Google ranks our competitor above us on 1000's of branded queires!!!

[ref.price]

Hi all,

I have noticed a very bizarre phenomenon in Google SERPs. When I search for a branded keyworks [Product + our brand].
Amazon.fr appear above us on thousands of results. Google even ranks Amazon above us for queries like [ PriceMinister google plus].

I have tried to ask Google about it but I can’t seem to get an answer. Here is the topic I posted on Google’s forum:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/crawling-indexing--ranking/DFvTPr14o_o

This seems like a mistake on Google’s side, some kind of semantic association with our two brands! Basically they are sending our customers to our main competitor even though they specifically searched for our brand (PriceMinister).

I find the phenomenon quite interesting for the SEO community and frustrating for our company.

Does anyone have ideas on this one?

Do you think it's a bug from Google?

Cheers

Oliver

[kchandler]

In order to help track down some options are you comfortable with sharing your website's domain?

Thanks - Kyle

[ref.price]

Hi Kyle,

Sure our domain is priceminister.com

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Oliver,

Interesting and frustrating indeed.

I don't think it is a bug, but my thoughts would be that it is some sort of association as you suspect between the two sites in Google's eyes. I didn't look a lot but your site does seem quite similar to amazon in terms of product offerings and I am wondering if in all the data available on click throughs etc that google has maybe a significant percentage of searchers end up at both sites quite often and therefore the link has been made. I would think perhaps the two brands are also mentioned quite a lot together and even linked to together quite often? Its not I guess that unreasonable if that is the case that google would choose to show these results, and amazon is amazon with the associated domain authority etc that goes along with it so might often get pushed to the top.

In regards the search queries you mention, do you think people do a lot of searches for the name of a book + the brand priceminister? It does not seem that intuitive that they would, although I might be wrong! If the searches are not happening that often, and since amazon is ranking highly anyway for the titles of many books, then maybe the book title phrases are simply out weighing the added brand keyword if you see what I mean. The google plus example is indeed a bit odd, but that being said if you search for 'priceminister google+' which I seem to recall is the 'official' way to search for g+ pages then you are front and center.

Not that much help in terms of what to do about it, maybe someone else will have a good idea!

[ref.price]

Hi Lynn,

Thanks for taking the time to look into our problem, it’s much appreciated.
You are right when you say that we are very similar site to Amazon.fr and that we are often linked to jointly in the same articles. But we are an established e-commerce pure player in France and it seems insane that Google would rank an Amazon page higher than ours on a branded query.  : /

To answer your question regarding branded queries, they’re in the millions monthly.

Frustration aside, As an SEO I find that these results really bad for the end users who want to buy a product on our site.

I wonder what Google think of this issue...

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Oliver,

I'm sure it must be driving you mad!

I don't have any great ideas on what to do about it, but my gut says that it is algorithmic (for whatever that is worth) so I am not sure google would look at it as an error. A quick thought before (hopefully) one of the algorithm aces chimes in...

Is this trend more pronounced in books (for example) or specific product categories? I did a search for priceminister and then clicked on a couple of suggested searches (priceminister iphone4 and that kind of thing) and you were all over the place and amazon was not to be seen. I am just wondering if the specifics of a book title or something else like that is triggering this kind of serp result.

Wish I could be more help, it is an interesting case.

[ref.price]

It seems to be the case with Books, CDs, Video Games & DVDs. Thank heavens these SERP results are still a minority.

This case is interesting:

[La vie est belle Priceminister]

http://goo.gl/0QApO

Amazon is N°1

[PriceMinister La vie est belle]

http://goo.gl/RySHQ
We occupy the first 6 results and Amazon is nowhere to be seen.

Thanks for your help. : )

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Oliver,

So if I understand right it is happening mainly in cases where the search string has quite a few words + priceminister brand and also when the brand is tagged onto the end of the search query rather than the beginning. Still no great ideas on how to approach but at least the scale and dynamics of the problem is more defined.

You say that it is a minority of the searches and that is obviously a good thing! I am wondering with the analytics data you have how much volume you are seeing in regards the brand at the front or at the end of the search query? Granted if it is at the end and users are clicking through to amazon you will not have a complete picture, but if they are actively searching for your brand then you should still see a pretty good chunk of the traffic. I guess what I am saying is, although obviously frustrating, maybe this is an issue you are noticing a lot more in comparison with 'normal' users and while annoying is not having a huge impact on the bottom line?

Not being much help! Be interesting to hear how this case plays out over time though. Perhaps google is messing with results and your branded terms will start surfacing more in the (hopefully near) future.

[ref.price]

Thanks a lot for your time and ideas Lynn!

[madhurk]

Hi Oliver,

Looks like this issue is now fixed? I searched for "24 hour people Priceminister" and "priceminister google plus" on google.fr and your site is showing up as the first result. Interestingly, we are also seeing the same issue for our brand queries on Google since last few months. For us Google is infact even showing the other brand for autocomplete search suggestions as well! See details here: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!mydiscussions/webmasters/ESDluD9Q0-A

Can you please let me know if there was something you did that rectified the issue or did it get fixed automatically? Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks!