Data Studies
Studies on how online stores and products show up in search: who ranks for product searches, how Google Shopping listings compare on price and shipping, and how Amazon search results work. The data comes from Google organic search results for US product searches, Google Shopping results, Amazon.com search results and Google Ads search volume. Other studies audit product pages and schema on small retail websites found through Google business listings. Each study explains what the findings mean for the category and product pages that drive revenue.
19 studies · Need help acting on them? See our ecommerce SEO services.
72.7% of product pages on US small-business websites have no Product schema, the code that tells Google a product's name, price and availability. 4.5% mark up their ratings or reviews, and 29% have no structured data of any kind.
Amazon appears on Google's first page for 66% of US product searches but holds the top organic spot for 8.2%, about one search in twelve. It reaches the top three for 30.9%, and Google mostly ranks Amazon's listing pages, not its product pages.
Amazon appears on Google's first page for 87% of headphone shopping searches but for 4% of running shoe searches, where Nike, Adidas and On hold most of the #1 results instead. Across all product searches, marketplaces take 9.1% of page-one results, and brand and independent store websites take 43.9%, the largest share of any type of site.
44.8% of the online stores that rank on Google's first page for US product searches run on Shopify, more than four times the 10% that run on WordPress, including WooCommerce. Half of Shopify stores' page-one listings sit in the top three results.
29.6% of Google Shopping listings show a sale price, and in home goods the share rises to 42.8%. The median markdown is 25%, and how often a listing shows a discount depends far more on the seller than on the product.
For 40.5% of products sold by two or more sellers on Google Shopping, the most expensive seller charges at least 25% more than the cheapest. The typical product costs 16% more at its priciest seller, and the gap widens as more sellers list it.
A category or listing page holds Google's top organic spot for about 7 in 10 US product searches, while a single product page holds it for about 6%. For broad product searches, Google sends shoppers to pages that offer a choice, and Reddit takes more #1 spots than any retailer except Amazon.
For 2,639 product keywords taken from Google's own search suggestions, US monthly search volume on Google is 11.5 times the volume on Amazon for the exact same phrases. Because the keywords come from Google, the list leans toward the longer phrases people type into Google; Amazon still out-searches Google on short, generic product names such as "laptop" and "blender".
73.7% of Amazon product searches show at least one paid, sponsored product among the first 10 results, and the fourth spot is an ad more often than not. On average, 1.5 of the first 10 products a shopper sees are ads.
12.3% of the products that rank #1 in Amazon's organic search results have fewer than 100 ratings, about one in eight. The median #1 product has 3,600 ratings, and the bar ranges from 1,200 in outdoor to 16,700 in beauty.
For 59.5% of products sold both on Amazon and by other sellers on Google Shopping, another seller matches or beats Amazon's price. Amazon is the cheapest option on 40.5% of those products, other sellers are cheaper on 29.2%, and 30.3% cost the same.
Walmart, the largest US retailer, appears on Google's first page for 16.3% of US product searches, about one in six, against 66% for Amazon. When it does appear, its best listing sits around position 6, and most of its ranking pages are category pages.
64.3% of product pages on US small-business websites have at least one image with no alt text, the short description that screen readers read aloud and search engines use to understand an image. The more images a page carries, the more likely it is to miss one.
56.7% of product pages on US small-business websites have fewer than 300 words of visible text, and that count includes the menu, footer and related products. A quarter have fewer than 150 words, leaving shoppers and search engines very little to go on.
Just 0.7% of the online stores that rank on Google's first page for product searches have a domain registered less than two years ago. The average ranking store's domain is 19.6 years old, and more than half were registered 20 or more years ago.
36.5% of Google Shopping listings show no delivery information at all, while 62.8% advertise free shipping. A shopper comparing products side by side sees "Free delivery" on most listings and silence on more than a third.
77.8% of US retail store websites have no breadcrumb schema, the code that tells Google where a page sits in a store, such as Home › Furniture › Sofas. Two thirds of the same stores already use other schema, so most have the tools and have simply not switched breadcrumbs on.
Amazon appears on Google's first page for 66% of US product searches, four times as often as second-place Walmart at 16%. Below Amazon, page one is shared by more than 3,000 online stores, and brands such as Nike, LEGO and YETI rank among the 25 stores that appear most.
A Shopify store ranks on Google's first page for 79% of pet product searches and 79% of home searches, but for 13% of gaming searches. Across all product searches the figure is 60.5%, and 1,087 different Shopify stores reach page one.
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