Amazon not Google 1st Choice For shopping

[seoskunk]

This extract sums it up, by Eric Schmidt

"last year almost a third of people looking to buy something started on Amazon — that’s more than twice the number who went straight to Google."

Ref: [bits.blogs.nytimes.com...]

[Samizdata]

So about 30% start on Amazon and less than 15% start on Google.

How many of the remaining 55% start on eBay?

...

[seoskunk]

Interesting quetsion...
About 50% remaining much will be direct traffic to brands and ebay or gumtree maybe as well as bing yahoo and social media.

It would be great to get a full rundown on where consumers are going for the remaining 50%. But it just shows with only a 16.5% of consumer driven results to google why some people are experiencing slow conversion even with high rankings.

[jrs79]

He spun that pretty well, because here is what Forrester says.

"Thirty percent of online shoppers research a product on Amazon before they purchase it"

and

"Forrester’s study said that while 30 percent of online buyers use Amazon to research first, Google attracted 13 percent. “Amazon is the first stop on the shopping journey for more and more shoppers; in recent years, it appears to have taken market share from search engines like Google, the dominant incumbent in shopping research,” the report said."

Not quite what Eric wanted us to hear.

[Samizdata]

It would be great to get a full rundown

I can't offer statistics, only anecdote for one locale.

In my experience, eBay is the first place shoppers look for most items.

It seems to have a larger search share than Amazon around here.

Almost nobody uses Bing or Yahoo in this neck of the woods.

And they don't want to wade through Google SERPs when buying widgets.

...

[superclown2]

I bought a Kindle because the spec was good and the price was right. Several times a week I buy something from Amazon with it. I only go elsewhere if they don't stock it because it's usually cheaper there and it's often delivered the next day.

They may be £$%&s to deal with but their marketing, like Google's, is first class.

[philgames]

Just me then who doesn't buy from amazon because of their monopoly and doesn't buy from ebay because its second hand or from china.

[GodLikeLotus]

I would say that shoppers are becoming much more savvy at researching products first and then finding the best price available.

I would guess that there are still many people who go to the stores first to look at the actually products, to touch and feel them, before going home and doing some real research about finding who has best price.

However, purchasing products is very different from looking for a service or tradesperson for a specific task. If I needed a swimming pool repair doing, I doubt that Amazon or Ebay is where I would start.

The real issue in the future for Google is will advertisers continue to PPC when they realize just how many of their clicks are people just doing research.

[Martin Ice Web]

less than 15% start on Google.

while Google has a big lack of choices for customers and this is getting bigger and bigger. Amazon/ebay offer plenty of Business selling the same product. Customers can choice.
Looking at Google there a 2-3 brands ruling the serps for every item. That is not a good user experience.

because it's usually cheaper

located in Germany, Amazon is in most cases in the middle but allmost never the cheapest. Like u say, they did a great Job in marketing.
IMO the only way to beat Amazon is offering a big portfolio. Have (brand)-choices for every item.

The real issue in the future for Google is will advertisers continue to PPC when they realize just how many of their clicks are people just doing research.

i have nothing to add to this, except: +1

[philgames]

"while Google has a big lack of choices for customers and this is getting bigger and bigger. Amazon/ebay offer plenty of Business selling the same product. Customers can choice.
Looking at Google there a 2-3 brands ruling the serps for every item. That is not a good user experience. "

I do agree with that. Though I don't like amazon as a small business as your basically putting your business in another competitors hands.

[toidi]

Google attracted 13 percent

...and we are supposed to believe the profit increases g claims year after year?

I used to use adwords, along with everyone else in my tiny niche, but now there are just a handful of payers and half of them are empty affiliate sites that really can't pay all that much per click and turn a profit.

Brand bias backfired.

[Martin Ice Web]

Philgames, as a small or big busines i don't like it either. But sometimes the circumstances make it necessary to ally with the bad, u have to choose wich ones is the smallest.

Heck, it they only have 15% of users with buying intention and i see their profit increasing year over year: how frustated must the users with the results that that rather click on an ad than on a not payed search result.

[Awarn]

Amazon is nothing more than the worlds largest Wal Mart trying to undercut everyone until we all go out of business. Then prices will climb. Google has actually aided Amazon with using Penguin and Panda to hurt many small businesses. Google needs to wake up before the destroy the majority of their Adwords base. Amazon does not need Google if they get the market share.

[Saffron]

Why would you look on Google when there's so much domain clustering?