A search for "buy vacuum" yielded Yahoo! Shopping, Best Buy and a store in Australia, but Wal-Mart did not make the front page. A search for "vacuum cleaner" again failed to turn up Wal-Mart. Adding a geographic search also failed to turn up Wal-Mart, instead yielding specialty stores focused on this product. Thus, competitors do turn up on the front page, but Wal-Mart does not. However it is worth knowing that aside from Best Buy, the competitors tend to be specialty stores. Other general goods retailers that form the main competition for Wal-Mart, such as Target, Sears or Amazon, also do not turn up on the first page of Google hits. I believe that for specific products, Wal-Mart does not have good search optimization. It is conceivable that Wal-Mart relies on its substantial brand recognition to bring customers directly to its website, rather than via a search engine. Alternately, the...
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