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Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

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Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#491

Post by ajross »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #394
ajross wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a long period where I would buy things from Amazon without considering other sources. That's gone now and they can't quickly get it back. That's probably true, but the truth is that situation was an unstable equilibrium in the first place. There's absolutely no reason in a functioning market to expect (or want!) one provider to be the uniform best option at all things. Eventually everyone else starts comp…

There was no lack of competition before, it's just that everyone loved Amazon... they had no desire to look at the competition. As that love affair wears off, we're looking elsewhere.

> everyone loved Amazon... they had no desire to look at the competition

That's literally the definition of a lack of competition. Everyone loved Amazon because they were cheaper and faster and better. Even inside the tech microcosm, no one makes a purchasing decision based on "love".

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#493

Post by agret »

hrktb wrote: post #219
ashelmire wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. Can they? They aren't the ones selling those products, individual companies set their own prices - and they have to pay a cut to Amazon. Even if that cut goes to 0 (making Amazon lose lots of money), that only puts them at barely better than the rest of the market. Walmart sets its own prices. >2) Given purchasing power scale…

They have a pretty aggressive policy of repricing in some markets. For instance in e-books, the most extreme cases, Amazon can straight give away a series' first volume to recoup on the sales on the following purchases. If I remember well in some cases the author or editor has no say on it and Amazon pays for the price difference. I wouldn't be surprised if they can do the same on other retail goods as long as they p…

Considering most eBooks with the free first book are like $0.99-$3 a book after you take out Amazons normal profit cut for the book they probably aren't really paying that much for the free book anyway so it makes it worth their while to do it this way.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#494

Post by yuhong »

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

Amazon shows some of the problems of the current debt-based economy. Most Amazon orders are with credit card debt, and of course most of it is imported from China and will be affected by many of the Trump tariffs.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#495

Post by hakfoo »

ixacto wrote: post #341
cs702 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Speaking as a longtime customer, I agree: this is what Amazon's behavior feels like to me nowadays. Search no longer works well for me. Reviews and product ratings are no longer trustworthy. The authenticity of products in key categories (e.g., electronics) can no longer be taken for gra…

Amazon search and non amazonbasics products are approaching garbage-level. How about half a page of advertising to buy some Chinese knockoff of a product that will break in a month. My mom wanted some new lighting Apple headphones (earpods). Good luck finding actual Apple products on there. I bought them from B&H instead. No tax + free faster shipping.

Amazon's search has always been terrible in at least some verticals. Computer hardware, for example.

I decided I wanted a GTX 1080 recently, and I gave Amazon's search a swing in case I was missing something that pcpartpicker didn't grab.

Search "GTX 1080" from their home page. First two results are aftermarket coolers, then we start seeing cards.

Okay, let's filter to just a price range likely to be cards... $300-500. The first result is technically in range at $499, but flagged "You can't buy this because you don't have Prime." The second is $661. Yes, technically there's a "used or something from $499.99." in the corner, but it smells like they've ignored the filtering entirely unless you want to play hunt the pixel.

If I do a step further "sort by price", it still sorts by the cheapest third-party used price and then shows the new price in big figures, leaving the results seemingly unsorted. You then see a disclaimer "Showing selected results. See all results for gtx 1080." WTH is "selected results?" My consumer sense is tingling-- are they trying to steer me into higher-margin items? Okay, I'll select "see all". The first result is a Vega 56, the second a 1060.

And this is why I bought from Newegg. That and they had a no-gimmicks model for $430.

What went wrong?

* Product categorization is a mess. I have to wonder if this is third party vendors keyword stuffing their listings for a "GTX 1050 not 1060 1070 1070TI 1080" or just some overly aggressive matching. In other searches, I've seen a related problem-- the same item repeated with marginally different listings.

* New/refurb/open box/etc. really need to be seperate SKUs. Books and DVDs, the used choice is a reasonable substitute, but on a ~$400 product where warranty is a purchasing factor, you can't really bundle them together.

* Filter and sort needs to work how you'd expect it. On the big price number. Maybe that means they have to do things like spinning out new/used/refurb as suggested, and maybe the "$A, also available from $B" phrasing needs rework.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#497

Post by daveFNbuck »

ajross wrote: post #490
majormajor wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's probably true, but the truth is that situation was an unstable equilibrium in the first place. There's absolutely no reason in a functioning market to expect (or want!) one provider to be the uniform best option at all things. Eventually everyone else starts competing. I'd say it's somewhat the reverse: Amazon was vastly better for things they sourced and sold themselves. I couldn't get everything there, but…

Or... if they hadn't tried to expand into "absolutely everything", you'd be buying from Walmart right now. Obviously you can second guess any single decision of theirs and try to spin that as "The Reason" Amazon is looking less dominant. I'm saying that no, that's silly. They're less dominant because they're seeing significant competition, and the stuff you perceive as "worse" is the inevitable result of them having…

How are we all the richer for shipping being slow and unreliable? Do counterfeit goods make us all richer?

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#498

Post by beenBoutIT »

Can someone explain why Amazon works so hard to direct searches into searches within its product categories? An example would be a search for 'Baking Soda' leading you to the 'Grocery & Gourmet Food' or 'Industrial & Scientific' categories. I'd much rather search for 'Baking Soda' and have it return every kind of 'Baking Soda' Amazon carries, as I want the best price and don't care how it's been categorized by the retailer. It's almost always faster to search for anything sold Amazon via a Google search outside of Amazon's own search engine.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#499

Post by saalweachter »

darioush wrote: post #399
taurath wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me my trust is breaking over a couple pairs of socks, of all things. I ordered some socks from amazon which were a larger than normal size. I was actually excited when they arrived and they actually fit perfectly - something thats difficult when trying to find specific styles of socks. I enjoy them so much I decide to order 3 packages for the future. They come in the mail - all of them are the smaller size (but h…

Had a very similar issue with socks. Re-ordered after ~4 years of the old socks wearing out. New socks came with the brand stitch in different color, and the new ones are already wearing out in ~4 months.

For me, the worst part was that the socks didn't feel like new socks. They weren't used, they just lacked the delicious new socks feeling.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#500

Post by jhall1468 »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #470
dymk wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Behavioral economics would like to disagree. Supply and demand are a function of what buyers want; somebody wanting something _right now_ has been a force that markets cater to since markets have existed.

Behavioral economics isn't a law of physics, much of it is completely unproven, relying on psychology, which has a huge reproduce-ability problem. Price gouging is raising prices to greater than what is fair for the value. The amount of price raised is almost certainly to be greater than what is deemed fair in these cases from the law of supply and demand. Despite one person demanding it more, one person may be deman…

> The amount of price raised is almost certainly to be greater than what is deemed fair in these cases from the law of supply and demand.

That's not true. Price gouging is a term thrown around a lot, but generally it refers to drastically increasing prices when supply takes a sudden hit (due to natural disaster, often).

> verses spying on them in their own home and offering them products.

Spying on them? Are you joking? They are on Amazons website. How in the world is that spying? Man, more and more Hacker News is starting to sound like reddit.

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