Why Beauty Retailers Lose To Online Publishers in Google Search

SYRACUSE, NY (July 20, 2021) — Terakeet, a leading enterprise search engine technology company headquartered in Syracuse, today announced that non-beauty brands (publishers, informational websites, etc.) and newer direct-to-consumer brands hold a larger percentage of Google organic search market share than established brands and major beauty retailers.

That is according to its Google Market Share Report for the Beauty Industry, which is the result of an analysis of more than 3,000 high-value, non-branded beauty industry Google Search terms across three primary areas of beauty — Skincare, Hair Care and Makeup — and nine underlying sectors. Together, these terms account for more than 9.3 million monthly Google Searches. Terakeet calculated market share for the report using Carina, its proprietary search engine market share analysis tool.

For Skincare, Terakeet found that allure.com has the highest organic search market share (12.39%), followed by byrdie.com (10.63%), nymag.com (6.82%), goodhousekeeping.com (6.54%), and sephora.com (4.74%). For Hair Care, byrdie.com leads market share (10.74%), followed by amazon.com (9.16%), healthline.com (8.17%), goodhousekeeping.com (6.67%), and allure.com (6.21%). Makeup was led by byrdie.com (9.98%), followed by sephora.com (8.86%), ulta.com (7.35%), allure.com (5.64%), and amazon.com (5.43%).

Terakeet attributes this trend in market share to factors such as Google favoring informational content over both product-related content and transactional websites in the search engine results pages — even for many non-branded product-related queries. Specifically, the majority of category leaders offer these informational assets through long-form content, backlinks to their website, product review pages, gift guides, and news sections.

The report also reveals that:

Beauty brands and retailers that once held a higher Google organic market share are at risk of being outranked in a short period of time and losing traffic to their sites. For example, Sephora’s market share decreased from the second highest in Skincare at 7.70% in February 2019 to the 5th overall at 4.74% in February 2021.
Traditional beauty brands and retailers are losing a great deal of search market share, even on product-related queries, due to small content portfolios. However, Amazon is the exception — performing well for Hair Care and Makeup Markets during the pandemic.

Within the nine underlying market sectors, Terakeet also segmented keywords into two separate categories based on search intent: product and informational to account for the Google algorithm. If Google determines that users prefer informational content when searching certain keywords, then its algorithm returns educational pages such as beauty guides, tutorials, and best of makeup tips. If Google finds that users want to purchase something when they search specific queries, then its algorithm will prioritize category or product pages.

“Strategic content allows brands to build a connection with consumers at the time that they are looking for products and services, but the current reality is that many beauty brands focus their content marketing around selling products rather than informing consumers, and as a result, they only capture a small slice of the market opportunity,” said Supriya Venkatesan, Senior Director of Content at Terakeet.

“In order to rank higher and capture valuable traffic, brands must shift their focus toward prioritizing relevant, authoritative, and high-quality informational content, while also understanding the intent behind what consumers are searching for.”

About Terakeet

Terakeet is an enterprise search engine technology company that leverages 20+ years of expertise to serve global brands. Backed by its best-in-class proprietary technology, Terakeet earns significant organic search engine visibility in highly competitive categories for Fortune 1000 companies and other global brands by applying the perfect mix of on- and off-page optimization, strategic outreach, and content strategy.