Amazon has Changed it's Search Algorithm Resulting in Huge Sales Loss
Why are they not being transparent about it? There is no way that sales fall 50-70% within a year or 2, and being due to the economy or competition. This is an Amazon change. As a small business, one can diversify and sell through differing channels as to not be solely attached to Amazon. The problem is Amazon owns SO much of the online retail market share. What the hell are they doing? It's strangling and killing businesses. Is that the goal?
Amazon has Changed it's Search Algorithm Resulting in Huge Sales Loss
Why are they not being transparent about it? There is no way that sales fall 50-70% within a year or 2, and being due to the economy or competition. This is an Amazon change. As a small business, one can diversify and sell through differing channels as to not be solely attached to Amazon. The problem is Amazon owns SO much of the online retail market share. What the hell are they doing? It's strangling and killing businesses. Is that the goal?
87 respuestas
Seller_CyGI7lF1437gx
Amazon is becoming more like AliExpress. On Prime Day, I searched for some early holiday shopping and searched in toys for boys, filtering age group 5-7 year old, Keyword "foam Airplane". Search results show about 10 different brands selling the same item.
Seller_5RMwtLYcf9rCS
Our sales also plummeted in the space of 6 weeks as of today. We used to do 8000 orders a month, now it's hitting just above 4000. Plus ROAS increased 10% and Amazon is not looking like the ideal store anymore. Our #1 selling product that sold 2200 units a month dropped 95% in one month too 100. This is incredibly strange. We want to continue on Amazon but we are opening out own store too. Something changed in the middle of august and again in september.
Seller_5RMwtLYcf9rCS
I know for myself We have been purchasing less on Amazon This last year because it's become harder to find what we are looking for and stuff that I used to buy and love is buried.
Seller_cTRcCppK12wQN
We have made massive improvements this year to our overall scope of product selection, our Amazon repricing algorithms for winning BB on shared listings and also our Amazon ad marketing (as we have implemented automation that tracks our ad and organic placement positions page 1-3 for 1K+ search terms with bids calculated automatically as default bid = ACoS budget / (ACoS / $1 CPC calculated per keyword and keyword synonym group with automatic adjustments made as determined by organic and ad placement, stock level and ad spend without sale or ACoS with sale). Our ad marketing is at a level that few ad agencies can rival. However, we have still seen a sharp decline YoY in overall sales and margin since our industry is being hit very hard by the recession, Amazon has greatly increased the cost of ads, the ratio of ads to organic and the number of clicks per conversion in an attempt to stay profitable during this economic recession at the expense of their sellers. What we are doing is just making our competitors run out of business sooner and we're just barely surviving.
The only way things improve is if sellers make concerted effort to use different SKUs for Amazon than other platforms, make the price higher for Amazon and set ad budgets reasonable with targeting that is very relevant. Increase sales with more products in more categories but be willing to downsize the operations, cut staffing and reduce all overheads. There are less sales to be had, so reducing overhead is a must. Amazon will continue to take and take from its sellers so unless sellers significantly reduce overhead in response to the reduced sales, raise their margins and maintain responsible ad costs then the profit margin won't be sufficient to sustain operations. I estimate that 3P sellers must get 40% smaller by next year to show profitability. Most will need to get 40% smaller because of downsizing or each industry's supply will shrink 40% due to sellers going out of business. Sadly Amazon has an arbitration clause in the SA which we're all bound to once we started selling so we have no recourse other than to accept the abuse and figure out a path forward despite it.
Seller_RW2hhNpmNDVQL
We keep getting boilerplate responses regarding major anomalies in sales and traffic & ranking.
One ASIN in particular that is historically high preforming during the summer months:
Responses from Seller Support etc gives empty fluff responses such as:
"Also one research we have found no best seller lists for this ASIN where it is #1.
The ASIN does not meet the minimum number of recent and historical sales to receive a badge.
From the attachment you have sent we can see that the ASINs sales trend has been fluctuating.
Also note that, sales and views trends are new features we are piloting to help our customers make more confident purchasing decisions. The data may not exactly match what you see in Seller Central. The sales and views trends feature provides a broad estimate of the number of customers who made purchases on or viewed a particular ASIN, across everyone selling that ASIN. Sales and views trends data is currently refreshed daily. Returns, cancellations are not currently included in the computation of this number."...
And asking for further clarity resulted in:
"Sales trend helps customers differentiate products in Amazon’s vast catalog by providing a broad estimate of the number of customers who recently purchased a product (for example, "10K+ bought in past month"). Sales trend data is refreshed at least daily and does not include returns and cancellations.
You can improve your sales trend number by improving the quality, availability, and competitive pricing of your products."
It's a lot of word salads to go through to be told a 310% change over a few weeks is normal.
Seller_TyNPnzv9SaYa3
This (below) is starting to appear on listings - where Amazon is telling buyers - go buy this somewhere else.
Seller_EcWkJa2ukzYqu
Advertising dollars rule the world.
Seller_2gzO3lLOtwvGb
Are you selling something in demand? It seems to me that you're not and thus the slow sales. Maybe it's time to change your business model?!?
We sell low priced, in demand toys and average 20-50 sales per day without ever spending a penny on advertising.
Not being disrespectful or bragging here, just making an observation based on my experience.
Seller_LAZowCz4BTyyt
I'm curious --
- Is the 50-70% drop in sales over 2 years your only indication that Amazon changed something?
- Is your product (or the equivalent) sold on other channels? (eBay, TikTok, Walmart, Temu, et al)
- If so, has consumer search volume increased over the past 2 years on another channel? (it certainly has on TikTok, as an example)
I'm not here to defend Amazon, but I do know how A9 functions and how to make it work for my products. I'm asking to test your assumptions and see if there is a solution or opportunity buried in your current frustration.
Best of luck.
Seller_S0JXNk2OxA2y9
You are correct and now they are holding our sales until package is delivered I have sales that were delivered over a week ago and the sale is still pending for payment. Between the loss of sales due to Algorithm changes and holding funds longer this is going to break me. Amazon must need money taking our sales and using our money to finance Amazon. Please stop making to changes to help us your killing our business I know I am a small seller but I feel the pain!
Seller_LkCtz4BoTywNw
I was frustrated because of Amazon and wanted to quit very much, but it was too difficult to clean up the goods. There were a lot of new products that I wanted to sell on this platform, but when I thought about the expensive advertising fees, I gave up.
