Using Amazon’s Product Search Tools to Boost Visibility

Typically, the most common answer for this question is the advanced book searching tool available on Amazon. Given the large number of books Amazon sells, it only makes sense to have a sorting method that various targets search.

Otherwise, its advanced search method can also potentially refer to product attributes. Product attributes are factors that narrow down the search for the prospective buyer.

Here are some examples of attributes:

• Free shipping / Prime shipping
• Average customer rating
• Shirt size
• Color
• Condition (new/used)
• New release
• Climate pledge friendly
• Brand

The attributes you see will depend on what you search. As sellers, the more product attributes you have accounted for, the higher your likelihood of getting spotted.

We will revisit product attributes a bit later.

The final form refers to search syntax.

Search syntax refers to the specific ways you can narrow your search down on Amazon. For example, if you searched for the phrase “digital camera,” you are most likely to receive listings for digital cameras.

If you expand your search to the less popular pages (beyond page ten usually), you might find non-digital cameras. When a search engine uses the terms you place, it takes individual terms into account.

If you want to avoid taking all cameras into account, search syntax enables you to wiggle around those requirements. Below, we will provide a full breakdown of search syntax to provide you with greater control over what you find in your searches.

The syntax is found on the standard search bar. You can also perform syntax by typing the following into any browser:

“site:amazon.com”

Both syntax options share similar (although slightly different) lists. In our case, I recommend you stick with the Amazon search bar.

The genre of the book is the overall writing theme that you insert in the product details. For example, Lord of the Rings is a series in the fantasy genre.

Because Amazon used to be a bookstore, having this is a substitute for a product category. Different subjects include the following:

• Children’s books
• Literature & fiction
• Religion & spirituality (Christian books & bibles)
• Cookbooks
• Comics & graphic novels
• Bargain books
• Reference
• Health, fitness, & dieting
• Politics & social science
• Education & teaching
• Self-help
• Arts & photography
• Science & math
• Humor & entertainment
• Business & money (investing)
• Medical
• Teen & young adult
• History
• Science fiction & fantasy
• Crafts, hobbies, & home
• Biographies & memoirs
• Mystery, thriller, & suspense
• Law
• Gay & lesbian
• Parenting & relationships
• Travel
• Sports & outdoors

Amazon has a large number of product categories. But putting yourself into the right one, you have a higher chance to hit your target audience.

There are also many subgenres you can hit. For example, “Final Season” is the number one seller in a lesser-known genre: Children’s Disease Books.

There are subgenres among subgenres in Amazon. By finding a less competitive option, young authors can increase their product discoverability.

There are four general conditions to be aware of:

• New – the condition selected for all new releases with no signs of wear and tear
• Used – a condition specified for books handled by resellers
• Collectible – a state indicating the book is of like-new quality but is an older book.
• All -means the buyer doesn’t have a preference over what condition the book is in.

Authors and some book resellers work in the new category. The new category is full of the latest releases and is typically the most competitive.

This is because selling books on Amazon is one of the most profitable niches to be a part of if you can do it right. This is especially true when you consider ebooks, which basically have almost no overhead.

Those in the used category typically buy extensive collections of books for reselling. It is expected that books in the used category will be far cheaper, so there is less profit potential and more challenge.

However, particularly tech-savvy people can resell extensive collections of books by single units. Check out your local bookstores (not the new ones) in town to get an idea of what to expect.

Selling collectible and rare books on Amazon isn’t the best idea. You’ll find that Amazon sends most people who apply for this type of practice to AbeBooks, an Amazon company.

Selecting the right reader age in the advanced search function enables finders to locate your book with greater ease. Below are the different categories and what you can keep in mind when selecting them:

• Baby to Two Years: Intended for the youngest audiences. Most likely associated with board books and sensory books to help littlest ones learn basic sounds and feelings.
• Three to Five Years: It still contains many board books but has slightly more advanced formats that include topics that may teach kids how to behave appropriately. Age five is when most kids begin kindergarten. So many in this category are just learning how to read by themselves.
• Six to Eight Years: From ages six to eight, children understand reading, often reading their first books alone. You’ll still find many common themes that try and teach kids good behaviors.
• Nine to Twelve: Kids learn more complex stories and formats with a greater understanding of more profound morals. While this category isn’t considered young adult literature, you’ll find this is the age where kids start to appreciate a good story.

