Ebay and Daily Mail top UK search rankings
StumbleUponOnline auction site Ebay appears highest in the extremely competitive shopping search market, according to a report out in August, while the Daily Mail rules the roost in news. New Media Knowledge did a little shopping around of its own for answers. By Chris Lee.
By Chris Lee
Online auction site Ebay.co.uk is the online retail site most likely to feature in shopping results displayed within Google’s UK search engine listings, according to a study by search analytics software specialist Searchmetrics. In this highly competition space for search, Amazon.co.uk, Play.com and JohnLewis.com are among the other retailers succeeding at being most visible on Google.
The Searchmetrics study was based on an analysis of the top 100 UK search engine results displayed by Google for a database of approximately 28 million search terms over a period of four months. In the news category, the DailyMail.co.uk is the most visible in search, fighting off strong competition from BBC.co.uk and Guardian.co.uk.
High visibility
Videos and images work wonders for search, according to Dr Horst Joepen, CEO of Searchmetrics, the search software specialist which ran the study.
“For a few years now Google has been bringing in specific shopping, news, image, video, blog and map-based results into the general search listings it presents to searchers as part of what has been termed its ‘universal search’ strategy - it’s intended to help searchers find what they’re looking for more easily,” he said. “When it comes to the shopping results category, we found that certain sites seem to be enjoying greater visibility in universal search – perhaps due to their search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts.”
The study suggests that marketers can further improve their sites’ online visibility within Google UK by focusing SEO strategies around video and image content - which now very frequently appears and is highly positioned in Google UK searches.
When the study examined the various categories of universal search content, video was found to be displayed most often in searches. In fact, video results appeared in more than 70 per cent of all searches where universal search results are included in the top 100 listings, Joepen explained. Second came image (more than 30 per cent), followed by shopping (close to 20 per cent) and news.
“Our findings indicate that online sites that want to increase their visibility in Google should consider creating video and image content and focusing SEO strategies on optimising it to appear in universal search results. Given that many retail sites already produce a large volume of video and image content, we think this could be an obvious step for them,” added Joepen.
Top tens
Searchmetrics found the following sites were the most visible in shopping:
- ebay.co.uk
- google.co.uk*
- amazon.co.uk
- play.com
- johnlewis.com
- tesco.com
- argos.com
- overstock.com
- asos.com
- debenhams.com
* Google.co.uk is listed as the second most visible result because Google sometimes aggregates two or more shopping results for a keyword. If the user clicks on this, then they are directed to Google’s shopping results index. This is not Google selling products.
The top ten sites with greatest visibility in ‘News Results’ within Google UK universal search listings include:
- dailymail.co.uk
- guardian.co.uk
- bbc.co.uk
- telegraph.co.uk
- wsj.com
- reuters.com
- indiatimes.com
- google.com
- independent.co.uk
- Bloomberg.com
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