If you want to get success on Amazon, you will need to understand the policy by which Amazon’s Search Algorithm works. Most people have no...
If you want to get success on Amazon, you will need to understand the policy by which Amazon’s Search Algorithm works.
Most people have no idea how Amazon will rank and deliver search results.
Are you want to know what is the real fact! Then here is a shocking fact!
Buyers search THREE TIMES more for buying products on Amazon, rather than on Google.
Think about it carefully…
Where will you go when you will need to know whether a product is worth enough for buying?
What’s up when you want to have the best deal on anything else from a booking to a refrigerator?
Amazon…. Yes it is!!
Yet, you perhaps don’t pay attention closely to the search engine; much less have the consideration of it as a marketing channel that is worth optimizing for. Even though most Amazon Marketers’ are always spending their times trying to have an optimization on their Amazon Listings’ for Google…
But, how it will be if you knew how to rank up in Amazon?
You definitely have THREE TIMES more and more ready-to-buy clients than you would get in Google – and you would do that in a fraction of time!!
Our work has started long before a customer types for a query. We have been analyzing data, noticing the past traffic patterns, and are indexing the text that describes every product according to our catalog right before the customer even decides to search.
Amazon!!
We see here that much of the work is already done before the customer will touch the keyboard. As soon as the customer hits “Enter” to have a search, the A9 algorithm delivers results through the two-step process:
Once we wish to determine which items match best to the customer’s query, our automatic ranking algorithms score to find out at present the most relevant results for the user on Amazon.
It’s a very simple process on its core:
The answer is very simple: relevance doesn’t refer the same thing again to Amazon that it always does to Google. Read the statement from A9 vary carefully to see if you find out the difference:
One of A9’s tenets is here that relevance is in the eye of the customers and we always strive to get the best result for the users. We consistently evaluate our algorithms using human judgment, analysis, key business metrics and performance’s metrics for Amazon.
Look at these?
It is said that there are a few simple rules which you have to always remember about Amazon. Actually, 3 rules are critically vital for making the most of this guide. So make sure you will read them carefully:
Relevancy: Always remember the first step in the A9 algorithm. At first, they gather the result and then they decide on how to list them up. Relevancy factors always tell A9 when it is time to consider your product’s page for a search term. Relevancy factors also include your title and product description.
Customers’ Satisfaction & Retention: How will you have the most money from a single customer? You have to make them so pleased that they will keep coming back. Amazon knows it that the secret to maximizing RPC lies in customer’s retention. It’s harder to get someone out there to spend $100 once than to spend $10 ten times. Customer Retention factors also include seller feedbacks and the Order Defect Rate.
(Note that Amazon always uses both predicted and real conversion rates for having product rankings. For an instant, if you ask a higher price than other similar product, Amazon will have a prediction of a lower conversion rate for the listing and they will use that rate until real data will correct it.)
Now Amazon is testing some new features in their search results where they will automatically append the Best-Seller banner to the best-selling’s product in the category-specific search.
More sales always mean higher in rankings – and higher in rankings means more sales!
It is like a vicious cycle but luckily we have still many ways for a new seller to compete.
For example, product search for the keyword -“vacuum” shows some interesting points on how Amazon weights the review volume vs. review quality.
Moreover, their products like Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush, which ranks one for the keyword used “electric toothbrush” over other that have equally rated best-sellers because it has almost double as many customer Q&A’s than any other listing in the same category:
The 1000×1000 pixel of image sizes allows Amazon to offer their customers to Hover-to-Zoom feature, that they’ve found out is having a dramatic effect on conversion rates.
Generally, you will see that as your cursor hovers on the images, Amazon automatically will display a zoomed-in version of the product’s information pane.
Have a glimpse that quantity of images is not at all important here. This Tippmann paintball gun is the number one product for the use of keyword “paintball guns”. But it only has one image. As the image is big enough and also informative enough to make the customer clear about all the info they have. So that’s all that it makes Amazon happy.
That is why it’s always better to have one large, high quality of image than to have many normal-sized images. Not to mention that multiple images don’t convert better than one image. It is just that the benefit of quickly taper off after the first.