You’ll find that not selecting a category in this opens up the possibilities to include adult literature. So choosing the reader age is only suitable for those who write or sell children’s literature.

Given that this tool is handy for parents trying to find the right books for their kids, you’ll find that this is pretty useful.

The Advanced Search Tool for books only currently supports four languages:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish

If your book manages to fit one of the four categories, it would be handy to remind readers of that.

Hiring a translator to take advantage of these languages might be handy. However, you’ll have to test the market to determine if creating physical copies is worth it.

You can test the waters by releasing the eBook and checking out the sales. You can consider a physical release if your book is popular with those from any above (or unmentioned) languages.

The publishing date is the official date the book was released in general. This category isn’t specific to Amazon release dates. Instead, it deals with the original release.

For those selling used books, knowing the publishing date is vital. This information is essential if someone is trying to remember a time-specific book.

This category is critical when working pre-1970, as ISBNs were not around at that time. I’ll revisit that topic a bit later.

For now, know that the publishing date enables you to search under three forms:

• Before the date
• After the date
• During the date

Those seeking books made before a date are likely looking for older used books. You might find people looking to revisit their childhood by getting a copy of “The Great Gatsby.”

Recall that collectible books aren’t typically suitable for Amazon. Instead, you are likely going to find people looking for old, inexpensive books.

People looking for books after a date might be trying to narrow things down by newer books. Maybe they want to avoid everything before the year 2000.

In this case, you will find a mix of people looking for cheap to new books.

The “during” period is most likely to narrow things down, as people in this category know the month or year of their preferred book. If you don’t have the correct year selected, you might miss out on a sale if you sell used books.

So, if you do sell used books or resell books, be sure you double-check your release date. Getting this wrong will cause you to lose potential sales.

There is a “sweet spot” when a book becomes scarce where you can increase the price. With price monitoring alerts from DataHawk, you can have us help you keep an eye on it.

Sorting results takes all the data mentioned above and sorts it by other factors. Below is a list of sorting possibilities you can use.

• Featured – Make’s Amazon’s preferred products on the top of the list. Typically, this means you see items sorted by sales rank, seller quality, and sponsored products.
• Bestselling – Sorts your list by the total number of sales over time.
• Price – low to high
• Price – high to low
• Average customer reviews
• Publication date (new to old)

You’ll find that being at the top of any of these lists is crucial when remaining relevant. However, these lists shift depending on what the user searches for.

For example, if they look for the cheapest books of any author, they will plug in the author and sort by price in descending order (low to high).

The point is that you should work to be on the top of one of these lists. However, being on the ascending price list is the least appealing option, and Amazon will downgrade your listing if it is too far above other options.

If you were paying attention, you might notice that we missed a massive area of the advanced search tool: ISBNs. ISBNs are incredibly important when creating your listing, regardless of what kind of books you sell.

The ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is an international standard for identifying books. Think of them like UPCs or ASINs, as these are how people remember your book on Amazon.

Because books must use these codes, ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) do not apply to books. Even if your book is sold in a collection, you won’t see them come in an ISBN.

Here are the ISBN options of the “Darkest Minds” four book box set, for example:

ISBNs were popularized after the 1970s as an easy way to track books. The ISBN organization performed the latest update in 2005, where booksellers went to 13 digits to account for both book and non-book products (audiobooks).

However, ISBN user manual updates have taken place this year.

In some cases, many books share the same ISBNs. However, there are no books made before 1970 that come with this system.

An ISBN is needed in one of two situations:

• To identify a newly created and published book.
• To look up information on a book.

In some cases, people will go to the public library and look up a local book to find for sale on Amazon. For towns that lack bookstores (many of them), locals choose between driving to the nearest store or shopping online.

An ISBN also contains a plethora of helpful information. Chances are, an ISBN will enable Amazon to fill in most of the product listing details for you after you put in a pre-existing ISBN.

In this case, it is no different from wholesale or retail arbitrage. Working with other people’s goods takes some of the efforts of in filling in product details.

