Amazon US accused of rigging search engine to promote 'own' brands

What happened

Based on data provided by 3,400 product searchers in January 2021, The Markup found that Amazon brands and exclusives received an 'outsized portion of the top spot on search results' while only accounting for a small proportion of products on the company's platform.

The study used machine learning to determine that being an Amazon brand was the single most predictive factor for achieving a top ranking, accounting for the top spot in 70 percent of cases regardless of quality. 

These "rigged" results were often disguised under the label "featured from our brands," which Amazon internally classified as "merchandising" rather than advertising or organic search results, thereby avoiding the standard "sponsored" labels that third-party sellers must pay for. 

The Markup also conducted a survey showing that most US consumers are unable to identify Solimo, Pinzon, and other top-selling house brands, many of which are not clearly labelled as owned by Amazon. 

Over 150 Amazon house brands and 137,000 unique house brand and exclusive products were identified during the investigation.

Why it happened

The incident is seen to stem from a fundamental conflict of interest: Amazon acts as both the marketplace owner and a primary competitor within that marketplace.

Internal documents and former employees suggested that Amazon executives pressured search engineers to prioritise profitability over customer relevance. By promoting its own brands, which have higher profit margins since Amazon controls the entire supply chain, the company prioritised its bottom line over the "customer obsession" it publicly champions.

Reports also highlighted that Amazon allegedly covertly used proprietary data from third-party sellers to identify successful products, create cheaper knockoffs, and then use its algorithm to ensure those knockoffs outranked the originals.