One of the largest factors Amazon tries to use to determine predicted conversion’s rate is pricing. They also know that customers always tend to seek the best deal. Even more importantly, Amazon determines to price as the main factor in picking that product to show in buy box, which is a part of the page that contains the Add to Cart button. (We’ll talk about it later).
There are several benefits of it:
kids leggings
For example; the juicer is the only one in top 4 results to use parent-child product connection. When you will enable the parent-child relationship, it will show as an extra option in the Amazon’s search result.
This increases not only click-through rates that we can see here but also it helps you rank above the competition.
Here’s the exact way what this similar-but-different metric means on Amazon:
As a normal rule, the more complete you may make on your listings, the better it will be. Try to do your best to fill up every single field in the listing’s setup page to maximize your chance of being at the top of product’s search results.
I’m not a fan of keyword stuffing. It’s not really necessary. The title’s keywords are combined with your other keywords used for optimization and product searches. There is no need for duplication. Whenever I come across a lengthy product title with too many keywords strung together, making it almost unreadable, I move on. While it is important to have good keywords in your product title, it is questionable how much mileage you will obtain by going overboard. It is best to have an easy to read title that is both professional and quickly describes your product.
Along with images, features are so vital that Amazon allows no other products without bullet points that are to be featured in the buy box. They are not having them as a serious roadblock to good Amazon ranking.
Again, a good example of proper Feature is Asus computer monitor that ranks number one for “computer screen”.
Have a look how the bullet-points are in used both extremely detailed and includes a ton of keywords! Besides, they’re very easily readable, that means they don’t confuse customers and risk hurting conversion.
So it is said, keep it in mind that unlike Google there is no extra benefit of having a keyword appeared in multiple times on the product’s page; if your product listing isn’t anywhere at least once, you are to relevant of ranking for it.
There’s nothing for your advancement about this product listing. They just cover all the bases. It’s through the invitation, easy to skim, captions, and they even include extra tech.
You can find here that a simple search for “dog food” generally takes us three categories deeper into Amazon’s product catalog, indicating the red lines in the images above. The blue box will show that we’ll have to stay in the Dog Food category until we either will return to the home page or manually tell Amazon to show us All Departments.
When you want to set up your product listing, make sure that you put your products in the most relevant, narrow category as possible.
This is somewhat complex to explain that I can’t do a better job than just head over there if you want to learn more about these specific factors. Nathan Grimm has already done over at Moz
Source Keyword:
This is one of the largest hidden steps that Amazon determines a listing’s relevance to a selected product search. This is also an example of how Amazon tracks on every single minutia of customers’ activities on their website. Take a look at this URL which links to a listing of a Black & Decker electric drill and sees if you can tell me what search terms I use to find it.You can find the source keywords right at the end of the URL – https://www.amazon.com/Euro-Cuisine-YM80-Yogurt-Maker/dp/B000EX16RY/ref=sr_1_4?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1490816046&sr=1-4&keywords=yogurt+maker – that can tell Amazon that the source’s keyword was “yogurt maker”.
So, if I were to purchase this drill, Amazon could know that this listing is boldly relevant for the term “electric drill”. The next time when a customer searches for that term, this listing will be more likely to show at the top.
Here is an Amazon ranking hack that you may do to take advantage of the factor:
1.Construct on an URL for your product’s listing by using the [&keyword=your+keyword] query (appends the code inside the bracket to your product’s URL).
2.Use a link for shortening service such as bit.ly to create a shareable linking to that URL.
3.Drive some traffic to the shortened link step by step.
Now anytime you can make a sale from one of those shortened keyword’s links, and you’re basically tricking Amazon into thinking that these visitors can perform a product search for your target keywords.
Customer Satisfaction & Retention Factors:
Instead, they track on very often negative seller feedback rates or frequency. It doesn’t matter how poor the feedback is – all negative feedbacks are the same, and it all counts against you even equally in terms of search results’ rankings.
To make it more clearly – as a third-party seller is attempting to win the buy box, you want your seller’s feedback as high as possible. However, negative feedbacks’ rate is the only metric with a known effect on product’s search results.
Whether you’re yourself a first-party vendor or a third-party seller, on keeping up your inventory is always vital to maintaining top rankings, both in A9’s products’ search results and in your products’ buy box.
Two of the big customers’ satisfaction metrics are Percentage of Orders Refunded and Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation. In both terms, Amazon has found out that vendors/sellers with low in-stock rates tend to have higher refunds and cancellations, that, of course, is bad for customer retention.
