{"id":134483,"date":"2019-08-01T14:27:27","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T14:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=134483"},"modified":"2020-02-24T06:25:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T06:25:17","slug":"amazon-google-market-share","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/08\/01\/amazon-google-market-share\/","title":{"rendered":"Google + Amazon: Data on market share, trends, searches from Jumpshot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, we hosted another happy hour here at our New York office. This one was titled \u201cEnergizing Ecommerce: Retail winners, losers, and Amazon,\u201d and was created in collaboration with Jumpshot. Here are highlights from the event around Amazon and Google<\/a>, and their market shares in ecommerce<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"energizing<\/p>\n

Our speaker for the evening was Steve Kraus<\/a>, Jumpshot\u2019s Head of Digital Insights. Steve has been at Jumpshot since November 2018, and previously held roles including Chief of Insights at SimilarWeb and SVP and Chief Insights Officer at Ipsos. He did a PhD at Harvard in social psychology, and was also previously a professor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He pulled on their data on consumer digital behavior to ask and answer various questions we all have about how consumers are searching and spending online.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since they work with mostly clickstream data, the numbers in this article refer to desktop and mobile clicks, but exclude in-app actions. (You can read more about their data near the bottom of this article.)<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Amazon\u2019s market share of US digital transactions?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Steve jumped right in with a question we likely all have asked at one point: How much does Amazon<\/a> matter in digital transactions?<\/p>\n

Many in the audience guessed around a 35-60% share. But in reality, the distribution looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"amazon<\/p>\n

Amazon averages a 74% share of digital transactions in the US.<\/p>\n

On this graph, the Y-axis represents the number of digital transactions and the X-axis shows Amazon’s market share in each. So for a category like electronics, you can see that there is a huge volume of digital transactions, and that Amazon holds maybe 80-85% of that volume. For something like women’s clothing, on the other other hand, both the volume is smaller and Amazon’s market share is smaller — closer to 35% (which we’ll expand on later).<\/span><\/p>\n

Steve mentioned that it’s quite hard to capture every interaction in the long tail, but the numbers are still a fairly accurate representation of the overall.<\/p>\n

The key takeaway?<\/p>\n

“Everyone says Amazon is so big, but in reality many of us still underestimate them.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to Steve, people maybe aren’t over-hyping Amazon’s dominance (nor Google’s). And they may even be underestimating it.<\/p>\n

“Many people guess Amazon’s market share at around 40-50% — but that’s how they perform in their worst categories, like clothing and furniture.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He expanded on this point, adding that\u00a0Amazon has 16x the number of transactions of Walmart<\/a>, and 54x the number of transactions of Target.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Even though we hear so much in the news about antitrust, Congressional hearings, etc., we still underestimate how big and powerful [these tech giants] really are.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What percent of searches happen on Google?<\/h2>\n

Another very popular question: How much of the search market does Google<\/a> own?<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Jumpshot’s clickstream data, Google<\/a> has about 90% of all web searches (desktop and Android phones).<\/span><\/p>\n

The huge caveat here is that they can’t look at searches that happen via voice search<\/a> nor inside an app — YouTube, Google<\/a> Maps, Amazon and others all likely have huge volumes of search activity that’s not factored in. In the below graph, for instance, YouTube appears much smaller than Google<\/a> Images, and we would assume that’s at least partly because most Google Image searchers use desktop and most YouTube searchers use the app.<\/p>\n

We can also see from this graph how overall since January 2016, the volume of desktop searches is declining in all areas (and we would assume that volume is moving to mobile).<\/p>\n

\"google<\/p>\n

This graph shows the same data as above, but with Google removed so that we have a better view of the smaller players.<\/p>\n

\"search<\/p>\n

One interesting point to note here is how much\u00a0DuckDuckGo<\/a> is climbing. However, their overall volume remains quite small. They’ve gone from next to nothing up to 300 million searches a month, which is great. But compared to Google’s 60 billion searches a month, they hit just 0.5% of the volume.<\/span><\/p>\n

What percent of product-related search is on Amazon?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

We’ve seen that Google owns the largest share of the search market. But what if we look specifically at product-related search?<\/p>\n

Jumpshot found that the positions of Amazon and Google flipped between 2015 and 2018. As shown in the image below, in 2015, Google had 54% of product-related search and Amazon had 46%. In 2018, Amazon had jumped to 54% and Google had fallen to 46%.<\/p>\n

\"54%<\/p>\n

The obvious concern here, and one that Steve demonstrated via the Vox headline, is the advantage that Amazon has from all the data collected in those searches. And of course, how little of that data is shared with sellers on Amazon who are made to compete with Amazon’s own product lines. <\/span><\/p>\n

By simply investigating “What kinds of keywords<\/a> are people searching for and not converting on?”, Amazon can discover opportunities in the market and fill them in a way their competition can’t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The story here, “Amazon made a skin care line based on what users search for” represents an example of the qualms of many sellers, regulators, and consumers.<\/p>\n

Which retailers are successful and which are struggling?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the age of Amazon and Google, which retailers<\/a> seem to be figuring out how to stay competitive?<\/p>\n

Contrary to popular discourse about the “retail apocalypse,” Jumpshot says that many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are doing quite well. Other, newer digital brands are, too — Chewy and Wayfair, for example.<\/p>\n

In this chart, we see the distribution of a number of successful and struggling retailers. The y-axis represents the overall number of digital transactions of that brand in 2018, and the x-axis shows the change in their number of digital transactions between 2017 and 2018. <\/span><\/p>\n

Any names shown in green, therefore, are growing their number of digital transactions. Brands in red are shrinking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"graph<\/p>\n

According to Steve, the retail apocalypse is a “story that\u2019s oversold.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the contrary, he says that “a lot of brands known for their retail presence are figuring out omnichannel.”<\/span><\/p>\n

What causes certain retailers to succeed while others don’t? According to Steve, part of the reason can be traced to the type of search happening: branded versus utilitarian.<\/p>\n

Branded vs. utilitarian searches<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There are two very different types of searches happening in the world, says Steve.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n