It would be in google's best interest, google customer's best interest (the advertiser), and little harm to the searcher, to show the best ads and the informational organic results set when the searcher has been identified as a buyer.
The problem is Google does not show ads above the fold, they show a single ad. In my industry that single ad leads to Amazon. Google also crowds the top of the organic results with multiple Amazon pages. The harm to the searcher comes from a lack of choice. It is true we are free to compete with Amazon for that single ad, but most of us can't transfer funds from an extremely profitable cloud business and pour it into our web stores as Amazon does.
The only workaround for Google limiting user choice was to participate in Google's shopping ads, where Google does not give Amazon every listing. And contrary to belief, Amazon still is running product ads in our industry. Unfortunately Google was not consistent in showing product ads, leaving advertisers losing out on visibility for many queries. Since the 9/27 update, ROI from those shopping ads has been halved just as organic conversions from Google have taken a nosedive. For the most part, this has been offset by increased sales on Amazon for us.
Getting back to what is in the best interest of searchers... Amazon takes a 15% commission on every sale unless the buyer purchases with a foreign currency. Amazon charges sellers an additional 2% fee to convert currency. Amazon also does not offer real time freight quotes. This leads to higher costs for consumers. For example, we do not offer quantity discounts on Amazon though much of what we sell is often purchased in pairs or sets (ie. most people buy four tires for their vehicles). Since Amazon does not offer real time freight quotes, what we charge for shipping is set to cover the cost of shipping from one coast to another. What this means is that a buyer a street away will pay a highly inflated shipping cost. It is true we could use FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) to ship our products, but the added warehousing and pick/pack fees cut deeply into margins. In using FBA, sellers must rely on an increasingly incompetent Amazon staff to pack/ship their products and manage returns. Such returns are approved by Amazon even if buyers send in the wrong items, leading to large losses that must be absorbed by increasing the prices of goods sold within the Amazon marketplace. This is why domestic sellers on Amazon are in the minority. Over half the sellers on Amazon reside in China, and these sellers have little choice but to absorb the costs of excessive fees, excessive buyer fraud, incompetency by Amazon's staff, etc. associated with FBA. However, offshore sellers have the profit margins that allows them to absorb these expenses and losses unlike domestic sellers.
I just don't see much reason for Google to be crowding the SERPS with Amazon pages. As a seller on Amazon, it's ok that Google does this because ultimately what they take from our site is made up in sales on Amazon - making it a wash for us. If Google wants to send their users to Amazon, where consumers often pay an inflated price for goods that are sold mostly by offshore sellers, that is their choice. But Google should not expect those of us that run our own stores to look at Google's paid advertising opportunities with any enthusiasm when such advertising opportunities are designed to limit choice to the single highest bidder, which in most cases is Amazon as they can transfer funds from their highly profitable cloud business to snuff out competition that lacks similar resources.
This last update in Google (9/27 roughly) halved our conversions but left traffic quantity stable. Having our conversions cut in half, when Google has done this many times before, ultimately results in few conversions from Google at all in our busiest month of the year. Google's shopping ads make no difference in conversions either. All one has to do is look at Google's search results to see why. Google shoves Amazon down their user's throats so badly that there is no room for anything else. This lack of choice/competition, IMO, is where the real and often unnoticed harm to searchers/consumers occurs.
It looks like Google is updating again today, with major flux in the SERPS. Can I expect Google to cut our already abysmal store conversions in half again or should I expect our Amazon sales to double?
Google Updates and SERP Changes - October 2018
