AI and SEO

Selling on Amazon Listings and Variations
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1

This is a slightly different angle from the ongoing AI post, so I thought I’d start a new one.

Background:
When Handmade was borg’d into the site-wide categories, many of us lost visibility, and thus, sales. Not only were we hidden in Search, but our landing pages were chopped up, minimizing our listing content to divert sales to higher-algorithm products. (Yes, I realize Amazon screws everyone, but my upcoming question relates to this.)

Before, my entire (well-written, precise) description was intact. Now, my page looks like this:
Pictures on left
Title
Product details (totally useless repetition of title words, plus Earring design dangle — if you can’t figure it out from the pictures, you have no business buying jewelry)
About this item 5 bullet points
Additional details this is OK
but then …
Jewelry Collection three more add-to-cart suggestions that will never sell to the same person as my item
Trending business discount offers horizontal carousel leading with toilet paper
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly another horizontal carousel, with jewelry
More to consider from Amazon Brands ditto
Product specifications more repetition
Product details more yawn details including UNSPSC Code — does anyone actually give a crap? — and it certainly won’t help sell the product
Videos I don’t have any
Looking for specific info? search bar
…and finally
Product description my well-written, precise description that should have been front and center, because that, with pictures, is what will sell.

Which brings us to the topic of this post.

Amazon, perhaps out of guilt (I doubt it) or experimenting with ways to monetize their AI investment (probably), shows another item daily in Manage Inventory as Enhance listings. Click leads to a page of suggested bullet points, 7 instead of the previously allotted 5, of bloated, effusive, cutesy salesy AI prose, cutting and pasting bits of my description content into the resulting AI dross, stylistically indistinguishable from every other AI blather. The kind of garbage you see in freshman English papers, when a student needs to write a 1000-word essay but has only 200 words of material. CRINGE.

The first dozen listing “enhancements” were so over-the-top cringe-y, I shut the page immediately. No way I want my products associated with that level of writing.

However, will these “enhancements” boost my SEO? Since the important/professional description is a 15-minute scroll down the page, will the bloated repetitive AI bullet points help or hinder? Do Amazon’s search engines give preference to Amazon AI content?

Discussion?

I understand that the intricacies of Amazon’s algorithms are stored in a safe somewhere with Bezos’s grandmother’s secret salsa recipe.

2

Forgot to add — I held my nose, closed my eyes, and accepted five “enhanced” listings, just to see if anything exciting happens. Not holding my breath.

3

If it’s not right, decline it. We do custom so it is similar in the fight to keep it right. AI says we need a size but Size 8 isn’t accurate because the customer selects a size for us to customize to. But AI said Size 8 and we do have a Size 8 so we let it slide. Then later on, an item came up as Size 7 and the customer could get a Size 7. But then, an item came up with Size 9 and the customer can not get a Size 9. We then realized that the bot was connecting part of the SKU to the Size attribute. On top of that, we really don’t have a Size … it is a total length of the item.

Finally, AI decided that the Size 8 was a Ring Size. The item is not a ring.

On one item, we fought to get the labeling of the addition of Ring Size removed and Amazon agreed but then just removed the Size (which was the less wrong of the two).

So our suggestion would be to go through those Enhance suggestions very carefully and reject everything that is not correct and give the reason when asked. It is a PITA but just know that eventually the Enhanced suggestions go away. Hopefully, you haven’t accepted too many things that will enable further change suggestions and damage to the listings.

4

I read all the “enhanced” bullets and altered the wording on a few before accepting. I have a good eye for spotting written mistakes, but I appreciate the warning.

5

I often wonder if this is Amazon’s way of grabbing the attention of the hyperactive ADHD customer who will just clink on a link impulsively and buy anything else from other bigger sellers.

Marilyn

6

I imagine that Amazon’s performance-improving claims are just as much fiction as all of the other ads promising “enhanced” results. :wink:

7

As I and most of the other sellers who were authorized in the Fine Arts and Collectibles categories discovered, if you are not selling box in/box out commodity products, Amazon’s attempts at AI are inevitably incompatible with being able to adequately offer our items.

Fortunately for me and my competitors and colleagues, Ebay draws the bulk of the buyer pool we are targeting.

If Ebay did not dominate this area of sales, we would be tearing our hair out or forced to change what we sell to meet the Amazon merchandising model.

8

This was my further question, if Amazon AI-enhanced listings are given preference, is it only within Amazon’s search or a broader effect? And if it is NOT a broader effect, then why is Amazon pushing it? :thinking: