Data & strategy
The online home furnishings sector in motion: a year-on-year comparison
The online landscape is always changing. On the one hand, there is Google, which regularlyturns the rankingsupside down with a new algorithm update. On the other hand, there are the websites,that are working hard to achieve the coveted top positions.
Data, data and more data
To compare the market landscape through a Share of Voice (SOV) at different points in time, it is first of all essential to have sufficient data. From the home and living sector, we selected the 1.100 non-branded keywords with the highest search volume that we have been tracking since 2021 or earlier; every day, we retrieve the top 100-positions for these keywords. The keywords cover home-related terms in all areas, from furniture to window coverings and from flooring to wallpaper.
We start the comparison on 1 October 2021, a year ago. Which parties predominantly ranked in the top 20? On the y-axis of the Share of Voice plot, we see the indexing percentage: the number of keywords for which that website ranks in the top 20 indexed. The larger the bubble, the greater the total search volume associated with those indexed keywords. The x-axis shows the average position within the top 20 positions.
Share of Voice October 2021
In October ‘21 there was a clear top 4: Bol.com leads with an indexation percentage of 71,4% and an average position of 7.5at the top, and just below it are other giants such as Marktplaats.nl, Beslist.nl and Leenbakker.nl. What stands out is that marketplace-like websites dominate.
Share of Voice home furnishings sector October 2021, click and drag to zoom in further on a particular area, click ‘reset zoom’ to return to the full overview. The SOV is easier to read on a PC.
Share of Voice home furnishings sector March 2022
Six months later, in1 March2022, things are already beginning to shift. Marktplaats.nl is making way for Ikea.com, which gradually is catching up with Leenbakker.nl. De the gap between the leading players and the rest of the furniture web shops is becoming smaller. We also see a fast-rising newcomer: Lionshome was not yet present in October's Share of Voice2021 six months later appears with 20,7% of the tracked keywords on average at 10,5.
Share of Voice October 2022
1 October 2022: Bol.com remains firmly at the top and has even improved its average position to 6,6. Little remains of former leader Marktplaats.nl, however; it has completely slipped to an indexation rate of just 29% compared with 41,1% in 2021. Google is increasingly understanding the distinction between (the search intent behind) new furniture and second-hand furniture, and no longer considers the second-hand items of the well-known platform relevant enough for high positions among home furnishing retailers.
At the same time, the type of webshop we see in the SOV is shifting. In October 2021 DIY stores such as Gamma.nl, Kwantum.nl and Karwei.nl performed reasonably well in the home furnishings sector. Only 7 competitors were above the DIY stores at that point. As of October 2022 the DIY stores have disappeared from the SOV (Gamma.nl) or have increasingly been overtaken by (all-round) home furnishing webshops.
Below you can see the shifts over the past year (October 2021 to October 2022) set out in a graph. It clearly shows how Marktplaats.nl is the biggest loser, with a decline of more than 50% while Haco.nu has seen an increase of more than 10% the biggest grower.
Your own progress mapped out
The shifts in the residential sector say nothing about changes in other industries. Curious about how your own performance within your sector has evolved? We track the results pages for more than 130.000 keywords across hundreds of themes, some of these terms since 2013. And if we are not yet tracking your relevant keywords, we can add them to our extensive dataset with a single click.
Using Share of Voices across your entire sector or theme Share of Voices for a specific niche, we can show you at a glance how far you have come and what has happened to the competition. This allows you to see immediately how many competitors are still ahead of you. Please feel free to contact contact us for a Share of Voice comparison of your field or more information!
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