We are experiencing this as well, and at this point my concern goes beyond the current spike in Singapore traffic.
I have been raising related bot traffic, analytics, filtering, and reporting limitations with Shopify for months, including directly with our CSM, and I have seen very little meaningful movement.
During one recent spike in traffic from Singapore, our Shopify-reported LCP P75 increased from roughly the low 2-second range to nearly 6.8 seconds at its peak. I have attached a screenshot showing how closely the traffic spike and performance degradation aligned. Correlation alone does not prove that the traffic caused the LCP increase, but it demonstrates how disruptive these events can be to the analytics and performance data merchants rely on.
To Shopify’s credit, the native human/bot classification does appear to identify much of the automated traffic when looking at reports where that dimension is available. However, it is not perfect. I have also seen legitimate customers and actual purchases classified as bot traffic in the past.
The immediate problem is that merchants cannot simply apply that bot filter everywhere it is needed. In particular, Shopify’s Home dashboard can become heavily distorted by bot traffic, yet there is no way to filter it out. This directly affects the high-level metrics that executives and other stakeholders are most likely to see.
Our CSM understands the problem and how these analytics limitations affect our ability to provide accurate and effective executive performance overviews. Despite that, we are increasingly having to look at third-party systems for reporting, executive dashboards, traffic filtering, and potentially bot mitigation.
The dashboard limitations are particularly frustrating. Merchants should be able to build dashboards using custom Shopify reports, apply appropriate filters, and share those dashboards with executives, team members, agencies, consultants, and other authorized third parties. Instead, we are forced to recreate Shopify data elsewhere simply to produce a reliable and shareable executive overview.
I have also considered implementing a Cloudflare O2O configuration to gain greater control over automated traffic, but Shopify explicitly recommends against that approach. This creates a difficult situation for merchants. Shopify discourages putting additional infrastructure in front of the platform, while the native tools for controlling and reporting on unwanted traffic remain limited.
At this point, I would like to see Shopify prioritize:
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Making the human/bot filter available across Shopify Analytics, especially on the Home dashboard.
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Improving the accuracy of bot classification so legitimate customers and orders are not incorrectly excluded.
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Improving platform-level bot mitigation and, where appropriate, challenging suspicious automated traffic.
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Creating customizable, shareable dashboards where merchants can add their own reports, filters, and executive KPIs.
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Allowing those dashboards to be securely shared with authorized third parties.
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Providing more transparency about these recurring traffic patterns and what Shopify is doing to address them.
What is most frustrating is the lack of visible progress or even a broader discussion around these requests. These are not cosmetic analytics features. They directly affect merchants’ ability to understand website performance, report accurately to leadership, and make informed business decisions.
If Shopify does not intend to provide stronger native reporting and bot-management capabilities, merchants at least need clarity about the recommended path forward. Continuing to push merchants toward third-party reporting and traffic-management solutions while discouraging infrastructure-level alternatives does not feel like a sustainable answer.
