Search Engine Working?
I was just checking my book Just Monkeys by Wilson was visible!
Entered that and just one hardcover book appeared at 29.67 but not mine
When I entered Just Monkeys by Wilson HARDCOVER ,in addition , up popped mine and one other all cheaper than the 29.67.
Do you have to be the most expensive to be visible on Amazon or must your customer type in HARDCOVER to see the listings?
ALL the Amazon listings are visible if you search on Bookfinder why can’t they be on Amazon?
0 replies
Seller_f5cnodyVjLD4S
Because Bookfinder does not have to put at the top of the search results items that are new that they are selling or have to include like sponsored products or show other products they want to prioritise/sell.
In other words Bookfinder does what it is supposed to …find books …unlike Amazon which changes your search terms and pushes the items they want you to buy instead. 
Seller_wP2N4PFKiopDt
Just to rub salt into an open wound the 29.67 book is ''Usually dispatched within 1 to 3 months."
Naturally customers are not going to wait that long and since the Amazon Search Engine does show them the other copies the result is ZERO SALES FOR AMAZON and their sellers.
Seller_LKjg1QRrO36Yq
The £29.67 copy is a non-existent (?) print on demand, by the looks of it.
‘Genuine’ original hardbacks are hidden behind the triangles.
There are several matching ASINs but the cheapest copies appear to be hiding under B00087K1NG.
Seller_wP2N4PFKiopDt
I have opened a case with Customers Services and I will see how they do.
I will forward my complaint to Jeff Bezos if I get no help there.
As someone who uses Amazon Marketplace I am very concerned the market place is rapidly approaching their "Ratners’’ moment.
I highlighted last week that searching on the Amazon app the only copy of a particular book was one that was available for 889 pounds. Looking on the PC later I find their are loads of copies from 4.13.
Amazon are not making all our listings visible so why are we paying 30 pounds a month?
A case for trading standards perhaps?
The Monkey Book listing shows only the highest price one is visible.
Soon customers will find if you want to pay the highest price you go to Amazon
Seller_taDBgt7LctucW
Whilst the original edition can be found on a desktop computer, if you know where to look, try searching amazon for it on your phone. When I typed in ‘just monkeys Wilson’ on my mobile I was shown the POD editions in both hardback and paperback but could not find the original edition linked to these anywhere. I had to go back and change my search terms to find that which most customers are surely not going to do and will leave assuming only POD editions are available.
Seller_LKjg1QRrO36Yq
On a more positive note, I have noticed recently that Amazon seems to promoting OOP UK published BMVD titles over those published or released in the USA.
I’m pretty sure it has been the other way round at times in the past
Seller_wP2N4PFKiopDt
THANK YOU EVERYBODY for your input on this problem.
I took the liberty of cutting and pasting what you said in my constant reopening of the case with Customer Services.
My last submission was
Despite my request that Amazon resolve the problem that my listing cannot be found when a customer looks for it by
title and author Amazon has not done so.
I have consulted an expert on the Amazon Market Place about my problem and he has given me some answers.
Evidently when you go onto the listing for this book there is a very very tiny arrow you can click and other versions of this book are visible.
I was unaware of the existence of this tiny arrow and its significance and I have been using Amazon for 10 years!!
My expert says it is very likely that very few potential buyers know of the use of the arrow and it has been suggested that fewer than 1 in a Million of potential buyers are aware and use these arrows and so to all intents and purposes my listing is INVISIBLE to 999,999 out of every million potential buyers.
THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE but very easy for Amazon to rectify.
All Amazon has to do is scrap the arrow and in its place have a button which states "IF THIS IS NOT THE EDITION YOU ARE LOOKING FOR PLEASE CLICK HERE’’
And when they click it leads to other editions.
I do not know if you in customer services have the authority to do this but if you do not have not the authority please forward request to someone who has the authority.
If this simple suggestion is implemented I will not need to escalate this further to Trading Standards or Jeff Bezos.
