Amazon pushed the concept of social retail forward by a large measure by linking shoppers to their Facebook friends. Through this connection, Amazon shoppers can get recommendations from friends on what to buy. It joins a handful of retail sites that cater to the socially-inclined shopper, such as Kaboodle, ShopWiki, ThisNext and Giantner.

As social retail gains momentum, it is fair to ask whether the retail space will finally upgrade its search functionality, which has been unpardonably lagging for years. In short, will a retail search engine ever be able to tell the difference between, say, a 'digital' camera and a 'high resolution' cameras without responding with a product dump of every camera and camera-related option.

TheFind

There are some signs this is beginning to happen. In May, the search engine TheFind overtook Yahoo Shopping to become the No. 2 search engine for retail queries, according to comScore. Google holds the No. 1 slot. CEO Siva Kumar told the E-Commerce Times that he formed the site about four-and-a-half years ago after realizing that the established comparison shopping sites didn't pull up practical information that buyers wanted - such as a complete list of all of the sellers or what items being searched could be found on sale.

Then there is Google Commerce Search, a $50,000 search engine for retailers that rolled out last year with the pointed observation that it is rare for a retail site to have advanced filters or any other means of executing a search that goes beyond a single word product name.

New Numbers

Efforts by retailers to step up search may be spurred by new survey results offered by Searchandise Commerce, which conducted a study conducted with comScore. Among the findings, it discovered that rankings matter in site search much like they do in search engine marketing: shoppers associate relevance and quality with products on the first page of search results. "We wanted to better understand how retail site search worked as a complement to search engines, and we've now quantified our assumptions about the value and the ways retail on-site search mirrors search engine marketing," said John Federman, president and CEO of Searchandise Commerce. " In both, attaining top position in search results is key to winning a higher share of clicks and sales."