Large US retailers with a store footprint doing best on Google
Traditional big box retailers and department store brands with brick-and-mortar locations dominate the list of top 10 US ecommerce websites with the biggest gains in google.com search performance in 2021 new research finds.
While apple.com enjoyed the biggest absolute boost in search visibility during 2021, established retail brands walmart.com, nordstrom.com, bestbuy.com and target.com are in the top five in the analysis by Searchmetrics. No pure-play ecommerce brand – those without physical stores – made the top 10 list.
However, three major online marketplaces – amazon.com, ebay.com and etsy.com – were among the major ecommerce 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, click-and-collect and buy online pickup instore (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,” explains 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.”
