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Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

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Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#191

Post by roywiggins »

bluedino wrote: post #155
roywiggins wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense- if Anker's batteries start exploding, nobody will buy Anker's batteries again, and that's a significant part of their brand. If Amazon's batteries start exploding, it's not quite the same magnitude. People will still shop at Whole Foods.

Samsung doesn't have a problem selling phones

People buy Samsung phones because they're good phones, people buy Anker batteries because they're good batteries. If they start exploding people will find some other, better battery brand.

Admittedly a phone that explodes is a bad phone, but Samsung can still sell its "good phone" brand the same way Apple can still sell its laptops.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#192

Post by dehrmann »

josefresco wrote: post #51

Side rant: Where is my Amazon branded phone case?!? This weekend I placed a half dozen searches for "iphone 11 case" and was only presented with super shady, low quality vendors. Floveme? Tendam? Donse? Spigen? and my favorite: Vapesoon. Is it just too early for the legit brands to have a case ready? Or am I doing it wrong?

This reminds me of CES. There were more phone case and screen protector manufacturers there than I knew existed.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#193

Post by throwawaysea »

noego wrote: post #141

The article is disappointingly misleading and buries one of the key details "Amazon’s lawyers rejected the overt addition of contribution profit into the algorithm... They turned to the metrics Amazon uses to test the algorithm’s success in reaching certain business objectives, said the people who worked on the project. When engineers test new variables in the algorithm, Amazon gauges the results against a handful of…

Thank you. I was struggling to understand what the article was trying to tell me or why it was so lengthy. It feels like news has evolved to buzzword/sensationalist headline + enough content/data (even if irrelevant) to provide a sense of comprehensiveness/substance.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#194

Post by partialrecall »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #171
partialrecall wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about Amazon Basics, but with Amazon's Choice products they're plainly not evaluating products before selecting them. LockpickingLawyer on youtube has done reviews on several Amazon's Choice locks and safes and they've all been abysmal borderline fraudulent products.

Amazon's Choice is a purely algorithmic tag decided by the computer. It's utterly meaningless. I guess they change periodically on some reason known only to the code. Amazon Basics must have had at least a couple of humans involved to agree getting it branded Amazon.

Presumably it was humans who signed off on the premise of Amazon's Choice in the first place. If Amazon is so careless with their brand in that case, as a consumer I'd feel like a sucker if I trusted there brand to mean much when their employees are evaluating products rather than algorithms.

Maybe the algorithm seemed like a good idea at the time but later turned sour. If that's the case, why hasn't Amazon yanked the program? If they don't terminate this program when it performs poorly, I don't trust them to keep other programs in line either.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#195

Post by ikeboy »

Spare_account wrote: post #186
ikeboy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I've spoken to people who compete with Amazon private label in electronics and they tell me Amazon doesn't care about quality, and that the factories they were buying from were known to be lower quality. I've also heard the opposite about Anker - that they always get the best quality.

The issue, then, is how do I guarantee that the Anker branded product I'm buying through Amazon is genuinely Anker manufactured. I'm of the understanding that Amazon comingle stock from different supply chains in their warehouses so presumably I can't trust them to be supplying genuine hardware.

Most Anker stuff is sold by only Anker, so that wouldn't be a problem.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#197

Post by ikeboy »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #176
ikeboy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I've spoken to people who compete with Amazon private label in electronics and they tell me Amazon doesn't care about quality, and that the factories they were buying from were known to be lower quality. I've also heard the opposite about Anker - that they always get the best quality.

Anker are difficult to gauge, I've a few products of theirs, mostly bought a few years ago, with nothing recent - those have been excellent quality and value. Yet I've also started to notice precisely identical unknown brands for most of their products on Amazon. So I no longer have any certainty. Are Anker merely badge engineering some random white label product, or are Amazon / Anker just not caring or able to do a…

Are those identical products being sold as Anker, or under different brands? If it's different brands then it's not counterfeit just to make a product that looks similar to another one.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#198

Post by partialrecall »

ceejayoz wrote: post #127
VRay wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AmazonBasics isn't any more trustworthy than any of the junk you find on AliExpress or at Wal-Mart/Target/Best Buy. (Except that it has a good return policy backing it, I think)

Amazon is at least liable (theoretically, at least) if they sell an AmazonBasics product that winds up giving my kids lead poisoning, and will have a lot harder time disappearing into the wind to avoid a lawsuit. They disclaim any liability for third-party sellers.

Sure, but will a lawsuit unpoison your kid?

Unless Amazon is currently testing products for lead before recommending them, which somehow I doubt, then the potential of a lawsuit against Amazon isn't actually protecting your child.

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#199

Post by opportune »

jhallenworld wrote: post #145
Pxtl wrote: post #34

Considering how shopping at Amazon now feels like shopping at an electronics bazaar in Singapore with giant bins of random knock-off products of suspicious quality, tweaking the algo to push name-brand options (even if it's their own name-brand) would be a welcome move to me as a buyer. Obviously it's grossly unfair to their vendors, but from a strictly user-centric view it's an improvement. Otherwise, Amazon feels l…

They do care about the quality of their own products. I posted a negative review on an Amazon product, and they called me(!) so that I could further elaborate. It was very odd because they called within an hour of the review. At some point I must have given them my phone number. This was a review for their TV Cube. I was trying to buy something with good voice control to allow a paralyzed person to browse YouTube, an…

I posted a negative review on a FBA product (~$100) that arrived super late and damaged. I got called to offer me $20 to take the review down. Didn’t respond, they somehow got my review taken down anyway. That was the first time I realized how bad Amazon was getting. Kind of surprised this is something Amazon does too though; I figured only crappy dropshippers would engage in that

Re: Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products

#200

Post by knodi123 »

tzs wrote: post #181
mattmcknight wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm done with buying stuff from third party sellers on Amazon. If the seller is not amazon.com, I am not buying from Amazon. Fulfilled by Amazon is not good enough. Unfortunately, the only way to get a seller option is to pick an item department. I wonder why they would bury such a useful feature. It should be a box you can tick for the whole site.

Are items where the seller is Amazon immune from commingling [1]? [1] OT: I wondered why it is "commingling" instead of "comingling" (like "cohabitation"), or "colmingling" (like "collaboration"), "conmingling" (like "concur"), or "cormingling" (like "correlation"), so looked up the rule. The com-, co-, col-, con-, and cor- prefixes all mean "together". Which is used generally follows this rule: "Com- is used before…

from the online etymology dictionary,

com-

word-forming element usually meaning "with, together," from Latin com, archaic form of classical Latin cum "together, together with, in combination," from PIE *kom- "beside, near, by, with" (compare Old English ge-, German ge-). The prefix in Latin sometimes was used as an intensive.

Before vowels and aspirates, it is reduced to co-; before -g-, it is assimilated to cog- or con-; before -l-, assimilated to col-; before -r-, assimilated to cor-; before -c-, -d-, -j-, -n-, -q-, -s-, -t-, and -v-, it is assimilated to con-, which was so frequent that it often was used as the normal form.

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