Alexa for Shopping is not the whole Amazon story

Similarweb and Statista put AI in 11.4% of shopping sessions. The jump that matters is inside Amazon: after Rufus was rebranded as Alexa for Shopping, on-site assistant traffic to product pages spiked. Referrals from ChatGPT and other chatbots are still under 1% of visits.

Growth is back at 6.8% YoY worldwide traffic, but direct traffic is up only 1.2% and Statista still forecasts $4.9T global revenue by 2030 on the back of habits Amazon already controls.

Marketplace loyalty looks total until you split by country, where Amazon exclusivity hits 27% in the US and over 30% in Germany yet collapses in the UK against a close eBay.

The punchline is not ChatGPT sending traffic, which remains under 1% of ecommerce and marketplace visits, but Amazon keeping shoppers inside to talk to its own assistant.

After rebranding Rufus to Alexa for Shopping in May 2026, PDP traffic from on-site AI jumped 26% month over month in June and 537.2% year over year (source).

The new agent combines Rufus, first released in 2024, with Alexa+, an upgraded generative AI voice assistant that Amazon introduced in May (source).

Amazon describes that shift as agentic shopping where AI can compare products, personalize recommendations, track prices, build carts and take certain shopping actions directly (source).

Similarweb's most cited warning is a two tier filter inside that assistant, where skipping Sponsored Products risks immediate exclusion and past purchase memory creates a retention flywheel for incumbents.

That claim rests on observed recommendation carousels mixing paid placements with past orders, not on disclosed ranking weights, conversion lift by placement, or cost to stay visible when every query becomes an attribute bundle like waterproof hiking shoes for wide feet under $120 for winter in Scotland.

Electronics exposes the same mismatch, with US and UK SKU growth in TVs and PCs at double digits while views fall 11 to 16%, Germany views up 3.2% against 12 to 18% SKU growth, and only Smart Glasses and Wearables growing views and SKUs together in all three markets at 12% to 25%.

Apple makes the retention logic obvious without AI at all, holding 51% exclusivity in the US, 54% in the UK and 41% in Germany despite smaller reach than MediaMarkt in Germany.

The 23% conversion rate for AI plus Search looks decisive until you ask who was counted, how long they were tracked, and whether high intent shoppers were simply using every tool available instead of being converted by the assistant.

If the shelf now has memory and a price for entry, challenger brands should demand proof before buying the narrative that retail media is the only way to be seen.