Amazon A10 Algorithm: Boost Your Listing Visibility

Aside from being the world’s largest online marketplace, Amazon also has a side hustle as a pretty successful search engine. It won’t help you find cat pictures or identify that spot on your back, but Amazon’s search engine is one of the most popular when it comes to product searches. The exact numbers are debated, yet it’s likely at least half of all US product queries online start on Amazon.

Although there was no official release, Amazon’s recent updates are referred to as the Amazon A10 algorithm, a newer version of the previous A9 algorithm. While not everything has changed, if your marketing strategies involve the Buy Box, keywords, or PPC campaigns, you’ll want to pay attention to what’s new.

What’s Different in Amazon’s A10 Algorithm?

The Amazon A10 algorithm may appear similar to the A9 algorithm, but you can really see the differences in these areas specifically:

Seller Authority Has More Influence — Even with the Buy Box

One of the biggest changes in Amazon’s algorithm update is the increased significance of seller authority. Your standing and history as an Amazon merchant greatly affect not only how your products appear in search results, but also how frequently you win the Buy Box.

Specifically, seller authority factors in these fields:

• Sales history: how much you sell and how frequently
• Time selling on Amazon: priority given to experienced sellers
• Seller feedback and rating: what customers say about you
• Returns: how many returns you’ve issued and how well you handled them
• Product range: somewhat surprisingly, Amazon gives priority to sellers with more products in their catalog

If you want to improve your chances of winning the Buy Box or just rank higher in search results, focus on optimizing the above areas. Using FeedbackFive to request seller feedback and product reviews can boost your seller authority to make a stronger impression on the algorithm. You can also use FeedbackFive to track your Buy Box wins and losses. We'll also notify you when a Buy Box that you were once winning has been suppressed by Amazon. This can significantly impact your visibility on the site and cause you to lose sales, so you'll want to rectify this right away. FeedbackFive shares a wealth of information in each alert, including how to fix a suppressed Buy Box. 

Impressions, Conversions, Internal Sales, and CTR Are Stronger

Want to get a higher ranking in Amazon search results? Compared to the Amazon A9 algorithm, the Amazon A10 algorithm puts even more emphasis on your product page’s impressions, conversions, internal sales, and click-through-rate (CTR). Here are some helpful definitions for these terms:

• Impressions: The number of times people view your product page, no matter how they enter (could be from an Amazon search or from an external link).
• Conversions: How many visitors to your site page that actually buy the product. If you had one person go to your page and they completed a sale, you’d have a higher conversion rate than a page with 100 visitors and zero sales.
• Internal sales: Including sales that originated from “frequently bought together” boxes, internal sales refer to all sales from within Amazon that are not derived from organic search results.
• Click-through-rate: How many times people clicked on your product when it appeared on the search results page. In other words, does your product satisfy the search queries it shows up for?

While these areas all improve with better sales tactics and products, you can still take measures to boost them individually.

For one thing, using a top-quality product photo as your main image tends to improve CTRs. Your main image is the one displayed in search results pages, so the better the image, the more people want to click on it.

Likewise, you can revise your Amazon SEO strategy to include only keywords that are relevant to your product. If your product is showing up in keyword searches that are irrelevant, no one will click on it and that hurts your CTR.

As for impressions, improving your external campaigns helps with that, as explained in the next section.

Bringing in External Traffic Boosts Your Product Page

You know who else wants more traffic to your product pages, besides you? Amazon. The more people visit your product pages, the more people visit Amazon. That’s why they’re incentivizing sellers to bring external traffic to them.

Amazon’s A10 algorithm gives extra priority to product pages that bring in external traffic. This is pretty much all visitors who do not find you on Amazon.

The easiest way to take advantage of this A10 update is to post links to your Amazon pages anywhere you can. Social media, other websites you own, guest posts on friendly websites — all of these will contribute to your off-site sales. Just keep your conversion rate in mind: people who complete purchases will boost your ranking more than visitors who bounce the second they land.

Sponsored Links and PPC Campaigns Are Weaker

PPC campaigns still matter — don’t misinterpret this. However, in the Amazon A10 algorithm, they just matter less.

Previously, Sponsored Links were a consistent driving force of sales. What’s changed in A10 is the consistency — Sponsored Links still give an initial boost when first launched, but that boost tapers out quickly. Those who’ve used it liken it to a “spike” in popularity that’s over as soon as it starts.

To compensate, try moving some of your PPC ad budget into other areas, such as driving external traffic, or improving product quality. That initial spike can still be useful, though, so don’t give up on PPC campaigns altogether.

Tools to Help with Amazon’s A10 Algorithm

Have you noticed that the A10 updates seem to favor successful sellers? If you want help growing your business, eComEngine’s suite of Amazon seller tools can improve both your search results rankings and your total sales.