This Week in M&A Issue #251
August 24, 2026
Hola! đź‘‹
Today’s trend of the week is “analog products”.
Shopify’s June 2026 sales data points to growing demand for products that offer a break from screens.
Vinyl sales rose 40% year over year, CDs jumped 137%, while DVD and Blu-ray players increased 347%. Sales of landline phones, feature phones, cassette tapes and stereo systems also climbed.
Hula hoops, toy trucks, pretend electronics and other hands-on toys also saw significant growth, suggesting consumers are increasingly looking for physical, offline experiences.
For online business owners, that creates some interesting opportunities. Products don’t necessarily need to be faster, smarter, or more convenient. They can be deliberately physical, hands-on, or simply give people a reason to step away from a screen.
Shopify suggests merchants focus on the ritual of using a product, the experience of being present, and the value of actually owning something rather than accessing it through a subscription.
Today we have for you:
- Five markets generate 80% of Amazon’s global sales
- Google begins rolling out its August 2026 Spam Update
And:
- How to optimize your Amazon listings for AI search
- Shopify AI referrals surge 197% but organic search still leads
- 9 AI search myths debunked
Alright, let’s dive in.
Amazon
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What Amazon’s Market Concentration Means for Online Sellers
Amazon may operate across dozens of countries, but its sales are heavily concentrated in just a handful of markets.
According to ECDB, five countries account for 80% of Amazon’s global gross merchandise value (GMV). The US alone generates 51%, followed by the UK at 10%, Germany at 8%, Japan at 7%, and Canada at 4%.
These markets are particularly difficult for competitors to challenge because Amazon has built strong logistics networks, high Prime adoption and significant customer loyalty in each. Its presence has also changed consumer expectations around delivery speeds, product selection and service, putting additional pressure on other retailers.
The remaining 20% of Amazon’s GMV is spread across the rest of the world. In many of these markets, Amazon entered later, invested less aggressively, or has a limited presence. That has given regional marketplaces more room to establish strong positions.
MercadoLibre is a major player across Latin America, Trendyol leads in TĂĽrkiye, Allegro dominates Poland, and Shopee has a strong position across Southeast Asia.
For businesses, this concentration creates an interesting strategic choice.
Selling into Amazon’s five largest markets provides access to the majority of its customer base, but those markets are also the most mature and competitive. Expanding into smaller Amazon markets can mean less traffic and demand, but potentially less competition as well.
For brands considering international expansion, the opportunity may not always be in Amazon’s biggest markets. The less-developed parts of its global footprint can offer different conditions, particularly where local marketplaces have not yet been displaced.
The Opportunity podcast
![How to Optimize Your Amazon Listings for AI Search With Jon Tilley [Ep.219] (1)](https://1745913.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/1745913/How%20to%20Optimize%20Your%20Amazon%20Listings%20for%20AI%20Search%20With%20Jon%20Tilley%20%5BEp.219%5D%20(1).png)
How to Make Your Products More Visible to Amazon AI
Amazon search is changing, and sellers need to rethink how they approach visibility.
In this episode of The Opportunity Podcast, we sit down with Jon Tilley, founder of ZonGuru, to explore how Amazon’s growing use of AI is changing product discovery.
We look at Alexa for Shopping and Amazon’s Cosmo algorithm, and what they mean for sellers. We also discuss why simply using AI to rewrite your listing isn’t enough, and how sellers can better optimize their products for AI-driven discovery.
If you want to understand where Amazon search is heading and how to improve your visibility, this episode is definitely worth a listen.
Google’s August 2026 Spam Update Is Now Underway
Google has launched its third spam update of 2026, and this one applies globally across every language. The rollout began on August 18 and is expected to take several days to complete.
Unlike a core update, the August 2026 spam update focuses on websites that violate Google’s existing search spam policies. Google has not announced any new spam policies alongside this update, so there are no new rules for site owners to follow. Instead, it’s refreshing the systems behind SpamBrain, its automated spam detection technology, to better identify existing violations.
The policies covered include scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, site reputation abuse, back button hijacking and violations involving AI Overviews and AI Mode. Older spam categories such as cloaking, link spam and doorway pages are also covered.
