
Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads - doener
https://www.recode.net/2018/9/10/17797720/amazon-is-stuffing-its-search-results-pages-with-ads
======
arbuge
Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in
danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly.

Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many
prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases.
A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon,
$13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Ebay -
identical item on Amazon was $33.95 (both including free shipping but Amazon
came with an additional 8.25% sales tax).

They can do that because so many people don't price compare anymore before
going to Amazon.

Not to mention the issues of buying an expensive brand item and getting a fake
instead, as well as the large numbers of fake reviews. Indeed, it is pretty
hard to get started in Amazon FBA these days when your competitors all have
hundreds of glowing reviews for similar products and you have none.

They've also moved many items to the add-on category (no more free shipping
unless you have $25+ in the cart, even with Prime).

My Prime membership expires in a couple months time, and this time I'm not
renewing it, after being a member for several years.

~~~
tfha
This is why I've been unhappy to see Bezos gaining steam. As his other
products become more successful, you can expect a lot more of this.

Alexa is not your friend, Alexa is a tool to make Amazon money. Amazon's move
into media is not an effort to improve the media system, it's a recognition
that there's a lot of money to be made by controlling the media that people
consume. Same thing with the fire phone, it wasn't an attempt to make a better
phone, it's an attempt to gain access to all of that juicy information that
Google gets from Android.

Bezos is out to make an empire, everything else comes second.

~~~
m3kw9
Xyz company is not your friend. Ok, like we didn’t know they are trying to
make money off the other side? When is the last time a company trying to make
a profit is our friend?

~~~
larkeith
This viewpoint fails to consider the nontrivial competitive advantage gained
by building customer loyalty. There are plenty of brands that do well despite
higher prices, longer waits, etc due to their consistent positive interactions
with customers; A culture of trust between customer and company is frequently
worth the cost.

Amazon seems to have decided that the higher margins of counterfeits and
prioritizing ads over search quality are worth the loss of user trust. I
wholeheartedly hope this will be a costly miscalculation on their part, as I
would prefer a marketplace with fewer ads and reliably genuine items.

~~~
linuxftw
I agree with you. Amazon's questionable inventory tactics have been a factor
for me in deciding to sometimes shop elsewhere. Although, I don't mind the
ads, they're selling screen space, I can happily scroll past them, the adds
are often very relevant, and they are clearly marked sponsored.

------
bootsz
In some sense it feels like Amazon is progressing along a similar trajectory
as Facebook:

1\. Start company with a minimally viable product

2\. Hire smart people to iteratively optimize the usefulness of the product to
attract as many users as possible. Incentive structure rewards maximizing new
users

3\. Product reaches "peak usefulness"; seemingly everyone uses it / loves it

4\. Re-focus business efforts to maximize revenue (e.g. stuff ads everywhere).
Incentive structure now puts greater emphasis on rewarding short-term revenue
increases

5\. Revenue climbs as usefulness declines; users begin to abandon the product

6\. Company continues revenue-maximization strategy because data on user
dissatisfaction / abandonment significantly lags behind data showing
correlation of "ad-stuffing" with more revenue

7\. User abandonment is finally apparent enough that management realizes it
should do something; commence back-pedaling efforts to try to "win users back"

Seems like Amazon is approaching step #5 right now. Will be interesting to see
how this plays out over another year or so.

~~~
aglavine
The thing is that in 3) the company still doesn't make money.

~~~
goda90
Is that a hard rule though? Is it possible for a company to stay at 3 and make
a profit? Is it pressure from investors that pushes them on to step 4, or the
forces of competition?

~~~
bootsz
I don't think it's a hard rule; it seems to apply to certain companies who
pursue a strategy of deliberately not making any money at first and just
acquiring as many users as possible to reach critical mass and ward off
competition, and then after-the-fact slap on monetization practices
(specifically Ads) that degrade the product and piss off users.

People don't like it when you mess with their products, especially once they
already have something they really like. It's all about expectations.

------
maaaats
Unless you know exctly brand/make/model you wan't to buy on Amazon, the search
is useless. Hundreds of similar results from dozens of vendors of varying
quality.

I liked it better when they sold things themselves, now they're just an eBay
clone selling cheap knockoffs trying to hide the fact.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Even then it's borderline useless as when you search for the exact pair of
trousers you want you'll now get other ranges, and dozens upon dozens of fake-
brand cheap knockoffs.

When you do find the item, you'll find in amongst the "customers also looked
at/bought" 4 or 5 other pages containing the exact same item. At different
prices and stock levels. None of which showed up in the search you just did
for that item.

It's completely broken and absurd.

~~~
bhandziuk
You simply cannot buy clothes online. It's far too unreliable in every way.
Even if they deliver what the advertise it's hard enough determining what size
to buy when in person, the amount of work it takes to buy something int he
right "size" online is astronomical. Easiest examples are shoes and pants. I
can wear size 8.5 to size 11 shoes or 29 to 33 pants. These all fit the same.

~~~
notatoad
I've found the exception to this is first-party webshops. For example, buying
Patagonia gear from Patagonia.com is by far the easiest way. Their sizing is
consistent across their line, and the website has a much better selection of
colors and stock than any reseller does.

~~~
bhandziuk
Yeah, that seems reasonable if you're unable to walk into a store. Even if the
sizing is internally consistent it still seems difficult for a first time
purchase though.

------
jrockway
I might actually be done with Amazon.

Every few months, I spend some time searching for the perfect LED light bulbs
for my apartment; the built-in fixture requires 6 candelabra-base bulbs. These
are hard to find, but there are a few products catering to this market, so I
randomly buy stuff to see if I ever get anything good.

I found some LEDs that claimed to have a high CRI and were brighter than
normal, so I took a chance on them. There were a couple legitimate reviews and
5 or more obviously-fake 5 star reviews. The LEDs turned out to be not that
good. They were bright, the dimmability was good, and the layout of the
internal LEDs was quite unique (corncob style but with some on the top, which
is great). But they emitted a very greenish light, which makes them unusable.
I have a spectrophotometer so I took a reading of the spectrum and, as you'd
expect from the visual appearance, they emit very little red light (and no
cyan light, as is the typical emission pattern of low-CRI LEDs).

I wrote a review covering these points, the positives and the negatives, and
included the plot of the emission profile. This review was immediately taken
down because:

1) Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your
experience with it.

2) We do not allow profane or obscene content.

3) Advertisements, promotional material or repeated posts that make the same
point excessively are considered spam.

4) Please do not include URLs external to Amazon or personally identifiable
content in your review.

In other words: please do not include actual data in your reviews. What Amazon
prefers is that the seller buys their own product under a fake name, and then
says "5 stars: Great!"

This is probably my last Amazon purchase. I might do a proper write-up and
spam it around the Internets and see if I can attract the attention of some
higher-ups... but probably not. Instead, I will just shop elsewhere. B&H is
way better for electronics anyway, and if you just want shitty LED lights eBay
beats Amazon there.

Maybe I will also start buying every LED light I can find and doing proper
reviews... but there is no business model there to make my time worthwhile.
Reviews only work if you can actually find a product that's good and get
people to buy it through your referral link. If every review says "you will
hate this product, save your money", there is no way to get funding. So the
fake 5 star reviews will continue, and everyone will continue to hate LEDs.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Downvoting this because it's irrelevant to the topic at hand (Amazon is
stuffing search results pages with ads).

It's your right to free-associate all amazon gripes onto this thread, but I'll
just use the system to indicate that they are noise to me.

~~~
nkurz
The downvote is fine, but the comment explaining it is excessive. Different
people will have different senses of what's relevant vs irrelevant. Although
this specific article is about ads on Amazon, I'm personally more interested
in the larger question of why/whether Amazon is shooting themselves in the
foot with bad policy choices. As such, 'jrockway' was on topic for me.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Meh, when I'm downvoted I prefer to receive a justification. So I return the
civility.

------
j-c-hewitt
The ads have been there for a long time (I know because I've either spent or
managed spending on millions of dollars in clicks). It's not even the first
time that it's been written about in the tech press. The share of voice
provided to ads on Amazon's search results is not particularly greater than
what you see on Google or FB.

The headline ads are a little newer, but they're still more than a couple
years old. On many Google searches you have to scroll past the fold to get
past the sponsored results.

With search, unless you provide some avenue for sponsored results, you will
get a winners-win-more effect in which the top 3 results for any given search
will capture the entire market. You will get people complaining about
'discoverability' when they are not complaining about advertising. You can't
stop people complaining about stuff: you can only trade around what people are
complaining about today.

I will say that as Google has generally subtracted or crippled features that
are useful to advertisers over the last several years, Amazon has generally
kept things simple and effective. Also, virtually no customer information is
exposed to advertisers through use of the platform. Everything about a
customer is essentially exposed if you are the seller, however, but that isn't
different from running a print catalog.

