There's a lot of noise about the Amazon algorithm, from "A9" to "A10" to whatever acronym is trending this year. Amazon doesn't publish its ranking formula, and the names are mostly industry shorthand. What matters is what we can see in the data, account after account: rank follows relevance and sales performance, and everything else feeds into those two.
The two things Amazon is trying to do
When a shopper searches, Amazon wants to show the products that are most likely to be bought for that search. So it asks two questions:
- Is this product relevant to the search? That comes mostly from your listing text and how shoppers interact with it.
- Will this shopper buy it? That comes from how well the product has sold for that search, and similar searches, in the past.
Relevance: getting indexed for the right keywords
You can't rank for a keyword you aren't indexed for. Amazon decides relevance mainly from:
- Title. The strongest relevance signal. Put your most important keyword phrase near the start, written for people, not stuffed.
- Bullet points and description. Supporting keywords and features, written to answer buyer questions.
- Backend search terms. Up to 249 bytes of hidden keywords: synonyms, alternative spellings and terms that don't fit naturally on the page. Don't repeat words already in the title.
- Attributes. Category fields like material, size and color. Shoppers filter on these, and missing attributes can hide your product from filtered searches.
To check indexing, search Amazon for your ASIN plus the keyword. If your product appears, you're indexed.
Sales performance: why velocity matters most
Once you're relevant, rank mostly follows how well you sell for that keyword, compared with competitors. The signals we watch:
- Sales velocity. Units sold per day for a keyword, and the trend.
- Conversion rate. The share of shoppers who buy after viewing. A listing that converts at 15% will outrank one at 8% for the same traffic.
- Click-through rate. How often shoppers click your result. Main image, price, review count and rating, and coupon badges all drive this.
This is why ads and organic rank are linked. Sponsored Products sales for a keyword count as sales for that keyword. Paying for visibility on a keyword, profitably or close to it, is one of the most reliable ways to climb its organic rank.
Things that quietly destroy rank
- Running out of stock. Rank drops quickly and takes weeks to rebuild. Low stock also triggers Amazon's low-inventory-level fee in FBA.
- Price jumps. A sudden rise usually cuts conversion, which drags rank down.
- Falling below 4 stars. Ratings feed click-through and conversion. Going from 4.3 to 3.9 can be more damaging than any keyword change.
- Suppressed or incomplete listings. Missing attributes, image errors or policy flags can remove a listing from search without much warning.
A ranking plan that works
- Pick the right keywords. Use search volume and the Search Query Performance report in Brand Analytics to find terms with real demand where you can compete. Five strong keywords beat fifty weak ones.
- Make the listing relevant and persuasive. Title, bullets, images and A+ built around those keywords. See our listing optimization guide.
- Push sales on those keywords. Exact-match Sponsored Products campaigns with a higher bid on top of search, accepting a higher ACoS for a set period.
- Protect conversion rate. Keep stock in, price steady, and reviews coming in through Amazon's "Request a Review" button and Vine where suitable.
- Track rank weekly. Watch your top-of-search impression share and organic position for each target keyword. When organic rank holds, reduce the ranking spend and move to the next keyword.
External traffic
Sales from outside Amazon (Google, social, email) count towards sales velocity too, and brand-registered sellers can earn a credit on them through the Brand Referral Bonus. It's a useful extra, but it rarely replaces a solid on-Amazon ranking plan.
The bottom line
There's no trick to Amazon ranking. Be relevant for the right keywords, convert better than the products around you, and keep selling consistently. Everything we do in a listing optimization project and in weekly PPC management is aimed at those three things.