Explanation of Amazon Ranking System, Algorithms, and Important Points to Note

I want to know how Amazon rankings work!

How can I reliably check the popular products on Amazon?

Are there any precautions I should be aware of when using Amazon rankings?

Amazon, the world’s largest online marketplace, handles millions of products and transactions on a daily basis.

In addition, “Amazon arbitrage” and other similar side businesses have been gaining attention as easy-to-start side hustles, attracting many individuals to participate.

Amidst the vast array of products available, how can a company make its own products stand out and achieve successful sales?

One of the answers lies in this Amazon ranking system.

To increase sales on Amazon, it is essential to have a solid understanding of the Amazon ranking system and list products at opportune times when they are likely to sell well.

Today, we will delve deeply into Amazon’s product ranking, exploring the complex mechanisms and algorithms behind it.

About Amazon Rankings

What is Amazon ranking?

Amazon Ranking is a bestselling ranking system categorized by products,

which Amazon updates every hour. Apart from the Bestseller Ranking, there are also the following rankings: [Please provide the list of other rankings you want to know about].

New Arrival Ranking:：A ranking of popular products that are particularly new (pre-orders or recently released)

updated every hour based on reservation data and other factors.

Rising Keyword Ranking:：A ranking of search keywords reflecting the most searched terms, updated daily.

Most Wished For Ranking：A ranking based on data from the most “Wishlist” additions, updated daily to show the most desired products.

Popular Gift Ranking：A ranking of popular products based on the utilization of gift settings in customer orders, updated daily.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/b?ie=UTF8&node=3540043051

Various rankings are prepared to cater to the different purposes of buyers.

How is the Amazon ranking determined?

Amazon mentions the following about Amazon rankings:

The Amazon ranking is determined based on the sales performance on Amazon. It reflects the latest and cumulative sales of all products sold on Amazon and is updated every hour.

引用：https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GGGMZK378RQPATDJ#:~:text=Amazon%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AD%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0%E3%81%AF%E3%80%81Amazon%E3%81%A7,%E3%81%94%E3%81%A8%E3%81%AB%E6%9B%B4%E6%96%B0%E3%81%95%E3%82%8C%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99%E3%80%82

From the above, it can be understood that Amazon rankings are based on the number of times an item has been ordered (order count) rather than the quantity of items ordered (even if a large number of items are purchased at once, it will be counted as one order).

Exactly, products with a higher number of orders will rank higher in the Amazon rankings. On the other hand, products with fewer orders (less popular products) will gradually decline in the rankings.

Therefore, even if you are currently ranked within the top 1000, there are cases where you may drop to around 50,000 within a week if you don’t sell well.

How to access Amazon’s best-selling ranking.

For example, you can display the best-selling ranking for “TV games” as follows:

1.Click on “TV Games” from the Amazon category.

2.Click on “Amazon Ranking.”

3.The best-selling ranking for games will be displayed.

※The above best-selling ranking displays up to 100 positions and is updated hourly.

4.You can also view the best-selling ranking for the sub-category of games (in this case, PS4).

How to check the Amazon bestseller ranking beyond the top 100:

Amazon’s bestseller ranking can only be viewed up to the top 100 positions, so to check beyond that, you need to utilize external tools that have accumulated the data.

With ERSA PRO, you can browse through over 300 million product data available on amazon.co.jp. It allows you to display the “Top 1000 products in the major categories” and extract products by specifying categories and rankings, such as “Toys ranked 2000 to 4000.”

I explain in detail in the various articles below.

Introduction of ERESA PRO’s “Top 1000 Display Feature” for major categories.

Introduction of ERESA PRO’s “Advanced Search Feature.”

Considerations on the algorithm of Amazon’s ranking system.

The method for determining the ranking order.

It can be inferred from the mention that Amazon updates rankings every hour that the ranking mechanism is likely based on whether a product received two or more orders within an hour.

For example, if there were more than 2 orders within 1 hour for 1000 different products, the ranking from 1st to 1000th would be determined based on the number of orders received for each of these 1000 products.

Furthermore, if there were 10000 different products that had more than 2 orders within 24 hours, the rankings from 1001st to 10000th would be determined from the remaining 9000 products (excluding the top 1000) based on their respective sales numbers.

The update time of the rankings varies according to the ranking position.

Amazon mentions that the rankings are updated every hour, but this typically applies up to around the 10,000th position. For products ranked from 10,000 to 100,000, the updates are generally done approximately every 24 hours.

Factors other than the number of orders are also taken into consideration.

Indeed, for products ranked below 100,000, other factors such as page views and other metrics may also be taken into account in determining the rankings.

How to accurately identify popular products.

If you want to accurately identify popular products, you can use services that allow you to check Amazon’s product rankings and price trends through graphs and numerical data.

Use ERESA .

The most effective way to discern popular products is to use ERESA , which is available for free.

“When you enter the product name, ASIN, JAN code, or any other information into the search box, you can not only see the current rankings but also the number of ranking changes within a certain period, the trend of the number of sellers, and price fluctuations at a glance.”

■ Product Details Information

■ Graph of Sellers, Prices, and Ranking Trends

ERESA (Eelisa) is a web tool, so you can access it from your computer, smartphone, or tablet.

Login / New Member Registration is here.

