

Ask HN: Amazon killed the “People who viewed X ultimately bought Y” feature? - dv35z

Does anyone have any background on why the &quot;People who viewed this item ultimately bought X&quot; Amazon feature was disabled? I recall using this feature extensively to find a &quot;better version&quot; of a product from an OK one. I could imagine that some vendors would not like to have a potential sale &quot;pulled away&quot;, but from a customer point of view, it was a valuable feature. Would love to hear when it was disabled (the Amazon customer support person I spoke to did not know), and if they have any plans to bring it back. Thanks.
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WaltPurvis
They currently have two similar blocks — "Customers who viewed this also
viewed" and "Customers who bought this also bought" — and I assume they
learned through massive analysis that these two blocks lead to more sales than
the "people who viewed X ultimately bought Y" block.

Whether having "people who viewed X ultimately bought Y" is more useful to you
is, probably, a matter of personal taste, although one could say that leading
a customer to a product they feel like buying is a good proxy for "helpful"
and in that case Amazon has obviously determined empirically that "people who
viewed X ultimately bought Y" was not as helpful as what they've replaced it
with.

