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Why Amazon Is Google's Real Competition
New submitter wreakyhavoc writes "Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider maintains that Amazon's reviews and One-Click ordering will undercut Google's shopping ad revenue, and that Google is 'terrified.' From the article: 'Google is a search company, but the searches that it actually makes money from are the searches people do before they are about to buy something online. These commercial searches make up about 20 percent of total Google searches. Those searches are where the ads are. What Googlers worry about in private is a growing trend among consumers to skip Google altogether, and to just go ahead and search for the product they would like to buy on Amazon.com, or, on mobile in an Amazon app. There's data to prove this trend is real. According to ComScore, Amazon search queries are up 73 percent in the last year. How could Google fight this possible threat? Perhaps they could expose the astroturfing of Amazon reviews. Of course, this could backfire, as it would also draw attention to the astroturfing, link farming, and SEO games in Google's search results."
I'm certainly guilty of searching for products directly on Amazon, but usually if I want something quickly. I'll typically trust that the price is reasonable and Prime means it's on my doorstep in one or two days.
That said, if I want something I know will be expensive, or something even faster I prefer to check first with Google's shopping tool to get price comparisons or to find out if an item is available locally the same day. That's something with plenty of potential for monetizing and is much harder for Amazon to compete with.
I have a prime membership, so why wouldn't Amazon be the first place to look? Free quick shipping is pretty compelling. I think that is a huge reason more and more people are turning to use Amazon as first search for products.
But also, Google totally tossed this away. I used to use Google first (even when I was a prime member), searching for *product name* buy. That used to yield a lot of great price comparisons. Google changed things so that product searches suck now, it pretty much never yields good comparison results.
What can Google do to get this traffic back? The only way, would be to become a better search engine...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have seen it, when looking for laptops.
personally I dont bother with th 5 star reviews, I start with the 1 stars and decide which are simply faulty products or user error (you can find a lot of simple user error in 1 star reviews) Than I like to look at 3 and 4 stars to see what the people who took the effort to dig a little deeper rather than 5 stars cause its teh god! That Is my usual shopping research methods
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
that I don't think Google has much to worry about. It doesn't even attempt to take the join of the words you enter, and the results are returned in essentially random order, unrefinable and unsortable. It's not bugged. It's always been so minimally functional.
It *seems* to offer more at first glance, but it's only a false hope, and results rapidly go random again. The ONLY time a multi-word search actually works properly on Amazon is when the words match a product name exactly. All other uses are broken in varying degrees, and only occasionally return something moderately sensible.
A professional outfit couldn't possibly do search this badly by accident nor incompetence, so my guess is that Amazon has deliberately made it so primitive in the name of dumbing it down for the masses. This appears to have gone off the rails though, as there was no need to break effective search so completely just to make it accessible.
People will still have to type 'amazon.com' into google first, right?
An example of Astroturfing on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Twelfth-Cliburn-Piano-Competition/product-reviews/B000BZ8IA8/ref=cm_cr_pr_btm_link_4?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFiveStar&pageNumber=4&showViewpoints=0
Of the 35 five star reviews, about 30 were posted in a 1 week period by people who have no other reviews. Of course, each of those reviewers carefully voted up all the previous other 5 star reviews to promote them in the review rankings (so
The Van Cliburn Piano Competition? Really? How many people would even be on the fence about something like that. You either own all twelve or you wouldn't watch it if it was free. I mean maybe there was some turfing by all their friends or something. But anyone who would gush about The Van Cliburn Piano Competition very well could be sincere. It's not like it's an air freshener or a stick of RAM or something. The idea is that it's an artistic pinnacle reached by serious young musicians. I think Amazon gets a free pass on this one.
I always go to Amazon first for product searching, then turn to Google for reviews. Google shopping is simply pathetic -- sorry Newegg and Nextag, never used you never will -- and their listed vendors simply can not match Amazon's pricing and turnaround -- especially since I am a Prime Subscriber.
Recently however, I've largely stopped even using Google for searching for reviews and comparative products since I've found Amazon's reviews to be more than adequate and with plenty of competitive products listed on their site.
Honestly, I think Google should reconsider their misguided foray into shopping -- it's just a ham-fisted ploy to capture data on the shopping preferences of their "user-commodities" and just doesn't stack up because it's a half-assed attempt at entering a market that they really don't understand and isn't core to their company.
