Amazon Sales Rank Top 10 Things you Need to Know – Jungle Scout




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Dave Hamrick

Amazon SEO, Selling on Amazon
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The Amazon Sales Rank (also known as the Best Sellers Rank or BSR) is probably the most important  building block of the FBA universe. Millions of dollars can be made or lost in an instant, when the sales rank fluctuates. 
That’s why sellers have a love/hate relationship with it. It’s also why so many try to discover the secrets of Amazon’s BSR, or to look for undetectable ways to game it.
And while it’s unlikely that Amazon will ever divulge the ins and outs of its ranking system, there is information about its sales rank that every seller should know in order to increase their chances of success.
 
The Amazon sales rank — or BSR — is a number that represents the item’s popularity in a main category or sub-category. Every product on Amazon receives a ranking for its sub-categories, but not every product receives a ranking for their main category
For example, many products sold in ‘Electronics’ don’t have a BSR for that main category. Instead, Amazon assigns them rankings for their sub-categories, like ‘Earbud & In-Ear Headphones.’
As for the BSR itself, it can range anywhere from 1 to 1 million+, with a higher number means fewer sales. The smaller the BSR, the more popular the product.
Here’s an example of Amazon’s BSR for the Instant Pot. In the image below, you can see it is ranked #2 in ‘Kitchen & Dining’ (the main category), and then #1 in the sub-categories ‘Slow Cookers’ and ‘Electric Pressure Cookers.’
Amazon sales rank: Instant Pot's BSR
 
The Amazon seller community has long speculated on what factors Amazon takes into account in order to determine the BSR of a product. But, taking into account the complexity of the ranking system while analyzing all of the theories floating around to pinpoint those factors can discourage even the most motivated seller.
For that reason we’re focusing on the nine main signals that we know can make or break a product’s Best Sellers Rank.
Even if your product is unique in its category, it still needs to consistently gather sales in the initial days of its launch in order to start climbing up the seller ranks. That’s why it’s a good idea to start thinking about how to get that extra sales push before you launch. 

For example, you may want to consider using a low-price-entry strategy, or run a product giveaway. You could announce your launch on social media, offer coupons, or work on your listing optimization
In other words, whatever you do, don’t just list your product and forget it. Have a plan in place to get those initial sales before you activate your listing.
From the moment you launch to when you hit the #1 spot for your targeted keyword, your goal needs to be to bring in more sales every day.
This is called ‘sales velocity,’ and it can dramatically improve your BSR.
Amazon sales rank: Kiehl's deodorant
Amazon’s BSR is like a report card. It’s an indicator of past sales and sales performance. And the best way to get a good BSR is to focus on getting daily sales consistently and building up a solid sales history. 
By emphasizing the development of a strong sales record for your product, you’ll see an overall improvement in your BSR. 
Looking at the blender bottle currently holding the #6 position in the ‘Kitchen & Dining’ top 100, you can see in the following image that the sales for the bottle have been consistently recently, leading to the improvement in its BSR.  

If you get a lot of sales in a short amount of time you may see your BSR spike. But, if you can’t keep that sales momentum up, your recently-spiked BSR will plummet. 
Should this happen, you’ll likely experience a negative impact to your keyword rankings. Consequently, it’s better to have consistent sales instead of lower sales with occasional sales spikes.  
Let’s say it’s the beginning of March and you’re doing some Amazon product research. During your hunt, you discover that inflatable flamingos have a really low BSR and are getting tons of sales. 
Based on that information, you may want to jump right in and put all of your savings into developing an inflatable flamingo product. But don’t do it! 
In the case of the flamingo, the current BSR is merely tricking you into thinking that it is a good product opportunity. However, because this item is seasonal, what you’re really seeing are the seasonal spikes in sales that start in the spring (before spring break and warmer spring/summer months). These sales drop significantly in the autumn or winter months. 
Amazon sales rank: inflatable flamingo data
Remember, since the BSR indicates how well a product is currently selling (rather than how well it sells year round), you want to have consistent sales regardless of the season.
You can check the seasonality of a product using a tool like Jungle Scout’s Product Tracker, or by taking a look at Google Trends.
After studying thousands of products, we noticed that an order of 30 units was given the same weight as an order of a single unit. 
In other words, when it comes to Amazon’s BSR, the fact that someone ordered your product is more important than the number of units they purchased. 
So, while selling more units per order might give your product a boost in its keyword rankings, it won’t boost your BSR.
Amazon is diligent about updating its rankings, refreshing the numbers at least every two to three hours. But it’s extremely difficult to be just as diligent when it comes to keeping track of your product’s BSR, particularly when it’s being updated so often. 
For that reason, consider using a tool like Jungle Scout’s Alerts to let you know when there are changes to your product’s ranking. That way you can immediately make the necessary changes to get your item back on track.
Everybody has a bad day — even products sold on Amazon. Thankfully, Amazon takes those momentary lapses in performance into account when calculating a product’s BSR. 
For instance, if your sales drop 50%-60% on a given day, Amazon won’t dramatically decrease your product’s BSR based on that single day’s worth of data. Granted, the ranking may go down slightly after one or two days of lower sales, but as long as the drop in sales is short-lived, your product’s BSR should be fine.

