthoughts.
Partners have been their springboards to grow until they don’t need it anymore. We’ve reached that time and they’re not giving us a transition period or a roadmap.