~~~
Marsymars
> With search, unless you provide some avenue for sponsored results, you will
> get a winners-win-more effect in which the top 3 results for any given
> search will capture the entire market.

If a seller really cared about this, they could implement something like a
Robson Rotation for search results of relatively equivalent quality for the
search criteria.

~~~
j-c-hewitt
There are millions of SKUs. On any popular search result there are hundreds if
not thousands of SKUs, not all of which are of equal quality. The organic
search results (and partially the paid ones) already rank things and will
often swap spots frequently during any 24 hour period if they're otherwise
close to even in relevance.

------
sk5t
It's not hard to imagine that Amazon has created a situation where groups
within the company are incented to drive up this high-margin ad income (no
annoying logistics! no inventory!), divorced from the "external" fallout of
ever-so-slowly turning the site into garbage.

eBay, have you anything to say about this? Or how about you, Hewlett Packard?

~~~
cle
Ad revenue is easy to measure. Long term erosion of the trust of your users
isn’t.

Metric-driven decision making is not a silver bullet.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I really doubt that it’s difficult to measure proxies for user trust. Return
rates, conversion rates, search funnels, customer feedback ratings, basket
size, prime churn rate, etc.

------
sonnyblarney
Monopolizing one part of the value chain, enables you to leverage that
monopoly into controlling the next.

Owning the railroads enabled standard oil to price it's competitors more, put
them straits, and buy them up cheaply.

Owning the OS, Microsoft can make sure they own the Office Product
productivity.

It's why the electrical grid needs to be separate from the energy makers (and
regulated).

Amazon and Google as the 'front of the internet' can just suck the surpluses
out of every other business; sure, you can still sell 'cereal and gadgets' \-
but all of your surplus / profit margin will be sucked up by them.

... but I have a sneaking suspicion that something disruptive will come along
before they entirely take over.

~~~
enitihas
When did standard oil own railroads? I thought Rockefeller had large
disagreements with the railroads and they had to build oil pipelines, and that
in sense contributed to downfall of certain railroads too reliant on the oil
money.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Owned or controlled and colluded with them in illegal/shady ways. It was a
major source of competitive advantage.

------
iamgopal
I think amazon is winning solely based on their physical infrastructure which
they keep investing in, and hence the share growth. It has nothing to do with
how good their website or customer support is, or how many ads they show or
not show. All are this ideas they just trying without anything to loose.

~~~
village-idiot
Their website is garbage for how popular it is. It’s really hard to navigate
the sections for controlling your kindle, digital purchases, or settings.

~~~
slivym
Whilst their website is terrible, I actually think the specifics of what
Amazon does makes it very difficult for the website to be good. They sell a
million versions of a million products in a million sectors. What is useful
for me to know when buying a hard disk is not the same thing that is useful
for me to know when buying a bottle of wine. So they either have 1 size fits
all, or a huge cost in building almost custom websites for every different
sector.

I'm not sure it's actually possible to do that well.

~~~
village-idiot
If it’s possible, Amazon has the resources to do it, they just clearly have
decided not to spend them.

Fwiw I knew a guy who claimed that the templating language for the main
website was written in C headers. I can’t verify that, but if true it’d go a
long way to explain why it’s so bad.

------
Discombulator
Maybe also due to Amazon’s tightlipped PR policy, it is not uncommon to read
in comments about some article related to amazon such as this one accusations
about systematically increasing and even user-specific “dynamically adjusting”
prices supposedly to maximize profits.

I don’t work there anymore since a bit, but I am somewhat annoyed by the
unsubstantiated confidence with which these claims are made so I’d like to add
my anec-data.

First of all, when I left the pricing system had in fact strong incentives in
place to _lower_ prices as much as possible (for Amazon sold items. Third
party sellers set their own prices.) Amazon would often make (small) losses on
many items, especially the ones shown on the home page.

Moreover, there is definitely only a single price for each offer listing
(which equals more or less an ASIN and merchant combination). This is
evidently the case for 3P sold items, since as a seller you definitely do not
have that infamous “auto-gauging” tick box the last time I checked. (And let’s
not forget, most of the growth of Amazon comes through third party sellers).
As for Amazon sold items, I invite anyone to actually show evidence that the
same offer listing has at the same time a different price for different
users/devices, otherwise it is just empty talk.

