Most Amazon.com shoppers are familiar with the “#1 Best Seller” badge that appears on many products. Together with reviews and ratings, it’s a way to decide if an item is worth buying.
However, the product may not actually be a bestseller.
Unscrupulous merchants are trying to trick Amazon’s algorithms into thinking they are selling better than they actually are by putting popular products in low-selling product categories. The scams Bloomberg uncovered focused primarily on smartphone mounts on car dashboards, phone cases, and USB drives. For example, one mount recently appeared in the “Replacement Axle Shafts” category. With more people buying phone mounts than car axles, this item has skyrocketed to best-selling status.
It’s not clear what other types of products are being targeted, but affected merchants say they’re losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases, before the scheme went viral. It says Amazon needs to crack down. A U.S. shopper is expected to spend $120 billion online this holiday season, so scammers have plenty of incentive to exploit the system.
Product categories created by Amazon and selected by the merchant appear right next to the Best Seller badge. But because people shop quickly (an estimated 28% of Amazon purchases are completed within 3 minutes of him), most customers are on mobile devices where fine print can easily be overlooked. So this trick is often not noticed.
said Michael Levin, partner at Consumer Intelligence Research Partners in Chicago.
Bloomberg recently identified more than 25 smartphone mount examples. All of these were sold by China-based merchants, and the best-selling badges were miscategorized. Sold by LISEN Direct in China, the magnetic mount was the best seller in the replacement wiper hose category.
According to Lesley Hensell, co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, which advises Amazon sellers, perpetrators are winning by increasing their own sales, which could jump as much as 50% on best-selling Imprimaturs. there is. Consumers play around and may not even notice unless the product turns out to be junk. The big losers are Amazon sellers who play by the rules. Their products are artificially pushed down in search results, making it less likely for shoppers to see them.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company uses machine learning to detect misplaced products and also conducts manual reviews by product classification experts when necessary. Sellers who place their products in the wrong category are usually warned, and repeat offenders can be banned from selling on the platform, she said. A spokesperson said Amazon’s bestseller ranking is updated every hour based on sales across the site.
“We work hard to create a trustworthy shopping experience by protecting our customers, merchant partners and Amazon from fraud and abuse, and have systems in place to detect suspicious activity.” she said in an email. “Amazon has no place for fraud. We will continue to pursue all means to protect our store and hold bad actors accountable.”
A mobile phone accessories retailer who said the scam had caused a 50% drop in monthly holiday sales had filed hundreds of complaints with Amazon in the past month, with mixed results. In some cases, a company removes a product from the wrong category and after a few days it reappears in another category. Alternatively, Amazon responds to complaints by saying nothing is wrong, said the seller, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
In response to one report that the phone mount received the Best Seller badge in the “sunroof” product category, Amazon sent a message stating “We are unable to take action on the report as no violations have been identified.” The merchant equated his efforts to thwart fraud with “fighting the wall.”
Amazon has long been criticized for not doing enough to police an online marketplace where nearly two million merchants compete to sell hundreds of millions of products.The site relies heavily on automation. This allows merchants to run their businesses with little input from Amazon employees. Automation keeps costs down for the company, but exposes the site to manipulation if sellers find cracks in their code. .
Other scams previously reported by Bloomberg include “sniping,” in which sellers buy competitors’ products and leave negative reviews to discourage shoppers from buying. Fake positive reviews have also been a long-standing problem, with Amazon suing Ring for selling positive product reviews. Last year, the e-commerce giant warned more than 700 companies from the Federal Trade Commission that fake reviews and other “deceptive endorsements” could face penalties of more than $40,000 per violation. was one of
This isn’t the first time Amazon sellers have misclassified products to trick the algorithm. According to Juozaska Ziukenas, founder and CEO of Marketplace Pulse, which monitors online sales, during the pandemic, the book and video game categories have been circumvented to circumvent Amazon’s product safety rules regarding the coronavirus. There was also a seller who put a pack of his masks on the face.
Smartphone mount sellers are likely tricking Amazon’s algorithm, according to Martin Heubel, a former product category manager at Amazon who now advises merchants. Sellers can move products from one category to another, and algorithms will first determine if the switch is justified, he said. If the machine finds anything wrong, it will be flagged for manual review, but this is not happening with the smartphone mount, he said.
“It’s a common tactic because even if you’re deliberately manipulating rankings, Amazon may see it as a mistake and issue a warning,” said Heubel.
Hensel, a consultant, said he helped two customers regain their best-seller badges after the badges were stolen by sellers who miscategorized their products. “It’s very detrimental to legitimate sellers who are overcrowded with products in that category,” she said. It’s very valuable and we need to stop this.”