Amazon has experienced a significant drop in organic search visibility on Google, according to new data from Audience Key, a content marketing platform that tracks and reports on Google’s organic product grid rankings at scale. The data shows that across 79,000+ keywords, Amazon has lost 31% of its organic product card rankings
- Before July 25, Amazon appeared in 428,984 product cards
- After July 25, Amazon appeared in 294,983 product cards
- A 100% loss of U.S. coverage has been observed after ~August 16th.
- Apparel had the steepest losses.
- Home Goods, Laptop Computers, and Outdoor Furnishings also fell sharply.
The decline follows both the discontinuation of its paid Shopping ads and the consolidation of its three merchant store names — Amazon, Amazon.com, and Amazon.com Seller — into a single store identify called “Amazon.”
Three reasons why Amazon could be pulling out of organic product grids, according to the report:
- Amazon’s choice: Amazon may have decided not to share feed data with Google.
- Temporary change: A technical or strategic retooling — suggesting a return could be imminent.
- Google’s response: A retaliatory move after Amazon quit Shopping Ads.
You can read the full report here.
I've been covering Amazon's departure from Google Shopping ads (and its subsequent return internationally) for the past couple months, but this is the first I've read about its decline in organic search rank.
Audience Key's report was published Aug 26th, but Amazon restarted spending on Google Shopping ads across its international domains at the start of September, according to SEJ ad Digiday. I asked Tom Rusling, Audience Key's founder if anything had changed since they originally published the report and if restarting Shopping ads has had any impact on Amazon's organic presence?
He replied:
“No nothing has changed in those three weeks. I will add that we have continued to track the results since that time in Amazon has continued to not be present thus far.”