------
sairahul82
In the details page of the product, they used to show people brought this
product also brought this list. Now that is replaced with sponsored products
in most of the pages. They moved that list to bottom of page. IHMO this is
deceiving users. There used to be lot of product recommendations and I find it
useful. Now most of these recommendations are gone and they are replaced with
sponsored ads. Not good for users.

~~~
adrianmonk
The worst part is that they are visually similar. There's text at the top of
the section that tells you whether it's sponsored or organic, but the layout
and format is otherwise identical. If you recognize things more by shape and
color and such as you're scanning the page (as I do), it's easy to not notice
sometimes.

While nobody loves ads, I'm OK with them if it's always very obvious which
you're looking at. This skirts that line.

Which is an unfortunate trend. Even Google's web search results page is making
ads less visually distinctive. If I remember right, they used to have a
different background color, and now they just have a small box that says
"[Ad]".

------
Zelphyr
Has anyone compiled a list of alternatives to Amazon? I’m not expecting a one-
stop-shop where I can buy everything like at Amazon. But a list of online
retailers who are better than Amazon at specific categories of products.
Because I’m at the point where I would rather pay a little extra and get
quality products from a not evil company than continue shopping with Amazon.

~~~
scrooched_moose
Just looking at my recent purchases:

Electronics - Newegg and Monoprice

Board & Table Top Games - Miniature Market

Pet Food - Chewy (owned by PetSmart now)

Clothing - Depends on your style, but I tend to stick to Eddie Bauer and
Duluth Trading Company for good quality, affordable clothes

Comic trade paperbacks - InStockTrades

Books - Barnes & Noble (new) and eBay (used)

The big one I've still struggling to find a replacement for is shoes. Zappos
seems to dominate that market and other online stores have been hit and miss.
DSW has probably been the best, but I'd love to find something better.

~~~
huehehue
Can't you go direct to a brand's site for shoes, if you already know what you
want?

For marketplaces/browsing, there are sites like ASOS, Gilt, Yahoo! Japan,
eBay, etc. You can also browse any department store's online section to find
something you like, and then order straight from the brand.

~~~
eric_the_read
I actually had no idea I could by from the brands directly. Nike's store seems
fairly decent.

------
justinph
This is one of the reasons I've let my Prime subscription lapse and started
doing more shopping at Target. In addition to fewer (or no) ads, I can often
pick an item up in an hour instead of waiting two days, and the prices are
better.

~~~
billysielu
In the UK, getting to a town center to do some shopping is so horrific that
Amazon is the only remaining option.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Costs more to take the bus in to town than it does for most (slow) deliveries.

For some things there are no bricks and mortar stores left. I wanted test
cables for a multimeter. 20p from China! (takes weeks mind you); I spent about
£3 to get some delivered from a company in Europe within 2 days (probably
drop-shipped from China) ... I can't think of anywhere in my UK city to buy
them.

Bus for me and my toddler in to town and back is £2.80+£1.40 (it's about 3
miles).

~~~
billysielu
For me it's a 20 minute car journey which actually takes an hour each way, and
about $10 to park the car for a couple of hours.

------
startupdiscuss
They should get rid of ads for Prime members.

OR else, create Prime Plus for $0.5/month that shows no ads

Or else, raise prime by $6 and remove ads for prime members.

I know some of you are mad that I am suggesting they raise the cost of prime.
But if you're willing to cancel prime over this, then you should be okay with
that.

------
sct202
Amazon's original strengths to me were fast shipping, low prices, and
trustworthy reviews to sort items. I'm not looking forward to what they're
turning into as they continue to get away from that old strategy.

------
phobosdeimos
So do physical stores. Is it really so different from Heineken paying for
prominent shelf space in the supermarket?

~~~
Talyen42
In Amazon's case, it's more like you walk in for Heineken and see three
advertisements:

* Best Heineken (a Chinese no-name brand with 1,551 fake reviews)

* Top Rated Heinekan (a Chinese no-name brand with 6,731 fake reviews)

* Genuine Official Heienekan 16oz Can Beer Great Tasting Best Loved By Users Drink Up (a Chinese no-name brand with 5,532 fake reviews)

~~~
mortenjorck
And then at the end of the shelf there’s the actual Heineken, with the caveat
that the grocery store doesn’t buy from just one authorized distributor, but
rather any distributor can walk in the door and drop off a case of what they
claim to be Heineken to sell on consignment.

