Amazon Rankings?

[rowyn]

This is weird.

Something screwy is going on with Amazon's sales rankings. And their search engine. Soemthing really screwy with their search engine: I tried a search for Heather Has Two Mommies, and on my first search the eponymous book came back as the 10th result. Books unrelated to it and matching none of the words in the title, plus imitations of it and ones about it, all ranked higher. Buh?

But when I searched again, I got it as the top hit. Buh?

It also has no sales rank. Contrast this with, say, Schlock Mercenary: the Teraport Wars, which has a sales rank of #637,692, or Alysha's Fall, rank #4,559,584. I'm pretty sure it's not that Heather Has Two Mommies hasn't sold enough copies to get a sales rank.

According to Publishers Weekly, Amazon is saying this is a glitch, and not a new policy.

According to Mark Probst , Amazon Support sent him an email that it was an intentional change to delist "adult" material. (And on what planet is Heather Has Two Mommies "adult" material? O_O Daddy's Roommate likewise lost its sales rank). Probst has a link to a Playboy Centerfold special that kept its ranking, but what roaming about I did trying to find heterosexual adult erotica also came up with a bunch of no-sales-rank results. So if it's a glitch, it's a glitch targeted at pretty much anything GLBT and most (but not all) erotica.

My guess is that it was intentional, but either it was intentionally done by someone who didn't really have the authority to do it, and/or Amazon didn't expect a backlash and is now so embarrassed that they're trying to squirm out of it. :6 The "Publisher's Weekly" piece at least suggests that the rankings are going to come back. It's still annoying at best. Sheesh!

Edit: Bunch more links and info here. Also biased towards "it;s an Amazon plot" but has links on Amazon defending itself.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I was just thinking about how Amazon could best handle this in a way that made all their customers happy.

One natural approach would be to allow logged in users to have a default set of tags which get appended as - to every search. This would allow users who want to avoid GLBT content to do so without using a ham handed approach like they are doing today. Amazon could even offer a pre-grouped set of tags which tend to be associated with GLBT content to let the users who find it offensive exclude it more conveniently if they are a large enough demographic that Amazon finds it in its commercial interest to cater to them.

The tricky part is how to set the defaults for users who haven't made a conscious choice. I don't know have many young children use Amazon's search tools. If that number is a significant percentage, it might argue for defaulting to removing explicit erotica (which is a very different category than GLBT that has some overlap), but it seems difficult to believe that Amazon's interests are best served by reducing the visibility of anything with non-sexual GLBT content by default.

Btw, I'm not including general statements about freedom of speech or about the reasons why GLBT people should be allowed to live their lives undisturbed because those issues aren't involved here. The question is just what is in Amazon's commercial interest and how their customers should respond to their choice.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure it's not in their commercial interest to have their software look glitchy. Being able to search on their catalog is one of the reasons to buy from them -- if the competing sites have comparable selection and better search, they're going to eat Amazon's lunch.

[natf.livejournal.com]

http://natalief.livejournal.com/1158712.html

[rowyn]

Thanks for the link!

[natf.livejournal.com]

Thought you might find it interesting! ;-p