Organic search

Organic search traffic is visits that come from the normal, unpaid results on search engines such as Google and Bing. Stores earn it through search engine optimisation: useful product and collection pages, clear titles, fast pages, links from other sites and content such as buying guides.

Organic traffic matters because it does not stop when the ad budget does. A store that ranks for many product searches has a steady base of visitors, usually with good intent, since people searching for a product are often ready to buy.

For competitor research:

• a high organic share in a store's traffic sources suggests a stronger brand and lower dependence on ads
• the pages a store builds, visible in its sitemap, show which searches it targets
• one-product stores built for paid ads often have little organic traffic

RivalSonar shows an estimated traffic source mix, including organic search, for each store. Combine it with the store's ads to see whether it grows mostly through paid ads or through search. Organic search is slow to build, so it is a sign of a store that has been working for a while.