India’s Ecommerce Search Behaviour: Google vs Marketplaces

Most Indian shoppers don’t open Google first. In a 2024 Capterra survey of 500 Indian online shoppers, 69% said they start their search for a new product on social media and 67% start on ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon or Flipkart, well ahead of any general search engine. Google still wins the research and comparison stage, especially once a shopper has narrowed down what they want and needs reviews, pricing, or a specific retailer. If you sell online in India, this means your SEO plan can’t stop at Google rankings. It has to account for marketplace visibility, social discovery, and the handoff between them.

Where do Indian shoppers actually start looking for products?

It splits by channel, not by a single dominant winner. Social media edges out marketplaces as a discovery starting point, but the gap is narrow, and both beat brand websites and search engines as a first stop. That’s a shift from the older assumption that Google is the default front door to ecommerce. It isn’t, not anymore, and hasn’t been for a while in categories like fashion and beauty where visual discovery drives the first spark of interest.

Where people finish the purchase tells a different story. The same Capterra survey found 65% of respondents ultimately buy through an ecommerce marketplace, and 52% buy through an individual retailer’s website or app. So the funnel looks roughly like this: discovery happens on social feeds and marketplace browsing, then Google (and marketplace internal search) gets pulled in during the comparison stage, and the marketplace closes the sale more often than not.

Google search vs marketplace search: what each one is actually good for

Treating “search” as one behaviour misses the point. A shopper typing into the Amazon search bar wants something different than a shopper typing the same words into Google.

A brand selling only through Google Ads and organic blog content is invisible during the discovery phase for most shoppers under 35. A brand selling only on Amazon is invisible to the growing share of buyers researching a category before they know which retailer they’ll use.

Why marketplace search behaves differently from Google search

Marketplace search is transactional by default. Someone in the Amazon app has already decided, at least loosely, what they want to buy. They’re filtering, not exploring. Google search, in contrast, carries a wider spread of intent: informational (“best moisturiser for oily skin”), navigational (“Nykaa login”), and transactional (“buy Nykaa foundation online”) all live on the same results page.

That split matters for where you put your content effort:

• If your product needs explaining before someone will buy it, Google-indexed content (blog posts, comparison guides, FAQ pages) does more work than a marketplace listing ever will.
• If your product is a known, commodity-style item, marketplace search optimisation (title structure, backend keywords, review velocity) matters more than a blog.
• Categories with high consideration, things like skincare, electronics, and furniture, see the heaviest Google research activity before a marketplace purchase closes the loop.
• Low-consideration repeat purchases (groceries, personal care refills) skip Google almost entirely and go straight to a marketplace or quick-commerce app.

The scale behind this shift

India’s internet base has grown large enough that these behaviour splits now represent hundreds of millions of people, not a rounding error. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India 2025 report, India crossed 958 million active internet users in 2025, up roughly 8% year-on-year. Among urban internet users specifically, 230 million (56% of the urban active base) shopped online in the past year. Rural India, at 548 million active users, is growing faster than urban India, and rural buyers lean even harder on social media, video, and marketplace apps over typed search, partly because English-first Google queries are a smaller part of their daily habit.

PwC’s research on how India shops online adds another layer: shoppers from tier-2, 3, and 4 cities drove more than 80% of Meesho and Amazon’s festive season 2023 sales. These buyers are less likely to have grown up Googling brands before buying them. They’re finding products through social content and marketplace recommendation engines instead, then using search mainly to confirm a price or check a seller’s rating.

What this means for SEO strategy in India

Ranking #1 on Google for a product keyword is worth less than it used to be if your buyer never opens Google for that category. That doesn’t mean Google SEO is pointless. It means the strategy has to be matched to where the actual search behaviour lives for your specific product and audience, not applied as a blanket rule copied from a US or UK playbook.

A furniture brand competing on “buy sofa online India” still needs solid Google visibility, because that’s a high-consideration purchase people genuinely research before buying. A snack brand competing for repeat Instamart or Blinkit orders gets almost nothing out of the same Google keyword work. Google’s own Think with Google research on India notes that 86% of Indian shoppers on Search are open to trying new brands or products, which is a real opening, but it only applies to the categories where people are actually using Search to shop in the first place.

