Saturday, July 13

How One of Google’s Best Customers Could Steal Away Search

Shopping is key to Google’s fortunes, Jordan writes in a commentary just posted over at Fortune. And search is central to what Amazon does:
Amazon is a vertical search engine focused on helping users find products. The overwhelmingly dominant way to find things on their site is the search box. Users enter a keyword phrase and are presented with results that match his or her query. The order of the search results is determined by algorithms that seek to optimize relevance and monetization. Sound familiar?
The big difference between shopping on the two, Jordan says, is that the Amazon user experience is better, to say nothing of price, selection and shipping. “Buying on Google takes chunks of an hour, not an Amazon minute,” he says.

Read more at Wired