If you have had a high Perfect Order Percentage, that means you have a high in-stock rate, accurate products’ listings and prompt up in shipping. That’s what exactly Amazon wants for each and every customer, so they’ll naturally rank high-POP seller above lower-POP one.
Important!! Buyer-removed negative feedbacks do not count towards your ODR. So, it really pays a lot to address each and every one of your customers’ issues.
Exit Rate
How often will a customer view your listings and then exit Amazon.com? That’s exactly your exit rate.If your pages have the above average exit rate, Amazon takes it as a sign that you have low-quality listings. Naturally, a high exit rate is because of your product has a low in-stock rate, or because your listings aren’t fully complete.
Clearly, packaging option is something that Amazon has found their customer cares about. But, even if it wasn’t, it’s a good way to separate your listings from other similar products (and rank higher through an increased conversion rates).
An easy way to do this is that is to use Fulfillment by Amazon to offer Frustration-Free Packaging. This is where Amazon works less packaging and fully recyclable material without sacrificing product’s protection.
Most people have no idea how Amazon will rank and deliver search results.
Are you want to know what is the real fact! Then here is a shocking fact!
Buyers search THREE TIMES more for buying products on Amazon, rather than on Google.
Think about it carefully…
Where will you go when you will need to know whether a product is worth enough for buying?
What’s up when you want to have the best deal on anything else from a booking to a refrigerator?
Amazon…. Yes it is!!
Yet, you perhaps don’t pay attention closely to the search engine; much less have the consideration of it as a marketing channel that is worth optimizing for. Even though most Amazon Marketers’ are always spending their times trying to have an optimization on their Amazon Listings’ for Google…
But, how it will be if you knew how to rank up in Amazon?
You definitely have THREE TIMES more and more ready-to-buy clients than you would get in Google – and you would do that in a fraction of time!!
Presenting A9: Amazon’s Product Search Algorithm
A9 is the key word of Amazon’s product search algorithm. As this is a guide of ranking products in Amazon, it makes a good sense to start with the source. So, this is A9’s official statement about how they will calculate search results.Our work has started long before a customer types for a query. We have been analyzing data, noticing the past traffic patterns, and are indexing the text that describes every product according to our catalog right before the customer even decides to search.
Amazon!!
We see here that much of the work is already done before the customer will touch the keyboard. As soon as the customer hits “Enter” to have a search, the A9 algorithm delivers results through the two-step process:
Once we wish to determine which items match best to the customer’s query, our automatic ranking algorithms score to find out at present the most relevant results for the user on Amazon.
It’s a very simple process on its core:
- First, they do the pulling the relevant results from the massive “catalog” of the product listings.
- Then, they have a sort of those results into an order which is “most relevant” to the users.
The answer is very simple: relevance doesn’t refer the same thing again to Amazon that it always does to Google. Read the statement from A9 vary carefully to see if you find out the difference:
One of A9’s tenets is here that relevance is in the eye of the customers and we always strive to get the best result for the users. We consistently evaluate our algorithms using human judgment, analysis, key business metrics and performance’s metrics for Amazon.
Look at these?
- Google always says, “What results is the most accurate answer to the searcher’s query?”
- Amazon always says, “What products are the searcher’s liking to buy?”
It is said that there are a few simple rules which you have to always remember about Amazon. Actually, 3 rules are critically vital for making the most of this guide. So make sure you will read them carefully:
- Amazon’s top goals in almost everything they do is to maximize Revenue Per Customer all the time (RPC)
- Amazon tracks every real action that customers take on Amazon just at the moment where their mouse clicks on the page.
- The A9 algorithms exist to connect the data tracked into the goal stated in.
Main theme of the A9 Algorithim:
Conversion Rate*: These are the factors that Amazon has found out have statistically relevant effects on conversion rates. Such as examples of conversion rate’s factors include customer’s reviews that are the quality of images and pricing. Seller CentralRelevancy: Always remember the first step in the A9 algorithm. At first, they gather the result and then they decide on how to list them up. Relevancy factors always tell A9 when it is time to consider your product’s page for a search term. Relevancy factors also include your title and product description.