However, authors of a book will need to acquire an ISBN.

The second half of this article deals heavily with an important topic: product attributes. Under the advanced search tool for books, you’ll notice that they match many habits from product attributes.

Looking at it now, you’ll see a lot of similarities:

If you consider your product attributes a form of advanced search, you get the idea. Ignoring these leads to a potential lost sale.  You can also learn about using backend keywords in your product listing optimization strategy in our other article.

To get an idea of how to take advantage of this, we will take a closer look at one of the better entry-level product categories: baby toys.

You’ll notice this breakdown as we scroll down the navigation bar under the toys & games category.

• Brands & Characters
• Price
• Department (for more detail)
• Interest

Here’s how each section is important:

If you are a baby toys wholesaler, you’ll pay attention to the brands. However, Amazon sellers who want to establish individual brands are more likely to pay attention to characters.

If you can sell a toy with a character on it, your kids will recognize it. If you have a kid and know about the famous show Paw Patrol, you know what we are talking about.

When you walk through a supermarket next, pay attention to how the kid’s snacks are located on the lower shelves. These shelves are strategically within arm’s reach, meant to help a kid reach the items more accessible.

While Amazon doesn’t have “shelves,” they do have character placement. It is an excellent way to increase the cost of everyday goods.

As a young, this can be a long-term goal. Once you get well-known characters on your toys, you’ll have great earnings potential.

The sweet spot for pricing of Amazon products is typically anywhere from $15 to $40. However, there are many pricing strategies you can use.

Your goal as a seller initially is to make it easy on yourself. Because you are small, you can’t expect to be a price of a quality leader (unless you have the investment to do otherwise).

Smaller sellers need to focus on providing middle-ground products. It would be best if you had a solid focus on middle-ground quality, which is why your pricing can’t be too cheap.

Please pay attention to the level of competition and how much they price those products. If you see an opportunity in an underserved niche, take it.

The department refers to your product category. The deeper you can go in this area, the better.

Take the example above.

You’ll notice that the department goes down four levels:

• Toys & Games
• Sports & Outdoor Play Toys
• Swimming Pool & Outdoor Water Toys
• Squirt Guns

It is much harder to rank for more generic terms because they are far more competitive. This strategy applies to any product category.

You’ll also want to narrow things down to other areas. Placing a tiger on your squirt gun qualifies it for animals.

Maybe your squirt gun is easy enough for a two-year-old to press the trigger. Regardless, you’ll want to do everything you can to narrow down the search.

Pay close attention to how deep your product category can go.

If we only choose those with high customer reviews, that list drops down to eight:

Amazon’s search engine is an unbelievably complicated tool. Finding specific items can be somewhat complicated if you have very few needs.

But most buyers don’t know about the advanced search engine features.

Syntax enables you to take advantage of Amazon’s search bar in the following ways:

• It allows you to be sure your product isn’t ranking for unwanted and adjacent terms.
• Allows you to check if your competitors are ranking for desired terms and variants.
• It enables you to add emphasis to certain words to see if you rank better for keyword variants.

These statements might all seem a bit advanced at first, but we’ll break down exactly what all of this means in the following sections.

We will start with basic searches:

Your basic Amazon search is something that anyone can do. It means typing in “beach sandals” and finding a pair of sand-resistant sandals with a palm tree on them. However, you’ll find that searching for the most basic terms yields too many results. For example, the long-term keyword “beach sandals for women waterproof” produces 1,000 results:

Fighting over the top positions when there are one thousand results is dreadful. Even with some more complicated searches, you’ll find there isn’t a lot to go on. Short keywords are basically worthless unless you are in an incredibly competitive position. These positions are typically left to large companies like Amazon, Samsung, or Crocs.

You might think you can just add another keyword, but that doesn’t always lead in the right direction. Check out what happens when you add “arch support.” Adding another three thousand results tells us that this target isn’t helpful. While you can see how other sandal companies hit the top of this rank, a basic search can be a waste of time.

Using tools (like DataHawk’s Amazon SEO Optimization tool) is one way you can supplement this shortcoming. You can also narrow things down with search syntax.

