Photo by Sherman Yang
What is Amazon search engine optimization? Can you impact your discoverability in search results by adding relevant keywords to your product listings?
Last month, the MerchantWords data team set out to answer these questions. We wanted to determine which products appear most frequently on the most coveted place on Amazon - the top 48 positions in the search results - page one.
Our Process
In January 2021, MerchantWords observed 200 million unique keyword searches across 11 Amazon marketplaces (US, CA, MX, AU, JP, IN, UK, DE, ES, FR, IT). These keywords ranked hundreds of millions of products, tracked by their 10-digit ASIN (Amazon Seller Index Number), on the first page of Amazon’s search results.
To determine which products had the largest Amazon search footprint and organic reach in each marketplace, we counted the total number of page one appearances for each ASIN.
And the first-place winner is ...
A long sleeve henley shirt. Like the one pictured below.
This humble henley shirt from Hanes ranked among the top 48 positions on more than 44K unique search pages.
Here’s a link to all the ranking keywords for this ASIN if you’re curious (subscription required to view).
A closer look at the data
Key finding #1: Kitchen & Dining had the highest count of ASINs appearing in our US Top 1000 list
When you view the Top 1000 US Amazon products by category we see a different story. The Clothing category is #10 with 28 ASINs in Women's Fashion.
Overall, Kitchen & Dining has the greatest number of products appearing in the Top 1000 list. 173 ASINs to be exact.
Automotive is close behind with 149. These products have the largest quantity of keywords ranking them at the top of the search results.
Key finding #2: 72% of the US products analyzed ranked on less than 5 “page one” search pages
The vast majority (72%) of the 200+ million products in the Amazon US marketplace ranked within the top organic positions (page one) on less than 5 search pages.
It is important to note that the analysis includes child ASINs (i.e., variations in style, color, or size from the main product).
Key finding #3: 35% of ASINs rank on the first page of search results with 10-24 keywords
To get a better understanding of how the more widely seen products are performing, we removed the under-performers (1-5 appearances) from our calculations. When we made this adjustment, about a third of ASINs had 10-24 organic appearances on the first page of the search results.
Key finding #4: The top 5 ranking branded products are from Motor Trend, Nilight, Hanes, AmazonBasics, and SEALIGHT
When we reviewed the top-ranking products by brand, the top 5 brands are Motor Trend, Nilight, Hanes, AmazonBasics, and SEALIGHT. Here’s the brand data set:
Key finding #5: Reviews do not have a significant impact on a product’s ranking in search results
We tested the hypothesis that reviews have a positive correlation with page one appearances. We used Spearman and Pearson correlations to uncover relationships. There was a Spearman correlation of 0.58 between the number of page one appearances and the number of reviews.
In 1000 repeated random samples of products in the electronics category, we saw no strong correlation between reviews and organic rank. This was the same for all categories, not just electronics.
The Pearson correlation was much weaker, around 0.12, and varied widely by category. This told us that the relationship between the number of page one appearances and the number of reviews doesn’t have a strong linear relationship, but does have a fairly significant monotonically increasing relationship.
Simply put, there is a relationship between the number of page one appearances and your review count, but on aggregate it’s not a really strong one.
Our Conclusion
Is this all doom and gloom? Of course not.
Can you impact your discoverability in search results by adding relevant keywords to your product listings?
Yes.
When you rank organically within the top 48 positions on Amazon for 5 or more keywords you’re already performing above and beyond most ASINs on Amazon.
To stay at the top, keep your listing content fresh and relevant and maintain customer satisfaction.
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