and search says I’m still in a whole bunch of categories where I’m not. Not that I have anything against Sports or Babies or Party Supplies — but I just shouldn’t be there, and people looking for ME shouldn’t have to waste their time clicking to see what I have in those categories.
I realize that if I wait a few days this glitch might go away, and Amazon will screw up something much more serious, but I’m annoyed. Why can’t their 14-year-old neophyte coders stop messing things up?
Are you sure it’s really your listings? Sometimes, for example, Amazon returns results that aren’t me, in lists of my shop name. (aerosoles, Aerogarden, Aerator…)
In Handmade alone, when I search meredithbead, the 2nd listing I see is Generic. If I look in books, I get results, but then if I look they are actually not your full name, but from authors called meredith. Same for the Kindle sub cat.
If you poke around in the other categories and still see your actual listings, that’s an issue, but often it’s just search returning broader results that kinda sorta fit search terms.
No need to swear (“…let Gus cuss for the rest of us”) on a stack of Bibles: I harbor no doubt that you are correct.
What you’re describing is simply an originally-baked-in feature (not a bug, @ least not in Amazon’s eyes) of the A9/A10 Sales Search Algorithm’s recipé.
Amazon’s widely-displayed penchant, in recent years, of climbing aboard the A/B-Split Testing regime’s long-demonstrable degree of success has soured the soup in more than one fashion, however…
Life, in its inimitable fashion, generally finds a way to teach us that it’s typically better to pragmatically climb the ladder itself rather to clamber frenziedly up the sides of the edifice which supports its end-point.
Amazon, “person” tho’ it might be under the Color Of Law, is like any other corporate conglomerate in its disdain for that human lesson in regards to its own realm of affairs.
I am not going to disagree with @Dogtamer but I have a different take on the problem.
The A9 search was designed to produce results which were more likely to lead to a sale than more traditional listings, and for many years IT DID. It annoyed sellers who felt it diminished their possibility of making a sale, but buyers bought.
Like every thing else on the site, the massive increase in sellers and listings, and the immense duplication of both destroyed the effectiveness of the algorithms and the attention span of the buyers.
I harp on the too big to manage theme not just because it is accurate, but it appears that Amazon knows it is true and is quietly taking actions to reduce the speed of growth and eventually the size of the site.
Every major announcement, from personnel matters to cutting the number of Amazon private labels to seller restrictions points in the same direction.
IMO the original goals and implementation of the A9 search were the proper choice.
Unfortunately, Amazon failed to properly manage the growth of the site, perhaps to out of fear, or perhaps out of short term needs to keep its stock multiple at an insane level/
As for the categories displayed in the search, they have been arbitrary, either due to the compartmentalized way Internet software is written, or bugs, which are many,
Most of the largest Internet sites have outgrown the capability of their software. which is why the AI push will probably be an earth-shattering disaster.
I never thought of doing this to see what categories I’m in. I do see that I’m in more categories than Handmade, which is cool. When I click on my product, I see the tree at the top is not Handmade. However, when I scroll down to the nitty gritty, I see my rank is in Handmade, so I think that must be my official category for that product.
