Google beats Amazon for product-search reach

It isn’t too much of a stretch to assume that Amazon has an outsize role in both discovery and completion of shopping online. According to a survey run by Kenshoo, we can safely say that Amazon has a large share of online shopping discovery market.

According to the survey, shoppers consult Amazon first 56% of the time when looking for products online. That is the largest by far and is much farther ahead than any of its other rivals. However, when it comes to shopping and discovery in general, Google is ahead of Amazon, 85% to 72%. 72% is still a massive percentage of all product discovery online. The number could be far higher when you consider that some of the destinations that Google will surface in a product search will be Amazon product pages.

The numbers are consistent across other countries where both Amazon and Google operate. The only difference in the US is that Facebook takes a larger role compared to other countries.

There are some other interesting facts in the survey results:

The first is that 22% of shoppers will not look anywhere else if they find a product they want on Amazon. The online shopping giant has a frictionless ordering process, and that ease of use and the convenience of Amazon Prime make it unlikely shoppers will look elsewhere.

Even more, worrying for other online retailers is that “even if they find something that seems right on another site, they will usually look on Amazon to find alternative ideas, compare prices or gather more information before making a purchase.”