AI search is adding a third layer on top of Google and marketplace search

There’s a newer wrinkle worth naming directly. Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews are changing how the research stage works, and India is a heavy adopter. A Google/Ipsos survey covering Indian shoppers, cited in the same Think with Google research, found that among people who use AI Overviews or AI Mode for shopping, 84% said it helped them make faster decisions and 87% said it made them more confident in the decision. That’s a meaningfully different experience from scrolling ten blue links and opening five tabs.

What this means practically: a shopper might now ask an AI-powered search box a full sentence, in a mix of English and Hindi, rather than typing a stripped-down keyword. The old habit of typing “best sofa under 20000” is being joined by longer, more conversational queries. That doesn’t replace marketplace search or social discovery. It sits on top of them, usually during the comparison stage, right before someone opens Amazon or Flipkart to actually buy. Brands that only optimise for exact-match keywords are going to miss a growing share of this traffic, because AI search tools reward content that answers a full question clearly, not content stuffed with a keyword phrase.

None of the three channels, Google, marketplace, or social, is going away. They’re stacking. A shopper might see a product on Instagram, ask an AI search tool a follow-up question about it, then buy on Flipkart because that’s where their saved payment method lives. Trying to attribute the sale to a single channel misreads how the whole thing actually works.

How to figure out which search surface matters most for your business

1. Pull your Google Search Console data and check whether your top queries are informational or transactional. That tells you how much of your traffic is research versus ready-to-buy.
2. Check your Amazon or Flipkart seller dashboard (if you sell there) for search term reports. Compare volume against your Google keyword volume for the same product.
3. Look at your Instagram or YouTube engagement on product content specifically, not just brand content, to see if social is doing discovery work Google isn’t.
4. Talk to five recent customers and ask, plainly, “how did you first hear about us, and where did you check us out before buying.” Five conversations will tell you more than a keyword tool.

None of this is a one-time audit. Search behaviour in India is still moving, mostly because internet access keeps expanding into smaller towns where habits aren’t fixed the way they are in metro markets that have been online for fifteen years.

If you want a structured read on where your traffic and buyers are actually coming from before you commit budget to any one channel, our SEO and digital marketing services start with exactly this kind of channel audit rather than assuming Google is the only lever worth pulling.

Related reading

For more on how Indian search behaviour differs from Western markets, see our breakdown of how Indians search, our look at why Indian search results pages are so aggregator-heavy, and our guide to mobile-first optimisation for the Indian market. If price is the main driver behind a shopper’s search behaviour in your category, our piece on price-led search query patterns in India goes deeper into that specific pattern.

Do Indian shoppers prefer Google or Amazon for product research?

Neither wins outright. Capterra’s 2024 survey found 67% of Indian online shoppers start their search on ecommerce marketplaces and 69% on social media, both ahead of general search engines as a first stop. Google plays a bigger role once shoppers move into comparing options and checking reviews, rather than at the very start of discovery.

Should a small Indian business focus on Google SEO or marketplace SEO first?

It depends on the product. High-consideration or unfamiliar products (furniture, electronics, services) benefit more from Google-indexed content because people research before buying. Commodity products already available on Amazon or Flipkart benefit more from marketplace listing optimisation, since buyers there have usually already decided what they want.

Is Google search declining in importance for Indian ecommerce?

Not declining, but its role is narrower than it was a decade ago. Google still handles brand verification, price comparison, and review research well. What’s changed is that discovery, the first spark of “I want this,” now happens more often on social platforms and inside marketplace apps than on a Google results page.

Why do tier-2 and tier-3 cities behave differently in search than metro cities?

Tier-2 and tier-3 buyers are newer to ecommerce and often less comfortable typing English-language search queries. PwC’s research found these consumers drove over 80% of Meesho and Amazon’s festive season 2023 sales, and they lean more heavily on social content, video, and marketplace recommendations than on typed Google searches.

What’s the single biggest mistake brands make with search strategy in India?

Assuming one channel represents the whole buyer journey. Ranking well on Google means nothing if your specific buyer never opens Google for that category. The fix isn’t picking one channel over another, it’s mapping which surface your actual buyers use at which stage, then investing accordingly.