How can previous sales activity affect your Amazon sales rank?

Many startup sellers feel confused by the behavior of Amazon sales rank. It is an unpredictable system which is continuously developed to provide customers with the most accurate search data. 

The most frequently asked questions we receive include: “Why did my sales rank go down when I sold more over the recent period?”, “Why did my sales rank go up when I did not sell any item?” and so on. 

Even experienced specialists may feel frustrated when it comes to Amazon sales rank. The principle of Amazon ranking system work is a secret which Amazon is not willing to disclose. However, we can get an idea of Amazon ranking system mechanism making some intelligent analysis and researchers. Once you understand that ranking formula too, the quirks of sales rank make much more sense, and you can use them to your advantage. 

The basics of Amazon sales rank

Amazon ranking system works like a golf score. The lower score you have, the better your products are selling. Each products sale counts as a plus to your rank score. Each day the ranking score may decrease by half, and it is added to today’s points. Amazon updates its rankings of the bestselling products in real time. So, the number one product at any given time is the best selling product on Amazon at the particular moment. As a rule, the products that rank at the 100,000 or more are updated daily or at least several times per day. It depends on the season of the year as well as on the product type. For each category on Amazon, products are ranked based on their current scores. 

While the ranking process is simple in general, there are some aspects of the process that contribute to the strange behavior of the Amazon ranking system. Amazon sales rank is relative to other products in your niche. As your item rises in sales rank, it will displace other items. As additional items raise through the ranks, your product may be pushed downwards. The Amazon rankings indicate sales that are happening or not happening at this moment, providing the opportunity for each product to strive for the first rank. 

One more Amazon ranking aspect you should keep in mind is the sales history. The more recent the sale, the more weight it has. Amazon weights sales by recency, ranking high those sellers who made more sales in the past. That is why in the long run steady and organic growth outperforms sudden rises of selling activity. Keep it mind conducting your optimization and advertising campaigns. If you want to improve your Amazon sales rank, you need to focus on long-term success. 

Moreover, I want to destroy the myth about the factors that affect sales rank. You should be aware that either review or ratings can affect your sales rank. This Amazon metric is governed by sales and downloads, with a little adjustment by Amazon’s algorithms. So, there is no sense to think over generating more reviews to increase sales rank. Everything you need is to improve your sales performance and attract more paying customers. To accomplish this task, you need to improve your product listing, upload a lot of quality pictures, and implement special marketing techniques to encourage shopper click on your listing from search. 

However, unfortunately, high sales rank can’t give you a guarantee of the high placement in the search results. Sales rank plays a small role in determining the order of Amazon search results, while such well-known factors as relevancy, pricing policy, keywords, and sales history are used by Amazon to determine the rank of the product on search results page.