The Challenge Of Amazon Search.

Yes, Google owns search, but not necessarily when it comes to shopping. According to Mediametrie/Netratings, 50% of French shoppers start their search on Amazon, 45% in the UK, and in the US, it’s 56% (Comscore).

Of course, Amazon’s algorithm is strongly behind Google, with a less mature CPC offer, and basic metrics. But Amazon has been capturing text ad click share in major retail categories and it’s not going to stop. In its report « How Amazon dominates the competitive search landscape », Adthena reveals that in specific verticals, Amazon wins the share of clicks vs share of adspend. (Desktop, Oct-Nov ’17)

The Challenge of Voice Search.

According to eMarketer, in 2018, 21.9% of internet users worldwide will use a smart speaker at least once a month. Figures from Statista forecast that unit sales for smart speakers will grow through 2019, tapering off in 2020 and 2021. In the blink of an eye, the majority of searches will be voice searches (50% by 2020 per Comscore).

The future of search is voice and personal assistants, stated Campaign magazine in this very interesting article . This will have a tremendous impact on marketing strategies, that goes beyond SEM. This will also have an impact on your content strategy. It is about how you are going to anticipate and create content that is answering a question. The marketeers need to be prepared, if not already. Here are some excellent tips in this article in Campaign about how to adapt to voice search:

How savvy marketers should adapt to voice search

1. Write content in a natural, conversational voice that answers the questions your consumers are asking: Website content in the era of voice search isn’t about keywords, it’s about semantic search and building the context related to answering a question.
2. Build out your view of user intent based on the types of question-based queries: It’s essential to understand the intent behind a query and how both you and the search engine can deliver more accurate results based on the anticipated context. Develop content as well as expand your paid search keyword lists to include longer tail keyword phrases to reach users at each stage of intent based on the types of questions they are asking.
3. Make sure structured data is integrated into the backend of your website (schema mark-up): Structured data within your website becomes more important because it is one of the signals used to power the search results and the « cards » — or direct answers. Using structured data and schema mark-up can help the search engines understand and crawl your data more efficiently and become part of the available knowledge graphs. Learn more

Najad Jonas-Menouar is the Founder of Sonemos, an independant media agency dedicated to Amazon Marketing and Advertising.