------
taurath
> “At Amazon we work hard to continually invent new ways for customers to find
> the right products to meet their needs. We take the same approach with
> sponsored products and sponsored brands. We are focused on creating value
> for customers by helping them discover new brands and products.”

I hope everyone else see's whats happening with this statement - that famous
"customer obsession" of Amazon's is now turned towards advertising buyers, who
are now more the customer than you, the person purchasing the product. Now you
are just a data point.

------
m-p-3
Is there an addon of some kind that exists to make those ads more obvious
(some kind of highlights) without outright removing them?

~~~
chanandler_bong
I am not a developer, but something like AdBlock or uBlock Origin should be
able to at least highlight the "Sponsored" text to make it more prominent?

~~~
bootlooped
uBlock Origin appears to remove a lot of the sponsored results. Some sections
like "our brands" or "expertly reviewed" may still appear above organic
results.

~~~
Splines
I used the element picker, "##.acs-private-brands-container-background" seems
to block the "Our brands" element.

------
dkrich
I don't understand the "Amazon is eating into Facebook's and Google's
business" argument, and I've seen it now over and over. Is there really a lot
of overlap there?

It seems to me that the brands that advertise most heavily on Facebook and
Google are the brands that don't sell much, if at all on Amazon. It seems that
the overlap would be those products that are sold on Amazon and advertised via
Google or Facebook, which I don't think I've seen much of. To me this seems
like it would only make selling on Amazon less of a meritocracy and more of a
competition for the deepest pockets.

But even if it's true that there is overlap, then suppose a company cuts its
Google ad budget to focus on Amazon. Then all searchers who still use Google
will now go to their competitors instead. So why would they do that? If
Amazon's ad business is growing it seems likely that it's coming at the
expense of the sellers more than the other ad platforms.

------
yubiox
Google trained me long ago that anything sponsored at the top is a scam. I now
skip below the ads without a second thought.

------
nkrisc
I chuckled a bit when I realized the only thing I buy from Amazon anymore
these days is... books!

Everything else I no longer trust Amazon for. Hell, even the books might be
counterfeit:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546)

~~~
conjecTech
Same here, which is why I cancelled my prime membership. You can get almost
any book you want slightly cheaper on abebooks.com (also owned by amazon).

------
ChuckMcM
This is of course not the least bit surprising. The search box on Amazon is a
pretty high value place, when someone types something into it they have
_already_ indicated they are looking to buy something so commercial intent is
well established. Amazon has more third party sellers on their site now than
Amazon, so there is a viper pit of competitive selling seething down there.
The next step? Let those vendors give up margin over to Amazon by bidding to
be in search results.

More money for Amazon both in ad revenue and additional sales (for all its
evilness advertising exists because it works).

Interesting question to see how Walmart responds.

------
TACIXAT
I went on the other day to buy a specific brand of pants. I was in the app. I
searched, clicked the first link, seemed like it was coming from a third party
seller. Selected the size I wanted and ordered. It arrived and was a
completely different brand. Went back and looked at the search and it was an
ad. What I thought was a third party seller's store name was the brand name.
From this experience I learned that I can't trust their search results. The
mechanism for finding what I want will also now give me things I don't want.

------
nicodjimenez
As Amazon's ad revenues increase, I expect them to gradually drop their
prices, making it EVEN more impossible for other online retailers to compete.

Amazon retail's profit margin is 3.8 percent, on more than $51 billion in
sales in 2016. They're probably thinking they can shrink this all the way down
to 0, and make up the difference in ads.

The big question for me is when they will get into the search space. The
growth of their ads business and Alexa's success is a massive threat to Google
long term.

------
yborg
The HN crowd are probably 5x more savvy to this sort of thing than the average
user. Amazon is the Wal-Mart of e-commerce, it now has generic brand
association with a large majority of consumers. So it's working for them, and
it's going to keep working for them even if every HN reader shops elsewhere.
It will take some serious competition to get them to change their behavior,
and I don't think Jet is going to get there, unfortunately.

------
beezischillin
I live in Europe, in a country without Amazon, however I often travel to the
UK so I've had a few opportunities to use their services.

