Search for profit
Amazon tweak for own gain: sources
Amazon has adjusted its product-search system to more prominently feature listings that are more profitable for the company, said people who worked on the project — a move, contested internally, that could favor Amazon’s own brands.
Late last year, these people said, Amazon optimized the secret algorithm that ranks listings so that instead of showing customers mainly the most-relevant and best-selling listings when they search — as it had for more than a decade — the site also gives a boost to items that are more profitable for the company.
The adjustment, which the world’s biggest online retailer hasn’t publicized, followed a years-long battle between executives who run Amazon’s retail businesses in Seattle and the company’s search team, dubbed A9, in Palo Alto, Calif., which opposed the move, the people said.
Any tweak to Amazon’s search system has broad implications because the giant’s rankings can make or break a product. The site’s search bar is the most common way for US shoppers to find items online, and most purchases stem from the first page of search results, according to marketing analytics firm Jumpshot.
The issue is particularly sensitive because the US and the European Union are examining Amazon’s dual role — as marketplace operator and seller of its own branded products. An algorithm skewed toward profitability could steer customers toward thousands of Amazon’s in-house products that deliver higher profit margins than competing listings on the site.
Amazon’s lawyers rejected an initial proposal for how to add profit directly into the algorithm, saying it represented a change that could create trouble with antitrust regulators, one of the people familiar with the project said.
The Amazon search team’s view was that the profitability push violated the company’s principle of doing what is best for the customer, the people familiar with the project said. “This was definitely not a popular project,” said one.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has propounded a “customer obsession” mantra.
“We have not changed the criteria we use to rank search results to include profitability,” said Amazon spokeswoman Angie Newman in an e-mailed statement.