Privacy Policy

Last updated: 16 October 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how IntentSea ("IntentSea", "we", "us") handles data in connection with IntentSea Search, our AI-powered search, filtering and autocomplete app for Shopify stores (the "App"). It applies to merchants who install the App and to shoppers who use search on a merchant's storefront.

1. What the App does

IntentSea Search adds AI-powered search, filters and autocomplete to a Shopify storefront. To do this it reads the merchant's product catalog and collections and serves search requests to the storefront through a Shopify app proxy.

2. Data we process

From merchants:

• Shop identity and installation details provided by Shopify (shop domain, installation status, plan-related settings needed to run the App).
• Product catalog and collection data (titles, descriptions, variants, prices, images, tags, collections, availability), accessed with the read_products scope. The App does not write to your store.
• Read-only theme, publication and translation data (read_themes, read_publications, read_translations): which theme is active and whether it contains a search form and the IntentSea app embed, which products are available in which sales channels and markets, and translated product titles and descriptions. Used only to set up search on the theme, to show shoppers only products available in their market, and to search in the storefront language.
• Product unit costs (read_inventory, read-only), only for stores that turn on profit-margin ranking: used only to compute a margin percentage that ranks products. Costs are never shown to shoppers, never sent to the storefront or our edge cache, and are not read for stores that leave this option off.
• Merchant contact details if you email us (for example for support).

From shoppers on a merchant's storefront:

• Search queries and filter selections entered into the search box. When semantic search is enabled for a shop, query text is sent to our configured embedding service to create a vector used to find relevant products. Query vectors are cached in Redis for up to the configured cache period (one hour by default); product vectors are stored with that shop's search catalog while the catalog is indexed.
• Anonymous interaction events: result impressions and clicks, used to improve ranking and to show analytics to the merchant.
• Add-to-cart and completed-purchase events, reported by the App's Shopify web pixel (see section 3): product and variant ids, quantities, prices and currency of the items, the order id or checkout token, and the id of the search that led to the product when the shopper reached it from search within the previous 7 days. These are used only to measure which searches lead to sales, so ranking can favour products that actually sell and merchants can see revenue from search.
• Basic technical data needed to serve requests (such as IP address and user agent), which is processed transiently by our servers and Cloudflare for delivery, security and abuse prevention. Page addresses are stored without their query string.

What we do not collect: shopper names, email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, or payment or card data. The App does not read customer records, and it does not have the read_orders scope; purchase events contain only the product-level data listed above.

3. Web pixel, consent, anonymous identifiers and Do Not Track

The App requests the write_pixels and read_customer_events scopes to install one app pixel on the merchant's store. The pixel listens only for add-to-cart and completed-purchase events. It is declared to Shopify as analytics only (not marketing, not preferences, no sale of data), so under Shopify's Customer Privacy API it does not run until the shopper allows analytics where consent is required, and it re-checks consent before every event it sends. Shopify withholds personal fields (name, email, phone, address) from the pixel, and the pixel never reads them.

Interaction events are linked only to an anonymous identifier (for pixel events, Shopify's anonymous browser client id, stored only when analytics consent is given) that is not tied to a person's identity and does not follow a shopper across different stores. To attribute a sale to a search, the storefront keeps a short list of recently clicked products and their search ids in the shopper's browser storage (isea_attr, at most 50 entries, removed after 7 days), written only with analytics consent. With analytics consent, the storefront also keeps a small preference profile (isea_pref) in browser storage. It contains weighted product vendor, type and tag preferences derived from views, clicks, cart additions and purchases. The profile is used locally for up to 30 days to reorder search suggestions and results; after that it is ignored and may remain in browser storage until overwritten or cleared. The profile itself is not sent to IntentSea servers or service providers. Shoppers can clear it using the storefront's clear-history control or browser storage settings. We honour the browser's Do Not Track signal: when it is enabled, interaction events and this profile are not recorded.

4. How we use data

• To provide, maintain and secure the App (search, filtering, autocomplete).
• To improve search relevance and ranking.
• To show merchants analytics about searches and engagement in their own store.
• To provide support and to comply with legal obligations.

We do not sell personal data and we do not use shopper data for advertising. Data from one merchant is not shown to other merchants.

5. Retention

• Raw interaction, add-to-cart and purchase events are kept for 180 days and then deleted. Per-product ranking scores derived from them cover the last 14 days and are recomputed hourly.
• Product catalog and collection data are kept while the App is installed.
• When the App is uninstalled, the shop is deactivated and our servers stop accepting events from its pixel. When Shopify sends the shop/redact webhook (48 hours after uninstall), shop sessions, catalog data, settings, search events, query-vector cache and indexed product vectors are deleted. Encrypted backups made before the deletion may still contain that data; they are deleted automatically within 30 days.
• We retain a limited billing-history record containing the shop domain, whether its free trial was used and the first-trial date after shop/redact. We use it only to prevent repeated free-trial abuse if the same shop reinstalls. It does not contain catalog, shopper or search data.

6. Shopify privacy webhooks

The App handles Shopify's mandatory data-protection webhooks: customers/data_request, customers/redact and shop/redact. Because the App does not hold personally identifiable customer information, customer requests result in no customer data being found or deleted; shop data is deleted as described above.

7. Hosting and service providers

On intentsea.com, search.intentsea.com, vision.intentsea.com and lab.intentsea.com, we use Cloudflare Web Analytics to measure page views, referring sites, visitor country and Core Web Vitals; it uses no cookies or local storage, does not collect personal data, and does not record query strings such as UTM parameters.

The App runs on servers operated by IntentSea. We use Cloudflare for CDN and edge delivery, secure tunnelling, encrypted backup storage (R2) and, when semantic search is enabled, Workers AI to generate product and query embeddings. Query text sent for embedding is used to produce vectors for search. When an AI feature that needs a language model is enabled, selected prompt and catalog data needed for that feature may be sent to OpenRouter, our language-model gateway. These providers process data on our behalf under their applicable service terms. We do not send the local isea_pref browser profile to them. Data may be processed in countries other than your own; where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards such as standard contractual clauses.

8. Security

We use encryption in transit, access controls and regular backups to protect data. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to limit access to what is necessary.

9. Your rights (GDPR, CCPA and similar laws)

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, to object to or restrict processing, and to not be discriminated against for exercising your rights. California residents may also request disclosure of what is collected; we do not sell or share personal information as defined by the CCPA. Because we hold no directly identifying shopper data, shoppers should first contact the store they shopped at, which can relay requests to us through Shopify. You can also email us directly at contact@intentsea.com. You may lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.

10. Children

The App is intended for merchants and is not directed at children under 16.

11. Changes

We may update this policy and will change the "Last updated" date above. Material changes will be communicated to merchants where appropriate.

12. Contact

IntentSea, contact@intentsea.com.