Impact of Amazon's A9 Algorithm on Product Ranking

by Saurabh Tiwari Digital Marketing Manager

With nearly half of the overall market share, Amazon has evolved as one of the biggest game-changers in the online-retail & electronic commerce industry. Looking at this fact, it comes as no surprise that this eCommerce giant has been ahead of its time in developing and integrating the latest technologies to its platform.

However, talking of the online world, tech giant Google still owns nearly 90% plus of the total web search share today[1]. Yet, when it comes to product searches, more than 55% of the internet users prefer doing it on an eCommerce marketplace rather than a traditional search engine[2]. There is definitely something that defines the accuracy of the product search for these eCommerce portals and what makes them a better choice over Google and such traditional search engines. Similarly, Amazon makes use of the A9 algorithm - developed by its subsidiary A9, which has been working on refining this technology since 2003.

What is the A9 Algorithm? How Does it Work?

Amazon's A9 algorithm is the search algorithm used by Amazon to deliver the best in class products in its search results that find maximum relevance to user-generated queries in the product search box by considering a certain number of factors within.

Once the user enters the query(or keyword) in the input of the search box and hits the search button, the text is analyzed. The results that are most likely to match his/her query intent are displayed in the search results page.

Understanding A9 Algorithm in Detail

Amazon A9 algorithm works pretty much similar to Google's site ranking algorithms, whereby weighing the various optimization characteristics in your product's content so being featured, inwards & outwards, i.e., analyzing it at both frontend and backend. This primarily includes the content copy, quality of images, and the keywords for being used for the individual products and the overall catalog. While these factors synonymize more with the keyword relevancy and optimization factors of a search engine algorithm for finding the relevancy, it is the trust and authority factors that tend to lie within which makes up for the difference. And when subjected to the 'Amazon sales+customer purchase intent,' the critical focus is on the variety of other external factors.

Gone are those days when a seller with general layman knowledge of IT and computers could get the expected dough( sales) with simply upload and forget stature. Besides general product optimization, the A9 algorithm has impacted a variety of such factors in its recent updates, and considering them for any competitive seller becomes a necessity and a part of any business strategy in this case. While these algorithm policies focus more on rectifying and removing the fakes and counterfeits, the factors it considers to do so have adversely affected various sellers in the past. The results have been baffling numerous Amazon SEO enthusiasts and digital marketing companies and service providers as well in the meantime, making them turn in a keen eye over its actions. But then, what are those things that have been influenced by this A9 algorithm for product ranking? Let's look at each one in detail.

More Emphasis on Contextualization With the User Intent

A9 algorithm updates have added more to the relevancy of frontend and backend content of products that sellers provide. While Amazon offers more than sufficient information for uploading product content with its guidelines (via Amazon seller Central) such as for title, description, Bullet, the emphasis today is more focused on the contextual part of the overall information to match user queries. It is more important to choose the right set of keywords for your product and catalog. And this would require more research in terms of valuable keywords and top-grossing competition, and put them to the best use when working on your product content. Countless free and paid tools can assist you in your keyword research and give you all the idea of user-related searches and similar things such as Google Ads Keywords Planner and other paid ones, so make sure to use them to the fullest.

Sales - The Leading Determinant Factors

Focus on sales is a significant part of your amazon's A9 algorithm while addressing the user's intent and is an essential element that contributes to improving Amazon's overall sales.

The result pages being generated today deliver priority to the products that have a better sales record with proper sales frequency, or other terms- the sales velocity.

While this wasn't the case a few years back, investing in Amazon PPC has become a necessary part of any product launches on Amazon. Or it is the use of external traffic sources that can help you get the sales. Besides, the competitive prices and possibilities of positioning yourself on the 'products bought together' section of the Amazon page can help. Still, it is more complicated in today's date than ever.

Influence on the Trust & Authority

As already stated earlier, Amazon does impose some rank penalties on your product as well as boost it, on the other hand, depending on the trust and authority foregrounds. When synonymizing these factors with the traditional search engine ranking algorithms, it is more correlated to the backlinking and other things like the linking web authority. However, in the case of Amazon, this is different since, in this case, the 'purchase intent' matters.

And to make it happen, Amazon, on one end, uses factors such as a seller's authority, reviews and ratings, price, and branding factors (influence of A+). On the other hand, it also calculates sure organic sales, PPC performance, click-through rates on Impressions, and its performance on places like 'frequently bought together,' besides the direct sales you attract from inbound links to your product.

A9 algorithm looks at your existing positive to negative review ratio, the overall seller authority based on the factors such as fulfillment method, and user review analysis on behalf of things such as seller's response time to the reviews, or in other terms, overall contribution to amazon's motto which is, customer service. Apart from that, the content quality based on enhanced brand content(EBC) and A+ enhanced marketing content (A+EMC) may also influence your sales indirectly. So you will have to keep a mark on yourself and when to turn up a couple of more product sales from your inventory. So you will have to keep a mark on your seller scores when working things out.

Consistency is the Key

When considering the ranking factors, A9 also goes through your sales history and how much sales you have had in the past. Its consistency becomes a matter of concern. Moreover, to optimize your performance, you, as a seller, will also have to be active in keeping your stock filled and up to date besides being proactive in fulfilling shipment requirements. One of the easy ways to get along with the latter is adhering to the fulfillment by Amazon criterion. According to the sources, it can boost sales and impressions by as much as 10% and also works on making your products perceivable from a trusted source.

Amazon sells over 500 million products from more than 2 million sellers, and the products topping the search result list get more than 64% of the clicks[3]. That is what makes the Amazon marketplace one of the competitive battlegrounds as besides being more customer-centric, the platform demands new innovations from the sellers at the same time to feature their products.

While all these above facts do sound intimidating for any seller planning to post new products in their catalog, Amazon, in the meantime, does open the gates for better performance and chances to score initial sales why it's PPC and sponsored ads. And there are always other channels available that many updated experts suggest and use in their strategy and approach to empower the product for better conversions and more sales while pushing users for a genuine review and rating.

Looking at the facts above and how the A9 algorithm updates are influencing the products and the sellers worldwide, this would be the right time to get down with the Notepad and jot things down that you can focus on for enhancing your sales frequency and overall consistent performance while considering the catalog as a whole. And since it's more about the Purchase intent of the buyers, leveraging the pros of promotional campaigns like discounts over social media and other platforms can always come in handy. And if it's too complicated for you, you can always plan to outsource it to a trusted digital marketing company with Amazon SEO expertise who often keep a trick or two up their sleeves to growth-hack and uplift your key performance indicators.

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