Chat Support just responded to the issue: Gotcha, so this post was from 2 years ago and a lot of improvements have been made. With that said, this is an observed behavior pattern for bots as they use the same checkout token to initiate several checkout sessions. Which explains why you get increased active cart numbers. This is an issue that the developers are aware of and are constantly improving.
Topic summary
Core Issue:
Merchants report abnormally high active cart counts in Shopify’s Live View analytics (ranging from hundreds to thousands) despite having only a handful of actual visitors. This discrepancy has persisted for weeks to over a year for some users.
Key Findings:
- The issue appears isolated to Shopify’s Live View; Google Analytics shows normal traffic patterns
- No third-party cart/checkout integrations are involved in reported cases
- Shopify Support attributes the behavior to bot activity: bots reuse the same checkout tokens to create multiple sessions, artificially inflating cart numbers
Business Impact:
- One merchant reports complete sales drops (to zero) during spike periods, with recovery only after Shopify intervention
- The problem recurs cyclically even after support “fixes” it
- At least one user reports sales never recovered after a year of this issue
Resolution Status:
- Ongoing/Unresolved: Shopify developers are “aware and constantly improving” the issue, but no permanent fix has been deployed
- Affected merchants must repeatedly contact support for temporary resolutions
- Some users are considering migrating to alternative platforms due to lost revenue and platform reliability concerns