Established retail brands like Walmart, Nordstrom, Best Buy and Target were in the top five in 2021, according to an analysis by Searchmetrics. Traditional big box retailers and department store brands with brick-and-mortar locations dominate the list of top ten e-commerce websites with the biggest gains in Google search performance.
The Searchmetrics study measured search performance by analysing weekly search results for millions of keywords throughout the year, scoring websites for factors such as how frequently they appear in results and how high they rank. The top ten ranking was based on a website’s absolute improvement in search performance between the start and end of 2021.
No pure-play e-commerce brand (those without physical stores) made the top ten winners list. And while three major online marketplaces - Amazon, ebay, and Etsy - were among the major e-commerce winners in search in the 2020 analysis, no online marketplaces featured in 2021.
“The pandemic continued to impact people’s ability or willingness to shop freely in physical stores last year, meaning curb-side pickup, and click-and-collect and buy online pickup in store (BOPIS) have been booming. So perhaps it’s fitting that the sites that have made the most gains in search during the year are mainly those with physical stores who can offer shoppers these options,” said Lillian Haase, CMO of Searchmetrics. “During the pandemic, the brick-and-mortar retailers invested significantly in improving their web presence, product range and their purchase, delivery and collection processes. They seem to have accepted the challenge to compete with online marketplaces and they are seeing some good success, as this study reveals”.
Read more about Retail brands dominate Google organic searches: Study