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Market decline
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The UK's No.1 Outdoor Retailers Industry Report
Between July 2025 and July 2026, average organic search visibility across UK outdoor retail fell 18%, measured across the 360 brands in this index. Visibility here is the estimated organic traffic a domain earns from the ranking positions it holds across every keyword it appears for, so an 18% average decline tells us most brands are ranking for fewer terms, sitting lower for the terms they still hold, or both at once.
The decline was steepest at the top of the table. The three largest retailers by visibility, Decathlon, Go Outdoors and Mountain Warehouse, fell 31.81% combined, from 4,430,865 to 3,021,439, a drop of 1,409,426. That is roughly 13.8 percentage points steeper than the 18% market average. When the largest sites lose visibility faster than the market around them, their share of total visibility shrinks, so the top of the outdoor search results became less concentrated over the year, and the visibility that left those big sites landed further down the table with specialist and mid-ranking brands.
Seven of the largest multi-brand retailers each lost between 28% and 46% of their organic visibility across the period. Scale and category breadth, which used to protect these sites, have started working against them.
| Brand | Jul 2025 | Jul 2026 | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decathlon | 1,818,406 | 1,304,070 | -28.28% |
| Go Outdoors | 1,484,005 | 1,017,035 | -31.47% |
| Mountain Warehouse | 1,128,454 | 700,334 | -37.94% |
| Combined top three | 4,430,865 | 3,021,439 | -31.81% |
The five most-visible names in the index show the split that runs through the whole market: the three biggest sites are the biggest decliners, and the two that grew did so from smaller starting positions. Decathlon still holds the highest organic visibility in outdoor retail at 1,304,070, though its year is down 28.28%. Go Outdoors sits second at 1,017,035 after falling 31.47%, and Mountain Warehouse holds third at 700,334.
Below them, Trespass grew 25.40% to 423,552 and Columbia Sportswear grew 33.55% to 212,156. Both climbed from smaller starting figures than the three retailers above them, and both are own-brand retailers that sell largely their own labels.
Ranking position is held in place at the top by brand-search volume and by the sheer size of these catalogues, while the growth is being earned lower down by brands that rank for the specific product terms they sell against. A senior marketer reading this table needs the year-on-year column next to the ranking column, because the order of the top five looks stable even though the visibility underneath it is moving quickly.
| Brand | Visibility (Jul 2026) | YoY change |
|---|---|---|
| Decathlon | 1,304,070 | -28.28% |
| Go Outdoors | 1,017,035 | -31.47% |
| Mountain Warehouse | 700,334 | -37.94% |
| Trespass | 423,552 | +25.40% |
| Columbia Sportswear | 212,156 | +33.55% |
The clearest single finding this year appears when you compare percentage growth with absolute growth, because the two measures rank the winners in almost opposite orders. On a percentage basis, trail.co.uk leads the entire index, up 145.92% year-on-year, but starting from just 27,467 that is a gain of only about 40,080 in visibility. Trespass tells the reverse story: its 25.40% growth looks modest next to Trail, yet starting from 337,754 it added 85,798 in absolute visibility, rising to 423,552, the largest genuine gain of any brand in the index once the domain migrations are set aside. Columbia Sportswear is second on absolute growth, adding 53,300 to reach 212,156, and Keen’s footwear site grew 67.29% for a gain of 24,670.
The same difference hides the largest loss in the index. Decathlon’s 28.28% decline looks unremarkable as a percentage, but against its very large starting figure of 1,818,406 it represents a fall of 514,336 in absolute visibility, the single biggest drop anywhere in the data. A percentage lens flatters big sites on the way down and small sites on the way up, which is why we report both figures side by side for every brand in the full report.
| Brand | Absolute change | YoY change |
|---|---|---|
| Trespass | +85,798 | +25.40% |
| Columbia Sportswear | +53,300 | +33.55% |
| Trail | +40,080 | +145.92% |
| Keen | +24,670 | +67.29% |
| Decathlon | -514,336 | -28.28% |
We do not have keyword-cluster data in this release, so the analysis below is structural: it shows where the losses concentrate across the market without tying them to specific search terms. The large multi-brand retailers depend heavily on ranking for broad category head-terms, the generic “walking boots”, “waterproof jacket” and “camping equipment” queries, and on the informational content that supports those categories. That is exactly the part of the results where broad SERPs and AI Overviews now answer more of the query on the page itself and cite specific sources, and where competition among the big retailers is heaviest. Specialist and manufacturer sites tend to rank for their own branded terms and for specific product queries, which are more defensible.
Branded demand shows the same tension. Go Outdoors carries roughly 1,000,000 branded searches a month and 261,294 reviews at 4.6 stars, yet its visibility fell 31.47% year-on-year. Trespass, an adjacent-scale retail name with around 135,000 branded searches a month, roughly a seventh of Go Outdoors’ branded demand, grew 25.40% over the same period. A brand with far more people searching its name directly lost visibility while a leaner own-brand player gained it, a spread of about 57 percentage points between two businesses of broadly similar standing.
| Measure | Go Outdoors | Trespass |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility rank | #2 | #5 |
| YoY visibility change | -31.47% | +25.40% |
| Monthly branded searches | ~1,000,000 | ~135,000 |
| Reviews | 261,294 @ 4.6 stars | — |
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