Synonyms in other shops — Otto, eBay, Etsy and the long tail of competitor catalogues.

Amazon dominates online retail, but shoppers shop everywhere. A buyer comparing loaf pans will check Otto in Germany, Target or Walmart in the US, John Lewis or Lakeland in the UK, and a category specialist or two. Each retailer's catalogue uses its own product copy, its own navigation labels, its own attribute filters. Each is a synonym source.

Why other shops add unique vocabulary

• Editorial copywriting differs. Otto's house style is more formal than Amazon's; Etsy's is more crafty; specialist shops use category jargon shoppers absorb and bring back to Amazon as queries.
• Filter structures differ. Amazon's filter rail is one taxonomy; Otto's is another. A filter Amazon doesn't expose (say, a material subtype) might be a synonym Amazon shoppers still type into the search bar.
• Category boundaries differ. A product Amazon files under "Home & Kitchen" might sit under "Baking & Pastry Equipment" at a specialist — and the specialist's deeper categorisation reveals attribute words Amazon's shallower category doesn't.
• Brand presence differs. Brands carried at a specialist but not at Amazon use product names that signal demand even though those brands aren't on Amazon — confirming the descriptive synonym.

Shops to walk by market

• DACH (DE / AT / CH). Otto, MediaMarkt, Saturn, Galeria, Tchibo, the category-specialist independents.
• UK. John Lewis, Argos, Currys, Lakeland (kitchen), Wickes (DIY), Hobbycraft (craft).
• US. Walmart, Target, Wayfair (home), Best Buy (electronics), category specialists (REI, Williams-Sonoma).
• Generalist competitors. eBay (for taxonomy across categories), Etsy (for handmade and gift vocabulary), AliExpress (for material and finish vocabulary the long tail uses).

The extraction workflow

1. Run the same generic query on each competitor catalogue.
2. Note the category breadcrumb the top results sit in. Compare against Amazon's breadcrumb for the same product — any missing segment is candidate vocabulary.
3. Read the left-rail filters. Capture every filter label and value Amazon's equivalent doesn't already have.
4. Open the top 5 product titles. Compare the noun choice, the adjective order, the size formatting. Anything different is a candidate variant for backend search terms.
5. Read the first paragraph of each product description. Specialist shops often write longer-form copy than Amazon allows — that copy is a vocabulary mine.

Legal and policy boundaries

• Copying competitor copy verbatim is copyright infringement. Harvest words, not sentences.
• Competitor brand names are still off-limits on your Amazon listing — even when they appear prominently in another shop's filter rail.
• Specialist shops' proprietary attribute schemas (a unique sizing system, for example) often aren't shopper-vocabulary at all; treat schema words with suspicion and validate against Episode 09 (Trends) and Episode 13 (PPC) before committing.

The diminishing-return curve

Other-shop walks are the most time-consuming synonym source per candidate harvested. The first 3–5 shops add genuine vocabulary; the sixth shop's harvest mostly overlaps the first five. Stop when you stop finding new words. Most categories saturate within 4 shops walked.

Where this output goes

Other-shop synonyms are usually classifier-rich — material types, finish styles, size formats, use cases. They land mostly in bullets and backend search terms, occasionally in the title when they're high-conviction descriptors. Episode 14's evaluation pass weights them against on-Amazon search volume before any of them earn a permanent slot.