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The Dirty Little Secret of Search Engines
Printed with permission from the NY Times

PRETEND for a moment that you are Google’s search engine.

Someone types the word “dresses” and hits enter. What will be the very first result?

There are, of course, a lot of possibilities. Macy’s comes to mind. Maybe a specialty chain, like J. Crew or the Gap. Perhaps a Wikipedia entry on the history of hemlines.

O.K., how about the word “bedding”? Bed Bath & Beyond seems a candidate. Or Wal-Mart, or perhaps the bedding section of Amazon.com.

“Area rugs”? Crate & Barrel is a possibility. Home Depot, too, and Sears, Pier 1 or any of those Web sites with “area rug” in the name, like area rugs.com.

You could imagine a dozen contenders for each of these searches. But in the last several months, one name turned up, with uncanny regularity, in the No. 1 spot for each and every term:

J. C. Penney.

The company bested millions of sites — and not just in searches for dresses, bedding and area rugs. For months, it was consistently at or near the top in searches for “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and dozens of other words and phrases, from the blandly generic (“tablecloths”) to the strangely specific (“grommet top curtains”).

This striking performance lasted for months, most crucially through the holiday season, when there is a huge spike in online shopping. J. C. Penney even beat out the sites of manufacturers in searches for the products of those manufacturers. Type in “Samsonite carry on luggage,” for instance, and Penney for months was first on the list, ahead of Samsonite.com.

To Find out why, click here.

Well, as it turns out it looks like I was correct about the beginning of the rush. 83% of our clubs saw the rush start about the third week of January whether they marketed or not. The ones that dropped their direct mail in the last week of December to hit mailboxes in the first week of January were generally disappointed with the results. The clubs that dropped in the second or third week were extremely happy overall.

A couple of side notes this year that seemed to be a little new. February overall seemed to be a much better month this year than the previous few years and the clubs that marketed this year got a better response than they did last year. The clubs that didn’t market saw more traffic this year than last which is a nice indicator for our industry.

They strange thing this year was that the surge seemed to be much shorter than in the past. Over the years we have seen the surge go through Jan. and Feb. and then a little of March. This year we saw the end of Jan., a great Feb., and then no March. So it seems that even though Feb. was a better month, for some reason it didn’t continue beyond that. Why was this window so short this year?

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The Dirty Little Secret of Search Engines

Update of the New Year’s Rush

The Dirty Little Secret of Search Engines

Update of the New Year’s Rush

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The Dirty Little Secret of Search Engines

Update of the New Year’s Rush

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