What we see
In answers about real products, the seller's own site accounted for 37% of citations. The most cited hosts outside the sellers' own sites included large retailers and specialist shops — bestbuy.com and rei.com among them — alongside review and reference sites (study).
Why the retailer wins
- Its page answers the buying question — price, stock, delivery — in one place.
- It may be rendered on the server and readable without scripts where the
maker's page is not — worth checking for your own products rather than assuming.
- It carries identifiers from the product feed, sometimes more completely than
the maker's own page.
When it is a problem
- When the retailer's page carries an old specification or the wrong variant.
- When the retailer does not sell in the buyer's country.
- When you sell direct and the retailer is a competitor for the same order.
What you can change
Make your own page the better source for the facts that are yours — identity, specification, what is in the box — and make sure retailers carry the same identifiers. You cannot make a model stop linking a retailer; you can stop it from being the only good source. What a citation does and does not tell you is at /evidence.