Categories
Most popular
Why You Need To Know Amazon Indexing
Why Are PPC Costs So High Right Now and What Measures Can You Take To Prevent Amazon Advertising Expenses?
Off-Amazon Marketing Strategies for Amazon Sellers in 2021
How to Reset Your Amazon PPC After Q4
How to Make a Conversion-Ready Amazon Product Listing
World-Class Innovation
What is Search Find Buy on Amazon?
If you have been selling on Amazon for awhile or at least have been paying close enough attention to the methods to help products get ranked faster, you have undoubtedly heard of “Search-Find-Buy” (i.e. SFB). This tactic is exactly how it sounds and has proven incredibly effective at helping sellers rank their product for their target keyword as well as help lower their BSR.
The strategy goes like this: A customer opens up Amazon and uses a distinct keyword phrase that a seller is trying to target/rank for. Once the SERP comes up for that particular search term, the customer will search the pages until he finds the seller’s product. Once found, the customer clicks on the listing and purchases the product. If enough people do this, the product is rewarded by moving up the pages of Amazon because Amazon is associating that keyword with the conversion of sales for that product. And Amazon rewards high conversion rates.
How Does Amazon Register Search Find Buy?
No doubt, most customers utilize the Amazon search bar to find their products which is why Search-Find-Buy is so effective. However, there are other ways customers can purchase products and if your listing isn’t optimized for these things, you can lose an opportunity for sales.
To understand Search-Find-Buy, you have to understand how Amazon registers it as SFB. Let’s take “tea tumblers” for example. Say I was to search for tea tumblers in the Amazon search bar. The SERP would look something like this:
But where I want you to focus in on is the URL for this SERP. Here, you can see the letter “S” after amazon.com.
The “S” stands for search. Moving down the URL, you can find the words K=tea+tumblers. This signifies that someone SEARCHED for the keywords “tea tumblers.” Now, if I were to pick a product from this SERP, the URL would read something like this on the detail page:
Notice in the highlighted section that Amazon is associating this product with this keyword phrase. Thus, if I were to purchase this product, Amazon would register it as a conversion for the keywords “tea tumbler.”
How Does Browse Mode Work On Amazon?
But what happens when a customer (knowingly or unknowingly) jumps out of search into browse? Suddenly, the keyword term that was originally typed in becomes null-and-void.
This occurs when you start browsing through subcategories.
For example, say I went onto Amazon to search for a tea tumbler but suddenly I’m going down the rabbit hole that is Amazon (and let’s face it, we’ve all done this). I decide to look at home decor. This is what comes up:
Notice that the original search term I typed (tea tumbler) is no longer in the search bar. It also can’t be found in the URL:
https://www.amazon.com/home-d%C3%A9cor/b/?ie=UTF8&node=1063278&ref_=sv_hg_4
What we can see from the new URL is that the “S” for search has been replaced by a “B” for browse (as indicated in the highlighted section of the URL.) This means that Amazon no longer is registering this as a searched item but a browsed one. No longer does my search for tea tumblers mean anything.
Now, let’s go further down the rabbit hole and click on “lighting” as one of the subcategories under “home decor.”
As you can see, the search bar has now been auto-populated by the subcategory that we’re in – not the search term we put in. Now, let’s dissect the URL link again.
The “b” indicates that we are still in browse mode. The node 495224 directly correlates with the subcategory “lighting and ceiling fans” (every subcategory has a numerical node associated with it). The “s” indicates search but not for a keyword. In this case, Amazon is registering it as a generalized search for merchandise which is how it tracks browse searches.
Why Is Understanding Browse Mode So Important?
Understanding that SFB is not the only way to have your product found on Amazon means you have to make sure your listing is optimized to be found in browse mode. This means that you have strategically decided on a category node funnel that best suits your product and places you among the right competition. This also means that your “intended use” “other attributes” and “target audience” are filled out thoroughly and accurately. Amazon uses all of this information to assess where and how you are found on Amazon.
The bottom line: Make sure you are thoroughly set-up in Seller Central. If possible, hire a professional to make sure your “keywords” and “more details” sections in your S.C. are optimized correctly to ensure your product can be found in both search and browse.
