A lot of people seem to not understand how the ranking systems work and to be honest, nobody but Amazon truly knows exactly as their formula is proprietary and they do not share all of the information. But after a lot of reading, my own experience and some back and forth correspondence with Amazon reps with what info they will give me, I have put together some information for everyone.
Ranking is basically a measurement of how an item compares to another item in its category. The ranking is measuring the time between sales and factors in sales stability also. This is directly from Amazon,“Amazon bases its rankings on all-time sales but recent sales weighs much more heavily than older sales. Orders placed now will count for more than orders placed a month ago. The ranking is calculated on a per order basis and not on a per unit sold basis.
This information is then used on a per ASIN basis so the information collected for an ASIN will be compared to competitor ASINs in whatever category the ASIN is in. If an ASIN changes categories, the information will transfer over but will be compared to the new competitor ASINs in the list. It can take up to 96 hours for information to update if any changes have been made to an ASIN's category.
In order for sales rank to surface on the detail page the ASIN must be a Best Seller at the subcategory level. This means that the ASIN must be ranked in the top 100 of the subcategory to be considered a Best Seller. Please note that the ASIN might have multiple Best Seller rankings at the subcategory level.”
From other articles that Amazon pointed me towards I also learned that the top 10% of the items in a category have the rank recalculated every hour while the remaining items are calculated each day.
Experience is what I see in the ranks and the changes made to give me an idea of what ranks to look for when buying. Some rookie sellers will make the decision to buy only under 50k rank in shoes for example. In this category I have seen items have a change in rank of 20k in a day. What was ranked 40k one day and something they would be willing to buy can be ranked 60k the next day and they will pass because it’s outside of their comfort zone. It is the same deal both days but the difference is only a matter of timing and seeing the item while the rank happened to be low enough to meet their criteria. This makes little sense but many people adhere to these strict guidelines they have set for themselves or that some “guru” has told them in the past. “Don’t buy items ranked over 50k in this category” seems to be advice you hear a lot in some groups. What if the item hadn’t sold for three days and the rank climbed to over 90k? Again, the only difference is the timing of when you see the deal.
Just as in the massive categories of Home & Kitchen. The category is so large that a 1 million ranked item still lands in the top 2% of the rankings. I had found an item ranked almost 1 million this morning with a single seller with 1 left, that item is still there now as I write this article and comparing the rank from 7am this morning to 11 pm the same day is a 36k increase. So that means roughly 36,000 other ASINs in the Home & Kitchen category, ranked over 1 million, sold in a 16 hour period.
When you look at an item and see the rank, you are just seeing a snapshot of where the item is at the moment. Without research you don’t know if it’s been climbing in the rankings to get to that number, if it’s been falling to get to that number or how long it’s been near that number. Maybe the rank has fallen because there hasn’t been an FBA seller on the listing for a few weeks and you are seeing a false high rank. Maybe it increased over the last couple weeks because a lowball seller came in to blow out some inventory and you are seeing a false low rank.
Just some things to think about when you are researching items and you may want to give less consideration to set in stone rank limits that you have imposed upon yourself. Learning to research your items is what is going to push your business to the next level.
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