Besides, they don't take paypal. ;)
It's a feature.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That's really smart.
And there's a whole lot of gaming that goes on in Amazon's books and music reviews. I met someone who works for one of the "New Media Strategies" companies. He's an out-of-work post-doc and is getting paid (poorly, I might add) to corrupt social media and online reviews in order to try to gain some perceived advantage for their clients big and small.
It gets worse: even little niche-y online communities like Slashdot are targeted by these companies for their clients. Insurance companies, politicians, big-name media companies, even sports franchises are using sock puppets to promote everything from candidates to soap to software. People can rely less and less that the entities encountered in social media are actually human beings posting their thoughts in good faith.
This could break bad for google and amazon alike, as people start to see online information as noise. Their seeming inviolability could disappear in a big hurry.
People are already starting to see that the bottom could fall out of a lot of big name dot.com businesses with not a lot of warning, and not just because of uncertainties about the economy as a whole.
It wouldn't take a whole lot to have Google and Amazon become dinosaurs real quick. I just think it's a mistake to believe that five years from now these companies are going to have the same kind of fundamental strength that the big manufacturing companies had in the post-WWII world. There are a lot of companies built on perception and that are very vulnerable to shifting habits.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The thing that annoys me about complaining about astroturfing on Amazon, is the concept that it would happen on Amazon with any more regularity than anywhere else that had reviews.
I feel like basically the sources with the most people providing input have the least to worry in that regard, as many other voices will drown out astroturfers.
As long as you read Amazon reviews with a critical eye, they are fine...
This is what I do. I check to see which people have actually bought the product and then I read all the negative reviews. So far I have not been stung. Read the negative reviews and then search elsewhere for reviews that support or disprove the review.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
It wouldn't take a whole lot to have Google and Amazon become dinosaurs real quick. I just think it's a mistake to believe that five years from now these companies are going to have the same kind of fundamental strength that the big manufacturing companies had in the post-WWII world. There are a lot of companies built on perception and that are very vulnerable to shifting habits.
Really? Both of these companies have massive, massive investments in infrastructure. These aren't some mom-and-pop, dot com, one trick pony shows. Hell, Government is starting (if not already) to rely on Google. Amazon is investing in same day delivery and is one of the biggest players online. It would take quite a bit IMHO for these two companies to become dinosaurs. This isn't 1999.
I know Google is a search company
I know Google's main income source is advertising
But that does not mean Google can not implement something that let users to rate the services/products they received via the vendors they have used - through Google, of course
I believe Google still have enough talents to implement such feature - that is, if Google wants users to participate more in their income generation
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Happens there too. The one the cheeses me off the most: Tangier Dream (http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/tangier-dream/id342411025). Stellar ratings and reviews, dotted with occasional "it's crap". Nothing unusual there. But check out the OTHER reviews by those reviewer -- non-existent, or telling the reader to check out "Buddy Mix" or some other piece of crap. The way the scam works is to pick something popular and write a fake review on it, adding a sentence noting that the reviewer's _other_ favorite right now is Tangier Dream, or Buddy Mix, or whatever. "Karen Rosa" on Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball: "...Speaking of cool rock tracks I just heard a great song I think everyone should check out 'Show Me A Little Leg' by Buddy Mix."...
"Karen Rosa" on Tangier Dream: "Wow...Wow...Wow!!! I think that says it all."
"Emily Love" on Kitaro's Digital Box Set: "I heard a new artist that has some asian feel to his music but also reminds me of Jarre and TD. The artist name is Eric Walker and his CD is Tangier Dream".
"Emily Love" on Tangier Dream: "Soothing and beautiful music..."
"Kristin Chan" on Digitalism's I Love You, Dude: "Also while I was looking for new music to hear I found Eric Walker and his cd Tangier Dream".
The turf war winner is "Ryan FarishFan", who has written six reviews on iTunes for a variety of albums. Each references Tangier Dream or Buddy Mix (on the same label).
Ick. I do see that at least a few of the reviews I bitched about to iTunes staff are gone now.
So did Studebaker.
I'm not saying they'd disappear, but they'd become something very different from what they are.
You are welcome on my lawn.