My experiences have been very mixed. The website, in my opinion, is a mess.
It's extremely hard to find things unless you know specifically what brand and
model you're looking for. Even then you might find that someone decided to
sell that item for an inflated price.

Generally when you're browsing for something you want but haven't decided on
an exact brand and model yet then discoverability is terrible and listings
become irrelevant pretty soon after scrolling down. Even trying to find a
gaming laptop for a friend to buy is a useless endeavour.

Shipping within the UK also seems to be terribly implemented: more often than
not your packages are going to get lost, misdelivered, forcing you to fight
for the goods you've already paid for and potentially get them way too late if
you want them by a specific date. In August, when I was visiting, they managed
to misdeliver 4 items I ordered and it's always Amazon's delivery team that
messes up.

The only reason I really like them is the book market and second-hand book
market. It's great to be able to buy so many books at such great prices.

In my own country, however, e-retail seems way more sophisticated: discovery,
delivery and reliability are king. They optimise the listings for you to be
able to browse and find things efficiently, to discover stuff you want
quickly. And it's very rare for the shipping to take more than 1 day, unless
there's a seasonal event like Christmas/New Year's. So I buy with confidence
and I browse knowing that I'll usually find what I'm looking for. When it
comes to buying from Amazon while I'm visiting the UK - I always expect
issues. And they always happen.

------
nraynaud
That's very interesting, it looks like there is a natural tendency in private
market to go to corruption. We see it where retailers ask money from the
factories to put the product in some height on the shelf. Online we see it
with "search result" placement. We see it in facebook where if you don't pay,
they reduce the number of people who will see your post.

------
tomcam
I consult for some of Amazon's biggest sellers. They absolutely have to pay
for these ads to compete. Amazon fees all in can easily reach 25% of the
retail price, and that's assuming you're paying very close attention. They
skyrocket if you decide to take a pee and leave your analytics dashboard
closed for a few minutes!

------
bordercases
I don't think it's simply the lack of consumer price comparison that is making
it easy for Amazon to front ads without consequence. I think it's also that
for many different consumer products, consumers don't know precisely what they
want, or more particularly, how to model their requirements. If they knew
their precise requirements, they would easily be able to judge whether or not
a given ad was fronting a product actually is the right one for the job (that
sometimes happens), as well as whether or not the products were a good deal.

It would be interesting if there was a repository of the performance specs for
different common household products. Right now it's the job for critics and
reviewers to be the experts here, but how difficult would it be to simply read
a five minute primer on the theory of detergents or the theory of headphones
and then go out shopping with impunity?

------
dgemm
Regular supermarkets have been doing this forever, they just aren't upfront
about it.

[https://www.vox.com/2016/11/22/13707022/grocery-store-
slotti...](https://www.vox.com/2016/11/22/13707022/grocery-store-slotting-
fees-slotting-allowances)

------
penguin2016
Do you guys realise that Amazon just acts as a marketplace now, and the
products being sold are from third parties?

Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many
prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases.
A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon,
$13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Ebay -
identical item on Amazon was $33.95 (both including free shipping but Amazon
came with an additional 8.25% sales tax).

Amazon is NOT raising prices, its the merchants who sell on Amazon who are
raising prices. The main value that Amazon provides is fulfillment, and
driving users to these product pages from third parties.

------
zanny
Amazon is the first trillion dollar company at the same time I went out of my
way to order shirts and guac mix from walmart.com because I have way more
faith in products I find in the page or two of results I get there than from
the thousands on Amazon, 99% of which are buried in fake reviews for fake
products.

And I do it substantially cheaper. I even checked this week when I was in a
physical store to compare prices and I was paying the same for the freely
shipped stuff on the website as I would have going into a location.
Competitive Amazon products had at least a 30-40% markup, even for the same
brand.

And thats all on top of knowing how reprehensible a company Walmart is, but
its not like Amazon is any better nowadays. At all.

------
anonymous5133
Another factor I've seen helping amazon is the fact that their amazon gift
cards are basically being used as a form of currency. I often trade stuff
online and everyone often uses amazon gift cards. The reason is because you
can redeem an amazon gift card immediately to your account to make sure you
don't get scammed. With most other gift cards, even after the trade the other
person can still use the gift card.