Customers’ Satisfaction & Retention: How will you have the most money from a single customer? You have to make them so pleased that they will keep coming back. Amazon knows it that the secret to maximizing RPC lies in customer’s retention. It’s harder to get someone out there to spend $100 once than to spend $10 ten times. Customer Retention factors also include seller feedbacks and the Order Defect Rate.
(Note that Amazon always uses both predicted and real conversion rates for having product rankings. For an instant, if you ask a higher price than other similar product, Amazon will have a prediction of a lower conversion rate for the listing and they will use that rate until real data will correct it.)
If You Want More Effective Result, Then Follow The Best Amazon Ranking Factors:
Amazon isn’t the same as Google where they go to great extent to hide the factor that they have used in their algorithm. Inside Amazon’s Seller Central you will find that they will tell you several of their top ranking’s factors. You can visit the official Amazon Seller Support Blog as well for some good insights. And here’s the UK Seller Support Blog if you have the interest.Conversion Rate Is a good Factor:
After just a couple of searches on Amazon, it will be very much obvious that numbers of sales compared to other similar products are otherwise known as Sales Rank that is one of the most important rankings factors.Now Amazon is testing some new features in their search results where they will automatically append the Best-Seller banner to the best-selling’s product in the category-specific search.
More sales always mean higher in rankings – and higher in rankings means more sales!
It is like a vicious cycle but luckily we have still many ways for a new seller to compete.
Customer Reviews:
It perhaps doesn’t need to say that the numbers and positive attitude of your customer’s reviews are one of the vital ranking factors in Amazon’s A9 algorithm.For example, product search for the keyword -“vacuum” shows some interesting points on how Amazon weights the review volume vs. review quality.
Answered Questions
This is one of the metrics that Amazon won’t state specifically they track. But, it’s data that they have the access to and Q&A’s is listed closer to the top of the product’s page which typically means it is important for conversions.Moreover, their products like Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush, which ranks one for the keyword used “electric toothbrush” over other that have equally rated best-sellers because it has almost double as many customer Q&A’s than any other listing in the same category:
Image Size & Quality:
Amazon always continues to tighten their images’ size and quality policies for the product listings. At present, some categories don’t even display result that doesn’t have an image (at least one) that is 1000×1000 pixels or even larger. This is called “suppressed listings”.The 1000×1000 pixel of image sizes allows Amazon to offer their customers to Hover-to-Zoom feature, that they’ve found out is having a dramatic effect on conversion rates.
Generally, you will see that as your cursor hovers on the images, Amazon automatically will display a zoomed-in version of the product’s information pane.
Have a glimpse that quantity of images is not at all important here. This Tippmann paintball gun is the number one product for the use of keyword “paintball guns”. But it only has one image. As the image is big enough and also informative enough to make the customer clear about all the info they have. So that’s all that it makes Amazon happy.
That is why it’s always better to have one large, high quality of image than to have many normal-sized images. Not to mention that multiple images don’t convert better than one image. It is just that the benefit of quickly taper off after the first.
Price:
You may remember that earlier we talked about how Amazon’s A9 products’ search algorithm works both in predicted and in real conversion rate to determine which product is to show in their search results.One of the largest factors Amazon tries to use to determine predicted conversion’s rate is pricing. They also know that customers always tend to seek the best deal. Even more importantly, Amazon determines to price as the main factor in picking that product to show in buy box, which is a part of the page that contains the Add to Cart button. (We’ll talk about it later).
Parent-Child Products:
Many sellers try to create multiple listings for the variations of the same products. This is sub-optimal. It’s good to use Amazon’s built-in parent-child products to direct all the customers to a single product’s page.There are several benefits of it:
- It will maximize your customer’s reviews, as Amazon combines your similar products to a single primary product’s page
- It will make the most sense from UX standpoint; keeping the customer on the same page to make it more likable they’ll buy your product.
- Amazon shows a preference for the ranking of product with multiple options in their listings.
kids leggings
For example; the juicer is the only one in top 4 results to use parent-child product connection. When you will enable the parent-child relationship, it will show as an extra option in the Amazon’s search result.
This increases not only click-through rates that we can see here but also it helps you rank above the competition.
