Amazon search, explained.

Amazon first picks out the products that match what the shopper typed, using your title, bullet points, product details and hidden search terms. It then ranks those matches on signals such as how often shoppers buy each one, its price, whether it's in stock and how fast it can arrive. That's why a live listing with no sales history can sit pages deep, and most products need ads and early reviews to climb. Results are personalised too, so searching for your own product won't show you what every shopper sees.

Every listing has a search terms box in Seller Central that shoppers never see, for synonyms and other ways people describe your product. Amazon caps it at under 250 bytes in the UK and EU stores, and the box counts bytes, not letters, so an accented character like ä, é or ß costs two and German and French terms fill it faster. Go over and Amazon ignores the whole box. Brand names are banned in it, yours as well as anyone else's, and breaking that rule can get your listing suppressed.

Search Amazon for your ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) plus the words, like B0XXXXXXXX vegan protein. If your product comes up, Amazon has picked it up for them. No result can mean the words aren't in your listing, your hidden search terms box is over its size limit, an edit has knocked them out or Amazon doesn't rate them relevant. Wait a day or two after any edit. The test shows you can appear, not where you rank, and it only covers the store you ran it in.

Start with the suggestions that drop down as you type in Amazon's search bar, which Amazon's own seller guide points you to for ideas. Brand Registry adds Brand Analytics, where the Amazon Search Terms report ranks each store's searches by how often they're typed and Search Query Performance shows how your brand does on the searches that find you. Your ads' search term report shows the exact words people typed before clicking, but only on searches your ads appeared for, so it can't reveal the ones you're missing.

Details such as size, flavour, material and pack count are what the filters in Amazon's search results run on, and its shopping assistant reads them when a shopper asks about your product. When someone ticks a filter like Vegan or Gluten Free, Amazon goes by the matching field rather than your title or bullet points. If that field's empty, your product can drop out of their results, however clearly the rest of the listing says it.

Yes, because the category decides which filters shoppers can find you through and which Best Sellers list you're ranked in. It also drives your referral fee, the percentage Amazon takes from each sale, but Amazon works that out from its own fee category, which isn't always the category shoppers see on the page. A product Amazon has put in the wrong fee category can pay a higher rate on every sale until someone spots it, which is why it's worth checking the referral fee on your first few orders.

They do, mostly through sales. Your star rating and review count show under your product in search, so they change how many shoppers click and buy, and sales are what move a product up. Amazon works the rating out with a model that weighs things like how recent a review is, not a plain average. Search shows the exact figure next to stars drawn in half steps, so a small slip can turn four and a half stars into four, and clicks and sales can fall with it.

Yes, price is one of the signals Amazon uses to order search results, alongside how well a product matches the search, whether it's in stock and how well it sells. Shoppers see prices side by side in the results, so a price that wins more clicks and orders on a search helps you climb for it. A price well above what the product sells for on other websites can cost you the Buy Box, and your Sponsored Products ads stop showing for as long as you're without it.

Best Sellers Rank (BSR) shows how a product's sales compare with everything else in its category, and number 1 is the top seller. You'll find it in the product details, and Amazon updates it hourly from recent and past sales, with recent ones counting more. A product gets a separate rank in each store and in each category it's listed in, though sizes or colours on one page can share one. It's worked out from sales alone, so a strong rank doesn't guarantee a high spot in search.

The Best Seller badge goes to the number 1 product on Best Sellers Rank in a category or sub-category, shown as "Best Seller in Vitamin D". A sub-category counts, as long as it holds at least 100 products and your sales clear Amazon's threshold. Amazon's Choice is tied to one search, as in Amazon's Choice for "vitamin d3", and Amazon says it weighs ratings, price, popularity, availability and fast delivery. It can appear on one search and not the next, and neither badge can be bought or applied for.

'Bought in past month' is the line Amazon shows under some products in search results, in steps like 50+, 100+ or 1K+, to show shoppers what's selling. The plus sign means at least that many rather than an exact count, and Amazon doesn't publish what it counts, so treat a competitor's figure as a rough floor rather than their real sales.

It helps when it turns into sales, because a sale from an Instagram or email link counts towards your sales history and Best Sellers Rank like any other. Amazon Attribution, a tool for Brand Registry brands, gives each link you share its own tracking tag and reports the clicks and sales it brings. Visitors who leave without buying still count as sessions in Seller Central's Business Reports, so badly targeted traffic drags down the conversion rate shown there.

Rufus is Amazon's shopping assistant, a chat window run by artificial intelligence where shoppers ask things like which moisturiser suits dry skin. It's been on amazon.co.uk since September 2024 and in Germany, France, Italy and Spain since October 2024. It draws on your listing details, customer reviews, shoppers' questions and information from across the web, so plain facts about who a product suits and how it's used help it recommend you. A complaint that keeps coming up in reviews can surface in its answers too, however good the listing is.