It is not good for Amazon as a business if people can’t find items on Amazon and that they can find items more cheaply (and of better quality) elsewhere.
The POD version of Just Monkeys offered (on very extended delivery of 1 - 3 months!!) on the Amazon page is an inferior product to mine.
If the customer is a collector, they will want the original. If the customer is buying the book for nostalgic reasons, they will want the original. If the customer wants the book for academic reasons, they will prefer the original as the illustrations will be of better quality and there will be no errors or omissions in the text.
THEIR REPLY
Hello from Amazon Selling Partner Team,
I am Archa Manuel and hope this email finds you well. I understand that you are concerned about the visibility of your product on Amazon website for your customers.
I find that you were not aware about the small arrow that could show all other formats and versions on website.
And, you would like to change it and have a wording that says, ‘IF THIS IS NOT THE EDITION YOU ARE LOOKING FOR PLEASE CLICK HERE’. Please note that we at Selling Partner Support does not have the authority to do so.
However, this is certainly a potential feature that we might consider launching in the future. You have provided us with us a valuable suggestion to make Amazon more seller friendly. I thank you for the same.
Your comments will help us make our service more convenient for all users. I am forwarding your email to our business team as requested. Please understand that this involves high level discussions and approvals, so any changes may take some time. However, I can assure you that the team will surely send you a communication with the update once the decision is taken.
We announce changes to account features and provide notices and updates about technical events via our Amazon Seller Announcement Boards, which you can view by visiting the link below:
http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/category.jspa?categoryID=2
Thank you for selling with Amazon.
Archa M.
Amazon.co.uk Seller Support
Seller_YEFxcfQls1c3L
Just to jump in on this topic regarding the Gratzer - if you search “gratzer” undergrowth (with the quotation marks), you get this result:
Seller_gIYJU8yUPdsJn
Hi All,
Frequent reader of the forums but always a bit wary of contributing.
Does anyone know approximately, when Amazon updated/tweaked the search terms most recently?
We have noticed a similar issue with search terms which seems to have kicked in around February / March of this year. Spot checks have revealed that searching by title has become labyrinthine to the point of being unusable. Either the book doesn’t show up on the list of titles returned at all, it is very far down the page under LOTS of irrelevant results or there are multiple duplicate listings with very small differences (the word “import” in the title for example) and the Sponsored listing will always be at the top. By comparison, searching for ISBN will bring up the correct listing, first time and it’s often the only one.
However, buyers generally don’t tend to know the ISBN when performing an initial search.
We keep being told this is due to a “sprinkler effect” but given we’re completely FBM, don’t use sponsored ads or other promotions and generally only have one SKU per product this seems unlikely. They may be placing the sponsored product at the top of the list when it is found but it looks like these just aren’t being found at all a lot of the time.
We have no evidence to support this but it seems more that Amazon are trying to increase sales by aggressively promoting related products. However, they have changed the keywords or algorithm in such a way that these results are taking priority over the initial search for the product that is actually desired by the buyer.
I have definitely noticed this outside of work as a buyer on my personal Amazon account. When running a very simple search for latest publications by a certain author I sometimes need to get down to page 3 or 4 in the search results before finding a single book by that specified author. Often I just give up. These are kindle editions all sold by Amazon and around the same price so there would be no benefit to them promoting certain listings over others.
Google and Bookfinder do a MUCH better job, hopefully buyers will work out that the best way to search for something on Amazon going forward may just be to run a google search and select the Amazon results from the returned results.
Seller_LKjg1QRrO36Yq
Just to add, I heard an interesting comment on ‘The Digital Human’ on Radio 4 the other day.
It was in regard to AI.
The gist of it was that the people who create AI programs and build the information technology interfaces that control a large part of our lives are not always known for their empathetic ability or their grasp of common sense.
In other words, the internet is being built by people who are out-of-the-ordinary, and not always in a good way.