I'm surprised other companies haven't realized this. If people are able to use
your gift cards as a form of currency then it really helps the overall brand
because eventually people are going to buy stuff with the gift cards.

------
beenBoutIT
Can someone explain why Amazon works so hard to direct searches into searches
within its product categories? An example would be a search for 'Baking Soda'
leading you to the 'Grocery & Gourmet Food' or 'Industrial & Scientific'
categories. I'd much rather search for 'Baking Soda' and have it return every
kind of 'Baking Soda' Amazon carries, as I want the best price and don't care
how it's been categorized by the retailer. It's almost always faster to search
for anything sold Amazon via a Google search outside of Amazon's own search
engine.

------
rubyn00bie
This is THE example of why any website that has “relevant” or “best” as a
filter type is absolutely shit...

I have really loved Amazon but their practices lately to drive growth are
driving me away. My Prime membership is coming up soon and this may be the
last year I renew if I do at all.

Ads are half the problem, counterfeit goods are the other... I actually could
careless about things being counterfeit but it’s a risky proposition with
electronics and often risky...

As long as they got Gran Tour I’ll probably subscribe... because Clakrson,
Hammond, and May are worth the $99 a year alone. Everything else... not so
much.

------
levosmetalo
I came to the point that I am actively avoiding Amazon for any purchase.

It happened multiple times that they give better price to someone coming to
Amazon from the search engine in incognito window than to their logged in
Prime member searching for a product directly on Amazon.

Now I always use günstiger.de or idealo.de or some other meta search engine to
find what I need, as well as many other people. The same way internet search
engines killed big portals back in the time, Amazon is going to be killed by
specialized search engines, though it may take a while.

------
nautilus12
At what point does this become semantics. Isn't a sponsored ad with strong
context (including the context of the search) simply a paid search result? The
issue is that there are competing masters, one that the ad wants to get served
and two that the person wants to find the search results most relevant to
their context, but amazon is attempting to provide a paid option that meets
that context first, and if it meets that context slightly less and is paid,
then thats a sacrifice they are willing to make.

------
hardwaresofton
This seems like a huge chance for some company more thoroughly obsessed with
item quality to wade through the muck and offer some value in terms of product
reviews, since reviews are being gamed.

Seems like lots of free time to buy and try products in various niches, an
easy to use browser extension and an extensive set of affiliate links, and a
coupled website (probably not youtube since negatively reviewed companies
might just copyright-strike) are all it would take...

~~~
karkisuni
you're describing Wirecutter and its many clones

~~~
hardwaresofton
A little late, but this just means that it's a good idea and people are doing
it and making a living off of it...

But I don't frequent sites like Wirecutter because there's too much
editorializing for my taste. I feel like the model could be tightened up so
much more.

------
trevor-e
I was amazed the other day at how difficult it is to find products on Amazon
now. I knew exactly which product I wanted to buy beforehand too.

I was trying to buy "BSN Syntha-6 Edge Protein Powder". I dare anyone reading
this comment to find a 2-pound jug of cookies and cream flavored whey protein
(not Micellar Casein or Hydrolyzed). I found it on GNC's website very quickly
and bought it there.

------
paradite
_> Nearly 8 percent of views on Amazon product pages came from sponsored links
in May, more than double what it was a year earlier, according to data from
analytics firm Jumpshot, which collects URL data from a panel of 100 million
people._

It is fitting that an article talking about increased number of ads is using
statistics from a company that collects data for ads targeting.

Guess why the ads are working so well?

------
josefresco
Sooo, just like Google? If these ads become commonplace, savvy users will
start to ignore the "first x results" and Amazon will make click/ad money on
the the same people that click Google Ads.

While we all wish a competitor (just a click away! /s) would arise to compete,
we all know from our experience with Google that lock-in is real.

~~~
ric2b
> While we all wish a competitor (just a click away! /s) would arise to
> compete, we all know from our experience with Google that lock-in is real.

In the case of Google search, it is. Duck duck go is good enough to be my
daily driver.

------
emmanuel_1234
What really kills me with Amazon is that, leaving outside of the US, I always
tick the box for "Deliver in $COUNTRY", and regularly (95% of the time) find
out at checkout time that no, in fact, this seller does not deliver in
$COUNTRY.

To be fair, I gave up on Amazon after that, except for Kindle's books.

------
blairanderson
If someone needs a project, please develop an "Amazon Advertising AdBlocker".

Their class names are fairly consistent.