However, while Amazon might not penalize your product for 1-2 days of low sales, a continued drop for 4-5 could hurt you. It can end up hurting your keyword rankings as well. 
Doing your due diligence when it comes to product research really is one of the main contributing factors to your product’s success. 
The amount of time you invest in finding the right product to sell can be a good indicator of the best seller rank that you can achieve. 
Spend a few hours researching, and the best you might be able to hope for is a product that turns a small profit. Spend a few weeks researching, and you may find a product that ends up being the next big thing (with a BSR of 1!
To increase your chances of finding a product that could garner lots of sales and a low BSR, here are three different strategies to use during your product research: 
 
Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank is not static. It changes often — in some cases, on an hourly basis — and holds the key to your Amazon success.  
But, even though its complexity can be overwhelming, don’t spend too much time on your ranking. Instead, use your time to find ways to drive more sales, gain more positive reviews, and increase your organic keyword ranking.
By focusing your attention on optimizing every aspect of your listing, and not on your product’s BSR, you should see a steady improvement in your ranking. 
 
Have you determined one of the factors involved in deciding a product’s rank? If you’re willing to share your secret, we’d love to hear it! Feel free to add it to our comment section.
 
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Dave Hamrick
Dave Hamrick is an entrepreneur and has been an Amazon seller since 2015. He shares his Amazon sales knowledge as a professional writer and social media influencer. Dave lives in Norman, Oklahoma with his wife, Tracy, son, Jack, and a whole mess of pets.
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Great post.
I have a doubt about Prime Now.
Prime Now have not a BSR, and a product that it is in stock in Prime Now, Amazon Retail show it like “currently unavailable”, but in Amazon Retail has BSR and so much variations.
This BSR is about the Prime Now orders?
The BSR variations, are Prime Now orders?
Thanks
Great post, thank you!
I have launched a new product (1 August 2020) on Amazon.com it is competitively priced $5 and I have a 10% discount voucher added I am selling an average of 2.7 units per day, mainly through PPC, and have 4 reviews.
The listing is fully optimized with great images, all in my opinion better than competing products but the listing has absolutely no BSR at all, please would you explain why this could be?
Thank you in advance, Keith
Hi Keith,
Hm, that is odd. What category is your product in?
thank you for BSR advise. How do we assess the avereage sales review and how should it effect our decision on a product ?
Hi Terry,
I like to find products where no seller has more than 2-300 reviews.
Interesting Article Dave.
You have provided good pointers to watch and work on.
Thank you.
Impressive blog, cleared my mind regarding that unit and order impact on BSR
Amazing work,
The growth of Amazon in the past few years has been one of the notable events in recent times. The following discussion would reflect on some important aspects related to the working of Amazon SEO
We order Jungle scout extension, but we cant use it these days. Want to get customer service support.
Kindly contact us . Thank you
Hi Jeane,
Please reach out to [email protected] and they will be happy to help!
I am an author of a book that I sell on amazon and on my own website. I have a contract with a customer to order 2000+ books per year. We have to ship the books to the individual customers. I would like to use the sales to drive up my sales rank on Amazon. At 2000 per year it would put me in the top 10 of my category.
We have currently set up a Multi-channel fulfillment account. Will the orders submitted using the Multi-Channel Fulfillment method increase our sales rank? If not, is there any other way we can structure the sales so that it contributes to our amazon sales rank?
Hi,
Does this apply to the sale of kindle books as well or is it just for physical products ?
Thanks
Kindle books work a little differently, but the ideas are roughly the same as ranking is powered by Amazon’s A9 search engine.
Thank you.
It was very well explained on how to start from scratch……..
I am wondering how much capital is required to get started.
Have fun
David
Hi David,
Great question. We’ve actually got an article on it: https://www.junglescout.com/blog/how-much-money-do-i-need-to-start-selling-on-amazon/
Hey Dan.
Thank for the info, but something is still not 100% clear to me.
BSR basically reflects my sales velocity (not exactly, as you mentioned, but generally this is the idea).
So, why do I care about BSR?
The only thing I should care about is my KW ranking and sales.
I mean, BSR, to my best understanding, is just a number which represents my latest performance on Amazon, and its not really affecting anything… right?
I should worry about reaching high KW ranking.
Am I wrong?
Hi Donna,
Glad you found it useful. Regarding the BSR I am saying that it would be a good idea to keep it under observation.
You can look at the BSR as a side metric that shows the health of your product in terms of sales and how are you performing compared to your competitors. Based on it you can create different scenarios regarding demand for your product.That’s how I use it, at least.
I don’t recommend to solely focus on BSR to rank a product
Thanks
Hi, I am a new author and have a few books on Amazon. I really would like to know what happens when you enroll you book on kindle select. From what I know is that once the book is on kindle select, it is automatically enrolled in kindle unlimited. So what I would like know is 1. Are you as an author supposed to be paid for books rated on kindle select?
2. My book has been rated like ranging from 4-5 stars on kindle select. I would like to know if one is supposed to be paid, I did enquire but did not get a clear answer but was told that I should have enrolled my book on kindle unlimited but again it says as long as the book is on kindle select, it is automatically enrolled in kindle unlimited. So I am confused.
3. How do you know if your book is selling in kindle shops? And is there a way of knowing how many copies of your book have been sold?
Thanks,
Dana.
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