What we capture from shopper actions
Beyond search queries, VeryQuery records two more lightweight signals from your storefront: when a shopper adds an item to cart, and when an order completes. These are item-level signals, not financial or personal records, and they exist to make your intelligence map sharper as your store accumulates real shopper activity.
Why these signals matter
Search queries tell us what shoppers are looking for. Cart-adds tell us what they considered. Orders tell us what they chose. Each adds a layer to the same picture. The point isn't to track shoppers; it's to know which corners of your catalog actually convert browsing into buying, and which queries lead to which choices.
None of the intelligence features built on these signals have shipped yet. They're enabled now so that, when those features arrive, your property already has the history to make them useful from day one rather than starting from zero.
What we record
For each cart-add and each completed order, VeryQuery records.
- Which item
- Was added or purchased (your Shopify product ID).
- When
- The action happened.
- Session ID
- An anonymous session ID if the shopper started from your storefront. Same session ID we use for search queries, so an eventual analysis can tell that a search, a cart-add, and a purchase came from the same visit.
- Order ID
- The order's Shopify ID, used internally to ignore duplicate webhook deliveries. Not surfaced anywhere user-facing.
What we don't record
- Customer details
- No name, email, address, phone, account, or anything Shopify identifies as a customer. Even on completed orders, we ignore the customer fields entirely.
- Financial details
- No price paid, no order total, no currency, no taxes, no shipping cost, no discount code, no payment method.
- Quantity
- Three of the same item in one order is still recorded as one signal: "that item was chosen." Quantities matter for your accounting, not for the question we're answering.
- Cross-session tracking
- The session ID resets when a shopper closes their browser tab. We don't fingerprint, don't drop persistent cookies, and don't tie sessions to people.
How it works under the hood
Two paths feed the same signal log.
- Cart-adds
- Captured by the same theme app embed that captures search queries. When a shopper hits "Add to cart," the embed sends us the product ID. The same toggle that enables query capture enables cart-add capture; you don't have to do anything extra. See Signals capture if you haven't enabled the embed yet.
- Orders
- Captured via Shopify's orders/paid webhook. Once your install has the Read orders permission, Shopify sends us a notification each time a paid order processes. We pull out the line-item product IDs and ignore the rest.
Permission and re-grant
The order signal needs the Read orders scope. If your store was connected before this feature shipped, Shopify will show a permissions banner the next time you open the VeryQuery app from your admin. Approving it grants the new scope and orders start flowing within minutes. You can also disconnect and reconnect from the VeryQuery dashboard's Integrations page to force a fresh permission grant.
Turning it off
Two switches, depending on what you want off.
- Stop cart-add capture
- Turn off the VQ Signals embed in your theme editor (same toggle as query capture).
- Stop order capture
- Disconnect the integration from VeryQuery's Integrations page, or uninstall the app from Shopify entirely.
Disconnecting also stops Shopify from sending us order webhooks at all.
Privacy and consent
If you use a cookie or consent banner, configure it to gate analytics scripts and the embed will respect the shopper's choice for cart-adds. Order signals come from Shopify's webhook side, not from a script in the shopper's browser, so they aren't affected by the shopper's cookie consent (your store's existing data-processing terms with shoppers cover that side). If you're unsure how this maps to your privacy policy, the safe summary is: VeryQuery receives item-level activity from your store, never personal or financial information, and uses it only to build your private intelligence map.