Amazon secretly changed the product ranking rules? !

Yesterday afternoon, a bug occurred on the Amazon search page, causing the search results to only show two or three products, and all other products were hidden by Amazon.

Although this bug was quickly fixed, Amazon still changed the number of search results. The decline in traffic and orders for some sellers was basically due to the reduction in display positions.

Unexpectedly, the impact of this BUG has not ended this morning. In our group, sellers were discussing that the ranking of the front-end products was no longer visible!

I randomly searched for several BSRs and ordinary products in the toys and electronics categories, and indeed none of them showed product rankings.

Product ranking is a very important data for operation and product selection. Usually, we need to refer to the ranking of our own products and competitors' products to formulate promotion plans and develop new products. Many sellers also like to use third-party data software to capture the changes in the ranking of competitors' products and reversely infer the promotion ideas of competitors' products.

The disappearance of rankings for a short period of time will not have any impact on sales. Later in the afternoon, I observed these products again and found that the rankings were displayed normally again. However, it is worth noting that this is not the first time that the rankings have disappeared. On Monday this week, Alice discovered that the rankings disappeared briefly, but because the time was very short, it was ignored as a seizure.

If the ranking disappearance only occurs once, it can be said to be a system bug. However, if it occurs multiple times in a short period of time, it is worth doubting whether Amazon is doing anything to the ranking system.

What will happen to the ranking system?

If you want to completely hide the product rankings, the involvement will be too huge, and doing so does not make much sense for Amazon. Whether it is displayed or not will not directly affect Amazon's related revenue.

On the other hand, marking the product rank can make sellers more competitive, and Amazon can also gain more profits (advertising fees, etc.), so Amazon will not hide the rank alone unless it is to cooperate with other larger change plans.

Excluding the possibility of hidden rankings, combined with the fact that the search volume also decreased significantly yesterday, Amazon is likely adjusting its ranking mechanism, and this new mechanism will affect most sellers and reshuffle the ranking rules.

In the past, there were many factors that affected product rankings, including relevance, nodes, sales, reviews...almost every product attribute would affect the ranking to a greater or lesser extent.

There is not enough data to infer what changes have been made to the ranking algorithm this time. Based on the changes Amazon made to the search algorithm not long ago, I would boldly infer that the update of this ranking algorithm may have added the influencing factor of geographical location.

Around the end of October, Amazon secretly changed its search mechanism and added the buyer's geographic location (zip code) as one of the factors affecting search results. The search results for different buyer addresses were also different.

This is one of the changes Amazon has made to implement the principle of "one size fits all". In order to allow customers to search for products that can be delivered to them as quickly as possible, this change is understandable. Since geographic location can affect search results, it can also further affect product rankings, and it is very likely that products closer to consumers will be ranked higher.

However, the ranking mechanism is different from that of search results, which will not only affect the buyer's purchasing experience, but also the seller's. If the ranking mechanism is also different for different people, then the above-mentioned method of using it as a reference for product selection and exploring the routines of competing products will definitely be a failure.

The change in ranking algorithm can also explain the low traffic and orders of sellers in the past two days. The traffic also plummeted when the search algorithm was changed last time. I will continue to observe and collect data on the front desk, and will inform you in time if there is any new conclusion.

Although the ranking algorithm has changed, the old factors that affect the ranking are still there. We can still improve the ranking through optimization and other operations. Finally, I have collected a skill package for you on how to improve product rankings.