I present this ad from a service provider, claiming that one needs web traffic from outside amazon (blogs, instagram, twitter, facebook) that links to amazon detail pages to rate higher with “A10”.
Anyone buying this as a thing, or is this utter BS from someone selling magic beans?
If this is true, then why would we need them? Couldn’t we simply put up a page on our own website pointing to our product listing on Amazon? … Wait … haven’t people been do that for quite some time?
Seems like one of those things designed to catch money from the newbies who are looking for that quick easy way to the top.
Where are they getting the traffic to drive the Amazon algorithm? If this is bot driven traffic, then Amazon may turn around and penalize those who are using it.
In our opinion
Yes and No.
We’re still on A9 so anyone throwing is just dropping trendy phrases like A10 is just doing that. There isn’t some official change in the algo moniker and the changes aren’t even known.
External traffic is still qualified - It doesn’t mean landing pages. It means pages that are known for traffic and also conversions - so affiliate links on buzzfeed would work while a random landingpage redirection would not.
External traffic is huge but again 3. A9 has reached a level of sophistication where simpler things that worked until 2019-2020 do not. The biggest one being Search Find Buy through messenger bots, which was essentially a purchase funnel explained here:
Mind you this is from 2021 and its still talking about whether its outdated, 2-step urls etc. This is all obsolete.
So what works now?
Qualified leads from external sources. FB and Instagram obviously (expensive). Tiktok (cheaper and popular) and actual content websites/blogs. Of course, what we call AI (or narrow AI) is changing the nature of search itself.
So here we are.
I feel like anything except “spend more on PPC” is a crock at this point. Yes there’s other factors, but PPC, and obviously making the conversion being equally important to drive your BSR is ultimately what matters.
Nope. You can spend away and at least in my experience, amazon will only improve BSR if your BSR metrics improve. Amazon will only give you kw preference if you outspend, unless your organic reach is insane, but that is nearly impossible to do if amazon has multiple placements on page 1 full of ads. Now yes you obviously have to convert even to appear there and make it feasible but the outspend ppc strategy of old is all but obsolete.
This is not the first time I have heard this and from people we trust.
When we did some testing, it didn’t seem to make much of a difference and conversion sucked…
We are trying again in about a month…
Well, I did mention conversion as being equally important. Amazon obviously doesn’t want to show products that have a problem or crappy detail page that’s turning people off from buying it once they’ve gotten the click.
I think it is getting tougher to launch products/brands solely on Amazon nowadays unless you have a massive marketing budget to spend up front. Top ranking products can often sell 10K+ units a month. Getting that level of sales solely on PPC means you need to outbid everyone else for at least 30 - 40K clicks / month and not that many people can just gamble 100K+ on launching a new product.
The hypothetical just doesn’t work as on a new launch you’re not getting coversions with almost no reviews or even the little reviews you do have don’t match the competition. So even with 200k budget you wouldn’t be able to afford a launch on a high volume product - you would have go off amazon - prove the product and then bring it to amazon or some such.
Conversion isn’t simply king - it’s conversion in a sea of converting products that have established metrics - simply unfeasible.
Now there are of course exceptions and strategies around this but these are highly niche, price and everything else dependent.
Amazon wants proven schitt or they want you to get lost.
And as much as they incentivize new product launches (which isn’t much) - the barriers to entry are still on the stupid side
Products that are not at at least a 100% margin before adspend and minus all fees are probably the only products worth launching and we know people are still going to compete on some silly number like 30-40% margin products after fees before ppc spend.
IMO and experience, conversion is as important as any other metric when it comes to search rank which is different from BSR by a lot…
As for conversion with incoming clicks from outside efforts - They ARE NOT counted towards the ASIN’s conversion in the reports. The only way to measure that is with the attribution program.
I’m not sure that this is written anywhere but the info I have comes from someone that does this for a living and also from experience. We ran a campaign this year with thousands of clicks from the outside which converted terribly and our conversion on the business reports was unchanged from “normal”.
Amazon may give preferential treatment to those that are driving traffic in from external sources which begs the question - "Why not just set up a link to Amazon in posts on all the various socials and just “click away”…? Posts don’t cost anything…
Would Amazon know what IP it came from if it was being diverted in from META / Tok??? I’m not so sure… Is this cheating? Maybe…
It doesn’t affect CVR% but it does affect BSR viz a viz conversion/sales if you convert. That is the entire point of driving traffic from qualified sources. It’s not a straight metric as perhaps GGX was hinting at.
If you are driving external traffic and it converts to a sale you bet your a$$ it’s going to bump you up organically and you will see that clearly in your sub-node ranking as well.
All other variables withstanding.
Well yea… Maybe I wasn’t crystal clear. I was honing in on crappy cheap clicks from SM do not affect your overall conversion which is an essential element when it comes to overall search rank which isn’t necessarily tied to BSR. Actually BSR and Organic search aren’t really related at all.
I know you all find that shocking (perhaps) but if you have the right price and kick-butt conversion you could be the #1 Organic rank for the search term and be the 10th best seller for the keyword. Been there and done that…
Price, conversion, and A LOT of inventory (if FBA) are the keys to success on Amazon. Total sales of course have an influence, but the first 3 will get you there.
They aren’t directly related. Yes. But they are indirectly related.
The higher your organic search, the more your convert, the better your BSR and Sub-Rank becomes. Unless, we’re saying different things.
Search rank is always at the individual kw level and apparently can vary based on geolocation along with everything else that is geo-location variegated now.
And while I’m on board with everything you’re saying - there has to be an internal metric to link products that are similar - In my sub-node there is a product with very little reviews, very high priced that has unique feature, sure, but has substitutes and is sub-rank is really high - like 6-8 - so it doesn’t fit the model you’re referring to. Additionally the lowest SFR kw for it is, I believe 100k+ which it has the AC badge for, but still it is not the lowest SFR kw in the sub-node.
Interesting stuff.
No arguments with any of this. 
Of course we are all speculating, including me, but based on experience I do feel pretty comfortable with my stance.
Things are always changing. This geographical Overall Pick / Pop Brand Pick / Organic Rank is new (last couple months).
There’s now also a time of day and day of week factor. We always lose our OP badge on Saturdays to another item, in a different form, with a 5th of the reviews, and twice the price per dose. It’s very strange.
So we can add a 5th element to all of this which is “spreading the wealth around” which really pisses me off. Hard to plan when you know you’re the best but Amazon gives someone else the badge to be, idk, “fair”?
Not really fair when someone else gets unearned rewards just because. That listing is full of false advertising too which is nice. Not like Amazon cares or would even look. God forbid we reported it. We’d be suspended for anticompetitive behavior and lose our brand registry too.
That’s just how sick Amazon is. They just don’t care. 75% of the listings our best seller competes with are complete BS and all the proof anyone would need is right there to see in the listings, which are in direct conflict with the actual packaging and what’s stated on there.
What that boils down to is buyers don’t even take the time to look at the details which are right there. All you need is a decent rank and a fraudulent listing to succeed. Integrity is optional, and apparently frowned upon in Amazon’s eyes.
One of the big issues is this:
Manipulating rankings basically comes down to spending a lot of time grinding away at the algorithm, and the willingness to do something that could potentially be considered fraud in the US.
When you can pay a few hundred people $2 / hour and your country has no law against it, it’s basically trivial to boost a listing up in a manner that seems legitimate to Amazon’s algorithms.
