Two e-com giants are at loggerheads. India’s great online shopping frenzy is on.

But, StatsOfIndia’s visualization of the state-wise distribution of online searches for Amazon and Flipkart seems to raise more questions than it answers.

What is evident from the charts is that Flipkart edges past Amazon in search volume in a larger number of Indian states. Amazon dominates Flipkart in states with higher per capita income.

However, does this prove that Flipkart have a stronger brand affinity than Amazon in its respective states? And, vice versa?

Inferring anything from data without context is risky.

• Search does not necessarily indicate a traffic or transaction, so we can’t say what the higher search volume results in.
• Online searches can sometimes be a good indicator of upper funnel activities, but not always. The upper funnel stages denote brand awareness and early stages of consideration. However, here we are not clear what kind of keywords were taken into consideration – whether only brand keywords, or, long-tail keywords as well.

# Let alone the app users (who already have the shopping app installed on their phones), even those who already have registered accounts, are less likely to search, and will instead type out the URL on the browser leading to direct traffic. Which does not reflect in the visualization.