Amazon & Google: Competitors or Companions?

Amazon is recognized as the leading brand for the three years in a row. Its value has already exceeded $200 billion, the company was the first who has reached this figure. All this makes this platform ahead of many resources, including Google. For more than a decade, these two giants have been competing with each other. Which one is going to win? It’s hard to reply. However, it’s possible to understand what makes them different and if they have got something in common.

Both these platforms are used for the search of products. However, statistically, if Americans are not sure what to buy, they will open Google. However, if the choice is already made, most often, they will go to Amazon that is used to compare prices. In the meanwhile, Google is the leading source of the traffic to online stores, Amazon being among them. Even though these two platforms are considered rivals, they are cooperating to a certain extent.

Intentions

To understand why these platforms are different, it’s better to differentiate that they have pursued diverse purposes from the very beginning. Google knows everything. This is the truth of the contemporary world. The main intention of the search engine is to arrange all the available online data and make them useful and accessible to users. For this reason, the company is focusing its efforts on the algorithms that will help it provide search results that will satisfy the requests of users.

In the meanwhile, Amazon was launched as the store of books that were the best-selling product at those times. Later, it has grown into the largest e-commerce platform across the globe. The main intention of the company is to provide users with the possibility to buy anything they would like without overpaying for the items.

The Most Significant Differences

Taking into account the above-mentioned, it is possible to understand the main Amazon vs Google differences. As people are using Google to get inspired before the purchase, read comments and feedback, compare diverse brands, watch reviews, etc., its niche is much wider than that of Amazon. Thus, this is the middle of the sales funnel. 

Amazon is preferred by users who already know what they want to purchase. Their main intention is to compare prices and choose the most appropriate terms of delivery and payment, which is the lower part of the sales funnel. These differences lead to different search optimization.

Important Indices for Google

When a user types a certain request (let’s say a product name) in the search bar, the search engine does not know the intention. Would this user like to read technical characteristics? Would this user like to read reviews or to compare different models? Probably, the intention is to buy. That is why, to understand if the displayed results are correct, Google evaluates the following indices:

• Click-through-rate, which is one of the most important ones;
• The loading time of a site;
• Content and structure of the site;
• The time users spend on the site & bounce rate;
• Quantity and quality of backlinks to the site that can prove its reliability and trustworthiness.

What About Amazon?

Being an e-commerce platform, Amazon doesn’t have to guess the intention of users. It’s already known — they are here to buy a product. Therefore, for its listings, the platform takes into account:

• Keywords;
• The rate of conversion; 
• Volumes of sales;
• Preferences of users.

The differences in the purposes of platforms, as well as the intentions of users, lead to different approaches to internal and external optimization. However, this does not mean that there is nothing in common. Let’s check what is similar for the two competitors:

1. A high rating is a prerequisite for more traffic and sales: Rating is the reflection of users’ experience. If they are satisfied and rate a product highly, both Amazon and Google will take this into account when they display results for the next user with the same query.
2. To reach as much target audience as possible, the combination of organic traffic and paid ads should be chosen. Both platforms make it possible to develop organically utilizing various channels and tools, as well as to use the feature of paid ads. Proper setting of advertising campaigns in the combination of the proper optimization and other promotion tools will lead traffic and, thus, boost sales.
3. SEO optimization is a never-ending process: If you have once optimized your Amazon listing or website and reached top positions, it does not mean that it will be the same all the time. The introduction of new algorithms and the change in user behavior lead to the necessity to permanently update the content and optimize it.
4. Adaptation of the content to voice search: People are more often using their voice assistants. They have stopped typing unnatural search requests like “iPhone buy NY.” Search queries are spoken to the voice assistant, therefore, these are sentences and full phrases. What’s more, the capability of search engines to correctly identify requests matters. This is what combines Google and Amazon and makes them compete at the same time.

In the field of product search, Amazon has been keeping the leading position for several years, and the e-commerce giant is unlikely to give up. While it’s rival is strong in the informational search. It is not yet time to announce the winner, as their competition is still continuing.