Time on Page & Bounce Rate:
Do you remember that Amazon can measure every other way a customer tries to interact with their website? So it’s very easy for them to track in detailed time on the page and bounce rate stats.Here’s the exact way what this similar-but-different metric means on Amazon:
Time on Page:
Amazon always believes that the time a customer will spend on your listing’s page is a good measure of how they are interested in your product. They know that a customer who will read your full product’s description, look through the reviews and he\she investigates the Q&A’s is more likely to purchase than the one who will spend a couple seconds skimming through the features.Bounce Rate:
A “bounce” occurs when a customer performs the job of a search, will visit your page, and then either he will go back to the search result or click onto a Related Product offer. It is better to keep in mind that Amazon has many exact measurements of bounce rate than Google because all users’ activities happen within their platform. Bounce RateProduct Listing Completeness:
The last conversion metric for optimization is listing completeness. The individual section of the product’s listing mostly has to do with relevancy. But the actual completeness of the listings has an extra effect on conversion rate.As a normal rule, the more complete you may make on your listings, the better it will be. Try to do your best to fill up every single field in the listing’s setup page to maximize your chance of being at the top of product’s search results.
Relevancy Factors:
Title:I’m not a fan of keyword stuffing. It’s not really necessary. The title’s keywords are combined with your other keywords used for optimization and product searches. There is no need for duplication. Whenever I come across a lengthy product title with too many keywords strung together, making it almost unreadable, I move on. While it is important to have good keywords in your product title, it is questionable how much mileage you will obtain by going overboard. It is best to have an easy to read title that is both professional and quickly describes your product.
Features / Bullet Points:
Another big reason is that certain Nexus charger ranks so largely is because it has a lot of keywords that have rich, informative features. A feature, which is displayed as bullet points right after the pricing and product’s options, has an absolute effect.Along with images, features are so vital that Amazon allows no other products without bullet points that are to be featured in the buy box. They are not having them as a serious roadblock to good Amazon ranking.
Again, a good example of proper Feature is Asus computer monitor that ranks number one for “computer screen”.
Have a look how the bullet-points are in used both extremely detailed and includes a ton of keywords! Besides, they’re very easily readable, that means they don’t confuse customers and risk hurting conversion.
Product Description:
Your product’s description is generally on your expanding up your Features. It’s also the parts of the page where you have the most control. If there’s really put a lot of efforts into the engagement, it’s in the product’s description.So it is said, keep it in mind that unlike Google there is no extra benefit of having a keyword appeared in multiple times on the product’s page; if your product listing isn’t anywhere at least once, you are to relevant of ranking for it.
There’s nothing for your advancement about this product listing. They just cover all the bases. It’s through the invitation, easy to skim, captions, and they even include extra tech.
Brand Manufacturer Part:
If you do a lot of searches on Amazon you will notice that those products with easily recognizable brand names in the title seem to consistently rank higher than those without. A lot goes into marketing and establishing a brand name. Just ask Nike, Coca-Cola, Xerox, and even Amazon! If you can include a brand name in your title then do it. This helps both new and repeating customers more easily search for your product.Specifications:
It is different than Features – this is the part of the pages where you naturally list the technical and physical detail of your products. These include size, shipping weight, color, publication date tech. specs and more. You can find this top-ranked product for the “home theater system” search term using their product’s specifications to the maximization.Category & Sub-Category:
You perhaps didn’t realize this, but once a customer will enter into a category – every other search they will perform on Amazon will be limited to that category by default.You can find here that a simple search for “dog food” generally takes us three categories deeper into Amazon’s product catalog, indicating the red lines in the images above. The blue box will show that we’ll have to stay in the Dog Food category until we either will return to the home page or manually tell Amazon to show us All Departments.
When you want to set up your product listing, make sure that you put your products in the most relevant, narrow category as possible.
Search terms:
In addition to categories that you can also specify as search terms, you want to be associated with your product. Even if Amazon lists five different 50-characters’ search term fields, you should better of thinking about it as big as 250 character text box in which you may enter every possible search terms you can think of for your products.This is somewhat complex to explain that I can’t do a better job than just head over there if you want to learn more about these specific factors. Nathan Grimm has already done over at Moz
Source Keyword:
This is one of the largest hidden steps that Amazon determines a listing’s relevance to a selected product search. This is also an example of how Amazon tracks on every single minutia of customers’ activities on their website. Take a look at this URL which links to a listing of a Black & Decker electric drill and sees if you can tell me what search terms I use to find it.You can find the source keywords right at the end of the URL – https://www.amazon.com/Euro-Cuisine-YM80-Yogurt-Maker/dp/B000EX16RY/ref=sr_1_4?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1490816046&sr=1-4&keywords=yogurt+maker – that can tell Amazon that the source’s keyword was “yogurt maker”.
