Amazon traffic has dropped sharply recently? Now the front desk has changed a lot!

Do you feel that the number of orders has dropped a lot recently? Many students said in our group that both traffic and order volume have dropped, and it is not at all like before the peak season.

Traffic has indeed declined in the past two days, and some sellers' data has even plummeted. This situation is quite abnormal during the peak season at the end of the year. Is there something wrong with Amazon?

After some investigation, I found a very strange change - the search display position on the front end has changed. This change is likely the culprit for the recent decline in our overall seller traffic.

What changes have been made to the front desk?

Now I will use real examples to tell you what changes have taken place. Let’s first search for desk lamp.

The position of the top headline ad has not changed, and the first row of search results has 3 ad positions plus 3 top natural rankings. There is no problem with the position up to the first row, and now we get to the point.

The second row of search results is the previously banished “Top rated from our brands” because this column displays products from Amazon’s own brands. At the beginning of this year, the media exposed that Amazon’s own brands were competing unfairly. After that, Amazon once removed this column from the search results or only displayed it at the end of the search results.

Now "Top rated from our brands" has not only returned, but also occupied the most prime display position in the search results. This is not only the case for the lighting category, but also when I searched for baby wet wipes, this column also occupied the second line of search results.

I was really surprised by Amazon’s operation of placing its own products in the second row. In the first half of the year, they were caught by the media and quickly took them down. In the second half of the year, they thought the limelight had passed and quickly put their own products back before the peak season to make money.

As the prime search display position has been taken away by self-operated products, the overall traffic of third-party sellers will definitely be affected and decline . However, this is not the end of the changes in search display. Let’s go back to the desk lamp and continue to look at the third row of search results.

This is the highlight of this search change. A new "Editor's Recommendation" column has been added to the third line of search results. This column shows some Amazon products mentioned in product soft articles on external websites. But it's still hard to understand this introduction, so I'll explain it to you from another angle.

We all know that there are some articles testing/recommending products on external websites, including some review websites, social networking sites, etc. Regardless of whether these articles are paid for promotion, in short, such review articles will have purchase links, and you can directly click on them to jump to Amazon to make a purchase.

The new "Editor's Recommendation" added by Amazon's front desk puts the products and articles mentioned in these articles in the search results. In our example of a desk lamp, we search for desk lamps, and we can see an article recommending/reviewing desk lamps in the results, and we can directly purchase the products recommended in the article.

This newly added column is of great significance. It directly provides sellers with a new way of playing. It is very difficult for products to be ranked in the top positions through advertising and natural traffic, but now they can rely on external media soft articles to reach the third row of the search homepage. The display and traffic that this can bring to the product are absolutely astronomical.

According to current information, only review organizations/individuals invited by Amazon can participate in this program called "Onsite Associates" . After joining the program, Amazon will automatically crawl articles from their review websites/homepages, and then attach matching articles to the search results when consumers search for keywords.

This will definitely be a battleground for sellers in the future. If nothing unexpected happens, service providers will be able to offer a wave of "brute force to the homepage" services. However, I guess Amazon should also have a review and supervision mechanism for the reviewers who participate in the plan, otherwise it will become a function abused by sellers.

The new item above is the main content of this update, but the remaining search results are still unfavorable to sellers. The search position in the fourth row is specially reserved for "Amazon's Choice". If there are less than 5, it would rather be left empty than display ordinary products. The remaining products will be displayed starting from the fifth row.

That is to say, about half of the space on the first page does not belong to ordinary sellers. There are self-operated products, advertising space and top sellers, Amazon's Choice, and even an "Editor's Recommendation" that is not known how to be displayed. The most prime display positions on the first page are all occupied. The adjustment of search position is likely the reason for the poor traffic reported by everyone recently.

Summarize

Let me summarize the ideas that this change brings to us:

1. Off-site and media soft articles may take off in the future. They can not only attract traffic outside the site, but also attract traffic within the site.

Second, Amazon’s push for its own products is very hated and is also a favorite fodder for the media. I estimate that Amazon may persist for two to three months during the peak season at the end of the year, and then quickly withdraw its products after the peak season to avoid being caught by the media.

We sellers really don't have a good way to deal with such outrageous operations. We can only try to get our products as high as possible, whether it is "Editor's Recommendation" or Amazon's Choice, which may achieve better results in the future.

As for how to participate in "Editor's Recommendation", I think Deal sites are a good breakthrough for everyone, just like "What's Worth Buying" in China. When Deal sites collect discounted products from the entire network, many of them also come with review articles.

Although we don’t know which organizations have been invited to join Amazon’s “Onsite Associates” program yet, it’s always a good idea to get in touch now. I have prepared a collection of foreign deal sites for you. Please scan the QR code below to get it from me~

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group