~~~
eswat
If they are consistent you can probably use your ad blocker's element picker
to selectively remove them.

------
CodeSheikh
Gone are the days when you go to Amazon.com for bargain shopping or in search
for better deals. I look at Amazon's Prime service as a shipping company. I
like 1-2 days shipping service and sometimes I would pay a buck or two more
for a product of Amazon Prime can ship it.

------
durpleDrank
Honestly, they are screwed once people start using ali express instead. I know
shipping times is a bit long, but I'm sure there will be some solution to this
in the future. I wouldn't be surprised they built their own fulfillment
centers on the continent.

------
fertel
The article made it seem as though sponsored product search results unique to
just amazon and the other big players. Walmart does it - although not as well.
Criteo has a product thats used by a lot of large online retailers that offers
this as a service.

------
zimmer688
I wonder if there is a way we can block these. This is getting really
irritating especially in the electronics category where there is a ton of
Chinese off market brands which take up a lot of space and then you get to the
ones you need

------
dwild
It's so weird, supermarket always sold better placement to some product and it
was never an issue. Amazon is clear in their doing too, is that the issue? You
don't notice it thus it's alright?

------
m3kw9
The uptick could be temporary because it is catching people off guard with
rhemused to seeing most relevant result in top. But the allure of the exposure
will always be there even after people smartens up

------
juris
I wonder if it would be cheaper for small-time sellers to cozy up to brick and
mortar store representatives than it would be to fight for space on Amazon.

Does Amazon lose market share... back to brick and mortar?

------
StreamBright
For me Amazon became the cloud & entertainment provider, I have stopped using
the store in the US after a while. Said to see this degradation of service
that Jeff Bezos was so proud of once.

------
tareqak
What tools (if any) do people here use for price comparison across many
sources when looking for the cheapest option for a given item/SKU? What about
when you are looking for quality?

------
ashelmire
>“Nobody is scrolling beyond the first page when they do a search,” Jason
Goldberg, SVP of commerce at SapientRazorfish, a digital marketing agency,
told Recode. “If you want to be discoverable, you have to find a way to show
up in search results.”

Bullshit. Amazon search is sketchy and reviews (both number and quality) are
often unreliable, so I spend far longer than I want to looking through reviews
to spot the fakes and try to find products that are actually of good quality.

I've actually started buying important things from elsewhere again. Many
companies on Amazon are in a race to the bottom in both price and quality.
That's fine for some products, but not for anything that's going to get
regular use.

------
thinkingemote
The early adopters (e.g. us techies) are leaving. Do companies have metrics
for who are these people are, do they care that we form such very small
numbers?

------
kolderman
Google has been doing this for years. I installed an ad blocker specifically
to clean up Google search results, they look much better now.

------
jarjoura
Sorry, but all this hate, how is this any different than your local grocery
store charging brands for higher placement on the shelves?

------
siavosh
Anyone else having the experience on the iOS app when trying to tap on a
search results keeps taking you to the Echo product page?

------
mattferderer
Physical stores have done this for years with shelf space and displays. Can
someone explain why this is a big deal?

------
homero
I can't find anything anymore. I was looking for Fitbit straps and the genuine
ones were many pages in.

------
bashallah
And here I was wondering why Google or another search engine was required to
find what I want on Amazon.

------
lawrenceyan
Arrogance and stagnation make for a bad combination. I hope Amazon can shape
up soon.

------
IB885588
"Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads "

Like Google, you mean?

------
tomc1985
Damn it people, stop messing with organic search...

------
jimjimjim
I remember when they used to be a great bookstore.

------
8note
is it better than the search without ads?

------
mr_kitty
First comment, but god damn do I live this site.

Learning new shit everyday.

First I end up switching back to firefox, now I get to hear stuff like this!
:D

------
AltCtrl
wow, revealing how the internet works

------
nblgbg
Amazon doing some questionable things off late like

1\. Removing prime subscription renewal notifications. 2\. Injecting ads into
search and not differentiating them much with results. 3\. Replacing different
recommendations in the details page with ads.

Unfortunately you won't notice them if you are not keen. I recently contacted
their CS about a fake product. The reviews clearly says it is some cosmetic
product the product itself is a dashcam. They did not do any thing about it.
They said they get back to me about it and never did. Not sure why they are
turning their back on these things. Its definitely not customer obsession !!

