What is Amazon Best Sellers Rank and How To Improve Your Ranking

Amazon's Best Sellers Ranking is an indicator of how your product is positioned in relation to your competitors' products in the same category based on the number of sales. Find out how you can improve your ranking and increase your sales.

What is the Amazon Best Sellers Rank

The Amazon Best Sellers Rank (ABSR) is simply a number that Amazon rewards a product when it obtains at least one sale. It represents the sales position relative to all other products in its category.

In short, ABSR serves as a measure of how well a product is doing in its category. The lower this number, the better it is performing in sales. For example, a product ranked #1 on the ABSR will have far more sales than a product in its category that is ranked #2,000.

The Amazon Best Sellers Rank is calculated by category and subcategory. The more generic the category, the higher the position of that product in the ranking. For example, imagine you sell skateboards on Amazon. This product could be ranked #1 in the standard skateboards subcategory and #5,000 in the Sports & Outdoors category.

How is the Amazon Best Sellers Rank Calculated

According to Amazon’s information, the calculation of the best sellers is based on the American multinational's sales and is updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales for each product sold on Amazon.

Even though Amazon has not made public the criteria by which ABSR is established, several commonly accepted standards that help to improve your product's position within this ranking:

Current and historical sales, which is assumed to be the most important factor in positioning a product in ABSR.
Product price variations and promotions.
Competitors' products.

However, Amazon has introduced several constraints to more accurately reflect the sales trends of each category. To explain this with a practical example, imagine a company "A" sells 10 units of a product in 1 hour, and its competitor, company "B" sells two units of the same product during that period.

If during the next hour, sales of company A's product drop down to 2 units, while company B's sales remain constant, Amazon's algorithm would not penalise company A, as it would take into account its historical sales (those of the previous hour) to determine its position in the ranking.

Differences between Amazon Best Sellers Rank and Organic Ranking

There is some misunderstanding about what exactly Amazon BSR means among sellers, especially when compared to other similar indicators. Many of them think that it is, or at least relates to the position in which their product appears in organic search, but this is not the case.

You can have a good position in Amazon's organic search and a bad ABSR in a given category, and vice versa.

However, both metrics provide feedback to each other and contribute to improving product sales. A good organic ranking places your product in a top position according to the search criteria, which in turn improves ABSR. For example, if your product is in the fourth position in the search results, it will get more visits and, consequently, more sales, compared to if it appears on the third or fourth page.

Optimize your Product Listing

If your Amazon BSR is high, it means that you are not being able to convert visitors into buyers. This may be because your product listing is not attractive, either because it is messy, does not contain all the relevant information or because it is outdated.

When selling on Amazon, it is important to include all the information about the products you sell, classifying them according to the categories you want to show on the platform. In this product listing, you should include all the information about the products you are selling, such as their title, images, description and price.

You must consider any element, no matter how irrelevant it may seem, to position your product in the product listing, and never assume that it is finished. It is a task that must be continuously reviewed and updated to improve and optimise your commercial offer according to different factors, such as market trends, your needs as a seller or even the competition.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: what is it good for me as a seller?

The Amazon Best Sellers Rank has more relevance than you might think. Being among the best sellers in a category is synonymous with success, as it sends a message to your potential customers that your product is among the best sellers, and not all buyers can be wrong.

Its evolution can even be used as a measure of future sales. Thanks to tools such as CamelCamelCamel or JungleScout you can track a product's ABSR over time to get an indication of how much a product is moving.

It also lets you know what the impact of a particular campaign or promotion has been. If the ABSR is low (remember, a ranking with a low/small number) over time, your product is selling well whether you have applied discounts or not. But a sudden rise in ranking may well be a response to these campaigns.

In short, ABSR is one of the most useful indicators for any Amazon seller, not only because it provides interesting information about the position of your product in a category, but also to identify trends and evaluate the need for promotions or discounts, among many other actions.

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