• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 10, 2014

Apps not only change the game for mobile devices -- they have begun to alter the search behavior of consumers across the Internet, even when it comes to same-store sales. Since more consumers have a purpose in mind when they log on to the Internet, they rely more on shopping sites like Sears, Target, Google Shopping, Amazon -- and yes, even eBay.

As consumers continue to change their behavior, so must brand marketers. Start by rethinking search engine marketing, seriously. What worked yesterday certainly doesn't work today. Google, Bing and Yahoo don't stand still. Nor should marketers. Target's David Peterson and Search Marketing Daily spoke about this during the last MediaPost Search Insider Summit. Target is growing its online marketplace, which continues to expand with the number of products it offers.

ChannelAdvisor tells us that Sears.com continues to do the same. Search engine marketing no longer only occurs on search engines Bing, Google and Yahoo -- an important consideration when mapping out strategies, it happens on retail marketplaces. Making this point, ChannelAdvisor throws out some numbers related to the big-box retailer Sears and suggests there are a variety of marketplaces from which brands can sell products and services. There are more than 10,000 sellers on sears.com that received more than 2.4 billion page views annually. The marketplace has 110 million items listed in a variety of categories.

ChannelAdvisor supports more than 37 global marketplaces. While eBay and Amazon are the biggest domestic players, other marketplaces now in the report include Best Buy, Sears, La Radoute, Newegg, OneStopPlus, Play.com, Buy.com/Rakuten Shopping, Shop.com, Tesco, Trade Me and several others generating enough year-on-year gross merchandise value to include them. They are not in the chart because this is the first month, but the summary data is included. Support was recently announced for MercadoLibre and Alibaba's Tmall Global -- and those will have to annualize before ChannelAdvisor includes them in its data.

"General interest search engines are going the way of the Swiss Army knife," said Adam Epstein, adMarketplace president. "Consumers are savvy enough to know specialized sites or apps can help them find what they are looking for efficiently. There is definitely a larger trend of user search fracturing across the Web and to mobile apps."

Here are some stats of same store-sale sales from ChannelAdvisor. Its clients saw a 28.1% sequential increase from 27%. eBay's May stats came in at 11.5% down from April's 14%, but overall the marketplace rose, event after the data breach. In the other 3PMs category the marketplaces grew 78.3% year-over-year on a same-store-sales basis. While these channels are not as big as the eBay and Amazon, their customers are see strong growth in these channels.

The comparison shopping engines came in at .4% for May -- up from April's 9% decline -- driven by softness in the non-product listing engines. Search came in at 11.7% for May, up sequentially from April's 4.3% year-on-year growth.

eBay saw its same-store growth fall to 11.5% from April's 14%, but fixed-prices rose 13%; Motors, 15.6%. Same-store sales driven by search ads, mostly Google AdWords, rose 11.7% Y/Y, up from April's 4.3%. Paid clicks rose 7%, cost per click rose 4%, conversion rates rose 7%. Google Shopping/product listing ad sales grew 21.4%, up from 7.8% in April. Growing ad buys and a 29.3% increase in click rates offset an 18.7% drop in average order value. Here are the details.