Product Search: Hard Numbers or Flights of Fancy?

September 16, 2017

I read “Amazon Shakes Up Search, Again.” I was not aware of Amazon’s shaking up search because there are numerous ways to define the term. The write up narrows “search” to people in three countries who buy products or look for product information online. Ah, good, I think.

My hunch is that the “shake up” is related to the data that suggests Amazon has three times as many product searches than Google. The assertion did not “shake” me up because Google’s product search is not particularly useful. I thought that Froogle had a shot at becoming a daughter-of-Amazon, but the GOOG lost interest. Sure, I can search for a product using Google, but the results are often not what I want. Your mileage may vary.

But back to the write up. I noted some factoids which may be useful to those who are giving talks about product search, those who work for a consulting firm and must appear super smart, or folks like me who collect data, no matter how wild or crazy.

Here we go with the “shake up” from 3,100 consumers in the US, Germany, and the UK:

72 percent use Amazon to research a product before buying the product
51 percent use Amazon as a way to get “alternative ideas”
26 percent use Amazon to get information and price when they plan on visiting a real store
84 percent of “searchers” in the US use Google
71 percent of “searchers” in the US use Amazon
36 percent use Facebook in the US use Amazon
24 percent use Pinterest in the US use Amazon
31 percent use eBay in the US use Amazon
80 percent in the UK use Google
73 percent use Amazon in the UK
9 percent use Bing in France
6 percent us Bing in the UK
6 percent use Bing in Germany
20 percent of searchers use Bing
Amazon stocks or “carries” 353 million products. Put aside the idea that percentages usually work on a scale of zero to 100, please:
- 59 percent are “health and beauty”
- 57 percent are “music, movies, or games”
- 55 percent are “books”
- 52 percent fashion or clothing
- 46 percent are home appliances
- 40 percent are furniture and home furnishings
- 39 percent are toys
- 34 percent are sports equipment and clothing
- 26 percent are garden equipment and furniture (?)
- 26 percent are food and grocery
- 9 percent are beer, wine and spirits.

So if there are 353 million products and the percentage data are correct, the total percentage of products is 443 percent. I did not the duplicate furniture entry but counted the percentage anyway. Also, there was no value for garden equipment and furniture so I used “26 percent”. Close enough for millennials steeped in new math.

My math teacher (Verna Blackburn) in my freshman year of high school in 1958 had an dunce cap. I think I can suggest one research report author who might have been invited to wear the 24 inch tall cap. The 443 percent would shake up deal Miss Blackburn. She also threw chalk at students when they made errors when solving on the blackboards which were on three walls of her classroom. The fourth wall looked out over asphalt to the smokestacks of the former RG Letourneau mortar factory. Getting math wrong at that outfit could indeed shake up some things.

Stephen E Arnold, September 16, 2017

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Amazon, Google, Microsoft, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.