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WSJ: Amazon changed search results to boost profits despite internal dissent
Amazon changed its search algorithm in ways that boost its own products despite concerns raised by employees who opposed the move, The Wall Street Journal reported today.
The change was made late last year and was "contested internally," the WSJ reported. People who worked on the project told the WSJ that "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 goal was to favor Amazon-made products as well as third-party products that rank high in "what the company calls 'contribution profit,' considered a better measure of a product's profitability because it factors in non-fixed expenses such as shipping and advertising, leaving the amount left over to cover Amazon's fixed costs," the WSJ said.
Amazon made the change indirectly, the WSJ reported. Instead of adding profitability into the algorithm itself, Amazon changed the algorithm to prioritize factors that correlate with profitability, the article said.
When contacted by Ars, Amazon said it does not optimize the ranking of its search results for profitability.
In a statement, Amazon said:
The Wall Street Journal has it wrong. We explained at length that their 'scoop' from unnamed sources was not factually accurate, but they went ahead with the story anyway. The fact is that we have not changed the criteria we use to rank search results to include profitability. We feature the products customers will want, regardless of whether they are our own brands or products offered by our selling partners. As any store would do, we consider the profitability of the products we list and feature on the site, but it is just one metric and not in any way a key driver of what we show customers.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday September 19 2019, @10:47AM (4 children)
for predicting the future.
Now that you are all locked in and there is nowhere else to even by a book without amazon knowing about it(almost), you get to see how they use this power to 'manipulate search results.'
Yet another case of Slimy Abusive Lateral Power Grabbing!
You thought they just wanted to be a free marketplace of everything you could buy, but NO, that's not enough for them, they want to control who can find what and when.
It's like they are a ghost in a huge mansion and everyone is looking for a flashlight, but the ghost sets all manner of random things where the people will look first, vibrators, razor blades, things that will get you put on a watchlist, the ghost is manipulating all of the searching so he can customize a way to bother everyone.
Does this sound like a trustworthy organization to host with? Now we know they jigger with things behind the scenes, why would you trust them with your hardware layer? Would amazon intentionally break your work if it didn't like you? If amazon will help reroute your packages for hardware comprimise, really what possible other line could we conceivably expect them to draw?
Any suggestions for alternative book dealers will be appreciated.
thesesystemsarefailing.net
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 19 2019, @01:16PM
Just like betting on stocks: no prize for predicting the obvious.
Anyone using a shopping site's own search function MUST understand that the search designers are incentivized to make the most money possible for the site. If this means: showing you the best deals on what you are looking for so you will patronize their site in preference to others who try to extract more profits from you... then, great, win-win. When the site is a virtual monopoly, I'd call that virtually naive to believe they will continue to do that.
Wal Mart's low price guarantee doesn't prevent them from charging double and more for common products in their rural stores compared to what Wal Mart charges in competitive urban markets. Don't like it? Drive into town, take photos of the shelf tags, then drive back to your rural store and demand your $2 discount on the products - their low price guarantee means they'll give YOU that discount, but anyone else who hasn't invested $20 in fuel and hours of their time won't be getting the lower prices.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 19 2019, @01:25PM (1 child)
K-mart did this first (or most conspicuously early...) Big store with EVERYTHING from daily needs through clothing and capital purchases like appliances. Floor layout specifically designed to make most common shopping trips pass by as much high-profit goods as possible. It's like taking the "foot traffic" metric used to determine the value of small retail shops captive and making your beer and cigarette customers walk by the rifles and fishing gear every damn single time they walk in to pick up somethin'.
Nothing new, nothing even that clever - and so much cheaper to implement in software than brick and mortar, but valuable enough that brick and mortar was doing it 40 years before there was a Google.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @06:47PM
Exactly. If you don't put the product in the customer's face, they won't ever give it a chance. Profits are driven by volume for lower-margin retail stuff so it's a must that you get people into the store with a good deal and push something new onto them every step they take.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thanar on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:51PM
When I am looking for the best deal on a particular book, I use BookFinder [bookfinder.com] which is a meta-search engine that gives you price-(including shipping)-sorted results for both new and used versions of the book. The book sites that most often have the best deals are sites like AbeBooks [abebooks.com] ThriftBooks [thriftbooks.com] BookDepository [bookdepository.com] Biblio [biblio.com].
ThriftBooks often has good combo deals and a points system for free books. Other sites that are good for finding used books in particular: Alibris [alibris.com] and Better World Books [betterworldbooks.com]