So, if I were to purchase this drill, Amazon could know that this listing is boldly relevant for the term “electric drill”. The next time when a customer searches for that term, this listing will be more likely to show at the top.
Here is an Amazon ranking hack that you may do to take advantage of the factor:
1.Construct on an URL for your product’s listing by using the [&keyword=your+keyword] query (appends the code inside the bracket to your product’s URL).
2.Use a link for shortening service such as bit.ly to create a shareable linking to that URL.
3.Drive some traffic to the shortened link step by step.
Now anytime you can make a sale from one of those shortened keyword’s links, and you’re basically tricking Amazon into thinking that these visitors can perform a product search for your target keywords.
Customer Satisfaction & Retention Factors:
Negative Seller Feedbacks
Why do I have to list negative seller feedback specifically, as it is opposed to just seller feedback in general?Interestingly, Amazon generally claims not to track on positive seller feedback; at least, not for the sake of their products’ search algorithm.Instead, they track on very often negative seller feedback rates or frequency. It doesn’t matter how poor the feedback is – all negative feedbacks are the same, and it all counts against you even equally in terms of search results’ rankings.
To make it more clearly – as a third-party seller is attempting to win the buy box, you want your seller’s feedback as high as possible. However, negative feedbacks’ rate is the only metric with a known effect on product’s search results.
Order Processing Speed:
Amazon knows well that one of the best methods to make customers happy is with the fast and accurate shipping. As a result, a vendor or seller who has shown consistency and efficiency in order processing is more possibly to rank higher than a vendor who will have complaints of inaccurate or slow shipping.In-Stock Rate:
Customer hates it when they want a certain product but can’t have it. One of the most common problems, when it occurs, is when an item is out of stocks, or when a seller doesn’t keep proper tracking of their inventory.Whether you’re yourself a first-party vendor or a third-party seller, on keeping up your inventory is always vital to maintaining top rankings, both in A9’s products’ search results and in your products’ buy box.
Two of the big customers’ satisfaction metrics are Percentage of Orders Refunded and Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation. In both terms, Amazon has found out that vendors/sellers with low in-stock rates tend to have higher refunds and cancellations, that, of course, is bad for customer retention.
Perfect Order Percentage (POP):
POP is a measurement about how many orders go in perfect smoothly from just the time that a customer clicks “Add to Cart” to the product’s arriving at their home.If you have had a high Perfect Order Percentage, that means you have a high in-stock rate, accurate products’ listings and prompt up in shipping. That’s what exactly Amazon wants for each and every customer, so they’ll naturally rank high-POP seller above lower-POP one.
Order Defect Rate (ODR):
ODR is generally the opposite metric of POP.Whenever a customer does a claim with an order, it’s considered an order defect. Here are some of the most common ways an order can defect:
- Negative buyer’s feedback
- A-to-Z Guarantee claimers
- Any kind of shipping problem
- Credit card’s chargeback
Important!! Buyer-removed negative feedbacks do not count towards your ODR. So, it really pays a lot to address each and every one of your customers’ issues.
Exit Rate
How often will a customer view your listings and then exit Amazon.com? That’s exactly your exit rate.If your pages have the above average exit rate, Amazon takes it as a sign that you have low-quality listings. Naturally, a high exit rate is because of your product has a low in-stock rate, or because your listings aren’t fully complete.
Packaging Options:
This is the metric that I didn’t use to think of Amazon’s measurement, but recently I’ve found out stuff like this in product’s search results.Clearly, packaging option is something that Amazon has found their customer cares about. But, even if it wasn’t, it’s a good way to separate your listings from other similar products (and rank higher through an increased conversion rates).
An easy way to do this is that is to use Fulfillment by Amazon to offer Frustration-Free Packaging. This is where Amazon works less packaging and fully recyclable material without sacrificing product’s protection.