The timing is worth watching. Search ranking volatility was already being reported in early and mid-August, although some apparent changes were caused by a separate Search Console reporting issue that temporarily affected impressions and clicks.
This is also becoming a more regular part of Google’s search updates. The March 2026 spam update lasted around 19 hours, while the June update took about two days. At the time of writing, the August update is still underway, so its duration and impact remain unclear.
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eCommerce
Shopify AI Referrals Jump 197% but Organic Search Still Leads
Many people assume that AI is slowly killing organic search. But Shopify’s numbers say otherwise…
AI-referred traffic to Shopify stores jumped 197% year over year in Q2 2026, while orders from AI referrals roughly tripled. That sounds huge, and it is. But organic search traffic grew 12% too, and it still sends more traffic to Shopify merchants than all tracked AI platforms combined.
It seems like shoppers are using AI and traditional search for different reasons.
Visitors who reached product pages through AI converted about 80% better than those coming from organic search. For products that require more research, the gap was even bigger. In categories where shoppers need to compare specifications, compatibility, use cases, or reviews, AI-referred visitors converted at roughly twice the rate of organic visitors.
Shopify also found that AI-referred shoppers converted at about twice the rate when AI systems used structured Shopify Catalog data rather than scraped or third-party product feeds.
That makes product data increasingly important. Give search engines and AI systems clear information about your products, including specifications, materials, compatibility, use cases, fit, reviews, FAQs, and delivery details.
You don’t necessarily need separate strategies for AI and Google. Better product information and stronger product pages can help you show up in both.
AI search is growing quickly, but Shopify’s data suggests you don’t have to choose between AI and SEO. Clear, detailed product information can help you attract more traffic from both search engines and AI while giving shoppers the information they need to make a purchase.
AI Search
Ahrefs Data Challenges Common AI Search Myths
There’s no shortage of advice about winning visibility in AI search. But how much of it is actually true?
Ahrefs analyzed around 15 million data points to test nine widely repeated claims about how to get cited by AI search engines.
Here’s what they discovered.
1. “Best” Lists Don’t Guarantee AI Recommendations
“Best of” lists made up 43.8% of pages cited across 750 ChatGPT prompts. But promoting your own brand doesn’t guarantee AI will recommend it. In a test of 34 self-promotional lists and 9,886 AI answers, competitors were often chosen instead.
2. You Don’t Need An llms.txt File
Ahrefs analyzed 137,000 websites and found that 97% of llms.txt files were never fetched. Of the files that were read, 77% were accessed by non-AI bots.
3. Schema Isn’t A Shortcut To AI Citations
After tracking 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD schema against 4,000 control pages, Ahrefs found no meaningful citation increase in ChatGPT or Google AI Mode after 30 days.
4. SEO Still Matters
An analysis of 1.4 million ChatGPT prompts found that 88.46% of citations came from Google’s general search index. Classic SEO still plays a major role in getting cited.
5. Page One Rankings Don’t Guarantee AI Visibility
Only about 38% of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews ranked in the top 10 for the same query. Ranking for related searches matters too.
6. AI Answers Are More Stable Than They Look
Across 43,000 keywords, wording changed 70% of the time and cited sources changed 45.5%. Yet the underlying meaning remained highly consistent, scoring 0.95 out of 1.
7. AI Hasn’t Replaced Google
Google sent 190 times more traffic than ChatGPT across 76,000 websites. Google accounted for nearly 40% of traffic, compared with 0.21% for ChatGPT.
8. AI Overviews Can Reduce Clicks
Ahrefs found that AI Overviews reduced position-one click-through rates by 58% in its latest study. Other studies have reported similar declines.
9. Mentions May Matter More Than Backlinks
Among 75,000 brands, backlinks and Domain Rating showed weak correlations with AI visibility. YouTube mentions had a much stronger correlation, followed by branded web mentions.
AI search doesn’t appear to reward shortcuts. Traditional SEO, strong topical coverage, genuine brand mentions, and content people actually reference still matter.
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