What matters most in Amazon rankings is the frequency of ranking changes.

Currently, the number of ranking changes is still being used as an indicator of sales performance.

ERESA also displays this figure as “ranking descent count.”

For example, if there were 10 ranking changes in one month, it can be inferred that at least 10 units of the product have been sold during that period. However, since one ranking change can correspond to more than one order, it does not necessarily mean only 10 individual items were sold.

This figure serves as one of the indicators of sales performance, but for high-ranking products (ranks 1 to 4), they often sell even more than the number of ranking changes suggests.

To further assist in estimating sales, you can utilize the “Sales Volume Prediction” feature in ERESA PRO. By specifying the Amazon main category and the product’s ranking, ERESA’s proprietary algorithms and past sales data can provide predictions of weekly and monthly sales volumes.

About Amazon’s bestsellers:

Bestsellers are products that have reached the top rank in sales in various categories, both big and small, on Amazon. They are marked as such for a certain period.

It is a clear indication to consumers that “this product sells well.”

Don’t judge products solely based on the current Amazon rankings.

Do not make judgments about products based solely on their current Amazon rankings.

As I explained earlier, you should not make purchasing decisions for products based solely on the current Amazon rankings. Amazon rankings can fluctuate over time based on sales and popularity. Even if a product appears to have a high ranking at the moment of checking, it may experience a rapid decline in rank afterward.

Let’s make sure to check the trend of rankings over a specific period.

Rankings can still rise even with purchases (or reservations)→cancellations.

Even if purchases (or reservations) are made and subsequently canceled on Amazon, the rankings will still rise.

Although it has become less common now, there was a trend for a while where some people would purchase their own company’s products through convenience store payments, repeatedly canceling the payments to boost their rankings without actually completing the transactions.

Even if used items are sold, the rankings would still increase.

Amazon rankings increase even if used items are sold. Regardless of whether the items are new or used, the sales are reflected in the rankings. Therefore, it is important to be cautious, as some products may have high rankings but only sell as used items (this is more common with products that have a large price difference between new and used, such as premium-priced products that exceed the regular price).

However, used items are basically one-of-a-kind, so if they sell, the number of used item sellers decreases. When checking rankings, be sure to also check the changes in the number of used sellers and the fluctuations in the lowest prices.

Sometimes, even if a product is selling well, it may not be displayed in the best-selling ranking.

In Amazon, there are cases where even though a product is selling well, its best-selling ranking suddenly stops being displayed.

Most often, this is caused by incorrect associations of browse nodes.

※Most often, this is due to the browsing node not being correctly associated.

Usually, when registering a product, you set up browse nodes. However, sometimes an error occurs where the browse nodes get disrupted when adding variations or making certain modifications midway, which results in bestseller rankings not being displayed anymore.

Rankings for adult products are not displayed.

Rankings for some products, such as adult items and those not suitable for individuals under 18 years old (games, figures, etc.), will not be displayed.

Sales and the number of units sold can vary significantly depending on the category, even within the same rankings.

The number of registered products varies by category, resulting in significant differences in sales and the number of units sold, even for the same rank in the rankings.

As you can see from the table below, even at the same ranking of 1000th place, the number of units sold can be completely different depending on the category.

※This table represents the sales volume prediction feature of ERESA PRO.

Be careful with products that use sponsorships.

One of the judgment mistakes that beginner to intermediate sellers often make during research is when they find a high-ranking and potentially profitable product in the sponsored products section while doing research on Amazon. They decide to jump on the opportunity, but unfortunately, the product doesn’t sell well at all.

Why did the product, which had such a high ranking, suddenly stop selling when I started promoting it?

Actually, products like this maintain their high rankings due to sponsored products. So, unless you use sponsored products as well, it’s difficult to achieve a similar ranking.

The sales quantity of high-ranking products cannot be predicted based on the number of ranking changes.

For low-ranking products, the frequency of ranking changes (fluctuations) can be an indicator of the number of units sold. However, for mainly high-ranking products with rankings in the four digits or above, this metric becomes meaningless.

For example, the sales figures for high-ranking products, which have been fluctuating between 1st and 10th positions, would be as follows:

 

Based on the logic that “ranking changes = number of units sold,” considering 231 ranking changes in the past 30 days, it can be inferred that approximately 7 to 8 units are being sold per day.

It is difficult to imagine that the Nintendo Switch, which is one of the top 10 best-selling products in the gaming category, has only sold 231 units in a month.

However, with ERESA PRO (paid version), you can use the “Sales Quantity Forecasting” feature to predict sales quantities as shown below.

After checking the 90-day average ranking of the product in the game category, which was 6th, I found that both new and used items are selling at a rate of over 15,000 units per month.

Of course, these numbers serve as a rough estimate, but they are more accurate than simply relying on the ranking drop frequency.

Regarding the sales quantity prediction feature of ERESA PRO, it is explained in the article below.

Summary

If you know how Amazon’s ranking system works, you will be able to predict which products will sell at what timing.

By doing so, you can purchase inventory at the appropriate timing, significantly reducing risks and enabling you to successfully sell products on Amazon and make a profit.

People who want to efficiently find popular products can utilize tools like ERESA PRO and refer to ranking information to determine which products are likely to sell well.

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