Mayday and the May Retail Report

[fabulousyarn]

The US retail report for May was not so good - the question is of course, is GOOGLE impacting the retail report, or is the retail report affecting GOOGLE, and so was mayday part of a may slowdown, and not just the new algorithim, or vice versa.

Who is affecting Whom here - is it just a coincindence? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. I of course was impacted by the overall algorithim change, and have lost considerable traffic, but just wondering if its a chicken/egg thing.

Judy

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

A lot of good sites were impacted by Google changes, in fact I've yet to read that "traffic is way up" from anyone. The traffic went somewhere and mashup sites did outstandingly well judging by the fact they are new to the top 10 for what seems like most keywords.

How could that not impact the retail report.

[fabulousyarn]

I think you are assuming that RETAIL is only about us, electronic retailers. In fact, in this report, we're a tiny dot on the retail horizon. And there have been many negative retail reports that were not during a google update. Which is why I asked. Amazon, a major online retailer, was not negatively impacted by the update, as far as I can see, and has rankings splashed all over the place where they didn't before. So, I don't think your assumption is correct. Which is why I proposed it. I am going over the numbers and I am wondering if the damage is a combination of online traffic decrease, and consumer fear, not just google.

[tedster]

Retail trade sales were down 1.4 percent (±0.5%) from April 2010, but 7.4 percent (±0.7%) above last year.

Advance Monthly Sales for Retail Trade and Food Services [census.gov]

Just so we have some context for the discussion ;)

I've yet to read that "traffic is way up" from anyone.

There are just a few such reports sprinkled through our threads over the past few days. Logically, there should be both winners and losers in any shift. But often, the winners don't post about it.

[fabulousyarn]

Hi Tedster - thanks for the note. And I have to tell you that I really enjoy reading your data/comments/threads on the forum. Im not that much of a newbie - I've rejoined recently after some intense immersion in the actual business and some financing research.

Im not sure that trade retail is the right data to view - how is that defined? I am doing some math/research as well. Isn't Retail trade sales different from electronic retailers and regular retailers. Im trying to get some explanations/ definitions - points of reference. internet retail is supposedly up, but everything else is down. Im not sure what the def. of retail trade is. I think the general number that was being thrown about was an overall - do you know. And yes, context is important. And data is a very sneaky thing. It is an interesting coindicence. My sales compared year over year are not down, but compared to the last six month, they should be about 20% larger, so its very wiggly. What other reports are you referring to - would you point me towards them?

[tedster]

The government website I linked to above includes a breakdown by type of retail - but they have not yet included a figure for electronic shopping and mail order:

Electronic shopping & mail-order houses
(In millions of US dollars)

May 10 -- (*)
Apr 10 -- 21,836
May 09 -- 21,799
Apr 09 -- 18,917

Still, I doubt that monthly figures are going to show that Mayday had some kind of universally depressing effect online sales. There are winners and losers, and some types of online strategies just stopped working, after many years of working rather well.

-------

The most prominent report here of a recent improvement is in this thread: Traffic Increase After A Suspected Manual Review [webmasterworld.com]

And there are a few positives also being reported in the June Updates and SERPs Changes thread as well. I is always more common around any major update to see posts about drops, not improvements. It's just in the nature of things to yell out when you feel a pinch.

However, Mayday did create more widespread pinching than the average Google update does. So there have got to be some more silent winners out there, too.

[edited by: tedster at 3:23 pm (utc) on Jun 17, 2010]

[rise2it]

I'm betting Amazon is UP....they're coming up in the top two spots in virtually everything in my niche, along with products in other areas I personally shop for (even if they don't actually sell that product).

The next (2 and sometimes 4, if they have more than one domain) is taken up by the manufacturer's website(s)...usually a waste of time for the end consumer, as they either don't sell directly, or sell at full retail price.

The best I'm seeing any normal merchant do is now the #5 to #7 spot.

[tedster]

I've got a client who has struggled for ten years to get #1 on their trophy term - big sales dollars. They been there now for six weeks. So it does happen.

[fabulousyarn]

Yes, I was looking at that same report - I wonder where amazon fits in on this, and for instance, wal mart online - if they include that in walmarts overall figures or electronic. Am talking to some industry people to try and find out where these numbers come from.

j