Wildcard enables you to place an asterisk or question mark in the middle or end of a word to account for multiple keyword forms.

For example, if you wanted to search for the plural form of a target keyword, you could do so. You would type your search term in like this:

hat*

The “*” will pull up results for both hat, hats, and any other keyword variant after it. You can also choose to insert this in the middle of a word to gain different forms.

*at

Choosing this can bring up sat, fat, cat, and all other simple English language examples.

In most cases, you’ll find this tool most helpful in finding plural variants of keywords. It can be handy to have that information in mind if you want to see how you rank when including both.

Proximity searching enables you to find search results where two pieces of text are nearby each other. For example, if you wanted to see if the words electric and grill were within three words of each other, you would type this:

“electric grill”~5

Knowing this information can enable you to find how title variants might impact a search ranking. If you choose to bring your title closer to what top results provide, you can check out variants by changing the number.

Fuzzy searching is a form of search that grabs other adjacent terms. The tilde key (~) is a sign to the search engine that you are willing to find a series of adjacent words.

For example, these results might pull up ‘car,’ ‘far,’ ‘par,’ and other similar words:

car~ 

Fuzzy searching can inform you about nearby search terms that resemble your word. It can be a handy tool for finding keyword variants that aren’t immediately on your mind.

Some people might suggest this as an opportunity to rank for misspelled words. However, Amazon automatically corrects these words to what is nearby. Do not use this tool for that purpose.

Term boosting refers to giving weight to one specific word in a search term over another. Term boosting is essential when you want to see if repetition of a search term helps in your search ranking.

For example, if we care more about grills than the word “electric” in our search results, we can use the following search command:

electric grill^6

You can also choose to emphasize specific phrases, but you will need to use quotation marks to focus on those phrases:

cordless “electric grill”^3

The number informs Amazon’s search engine how hard you would like to emphasize the word or phrase. Try not to get too hung up on it, as you will likely play with the number and move it up and down to see different results.

Removing special characters is sometimes necessary. The current list of special characters part of this syntax can be found below:

• +
• –
• &&
• ||
• !
• ( )
• { }
• [ ]
• ^
• “
• ~
• &
• Z
• :
• /

All of the special characters above have the potential of fooling Amazon into requesting it to do particular actions, as these symbols are boolean operators. However, searching for special characters has the benefit of finding character-based ranking data.

A backslash (\) informs Amazon to remove the emphasis on particular characters. Instead, the backslash tells Amazon to put them as part of the search.

The + symbol is another boolean operator informing Amazon of a search term that must appear in the document. It tells Amazon that the form must be exact, so the word appears in quotation marks:

+”electric grill.”

This command is excellent in situations where you are looking for exact matches. The “+” command tells you of cases where variants are excluded, which can be handy for PPC when targetting negative keywords.

By placing a second phrase with quotation marks in it, you can also include search phrases that are allowed to appear in the list:

+”electric grill” “smokeless grill.”

In this case, you can see the search results when someone tries to rank for multiple keywords. You’ll find that some situations end up swapping the top option, as smokeless grills are electric grills are often interchangeable terms.

Of course, you’ll sometimes want the opposite results.

The usage of advanced search systems can mean many different things. Here’s a quick breakdown of the three sections we just went through:

The Advanced Book Searching Tool contains numerous important details regarding bookselling. It reminds us of precisely what we need to put down when making book sales. Also, remember that ISBNs are your ASINs. You can’t list books without them!

The second area we went through was the product attributes section on the left. These attributes can change heavily depending on what your niche is. Selling technology is totally different from selling baby products. Always remember to go incredibly deep when it comes to product categories and attributes.

The last area went over syntax-based search. Any search engine uses some form of syntax, and many of those we listed will work on Google as well. Syntax searching enables you to gain powerful insights when appropriately used, but use this post as a guide to avoid confusion.

To ensure you give yourself the most excellent chance for top ranking, utilize all the tips here for the most narrow target. Whether you are a bookseller or not, there’s something here for everyone.

You can also use Datahawk’s Keyword Ranking Tracker to see how those search terms apply to volume. We hope this helps you out! Thanks for reading!