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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

> The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one (or for the best air fryer, to keep you on track to buy the one you wanted in the first place). The ads make the search worse.

"The best" is not a static product. If Amazon had no way for vendors to showcase their product, the best would be a stale product that accumulated decades of reviews. Maybe it's still the best , maybe not. But there is value to show some noise in the search long term.

Another way to look at it is through the vail of ignorance. Suppose you're a manufacturer of air fryers, but don't know where you stand in terms of how competitive or popular your product is. Would you want to live in a world in which you CAN'T bump your placement? Sure if you're the top 3 manufacturer, maybe you would prefer not to pay the tax. But if you're not, you'd much rather prefer the system in which you can.

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Isn't that what independent reviews are generally useful for? To try all the options and share feedback for someone to make their own choice.

How do you get someone to review your product if you're one of N? Paid reviews? Not independent anymore. Paying money to get some exposure and sales is the best of all bad options.

Yes, if you can even get your product high enough on the rankings to make a sale.

The incumbent has a massive advantage, making it harder for a new (but better) product to get on the first page.

For every kind of product one might need to buy?

"The best" for many products is often static, on the level of decades. Better e-commerce websites than Amazon will curate away all the garbage and only show you the best things. At this point you can pretty much use the top 5 results from any Amazon search to rule out things NOT to buy.

There is basically no category of anything where there is something that is THE best, once you take buyer preferences and tradeoffs like cost, quality, time, brand, etc. into account.

>"The best" is not a static product. If Amazon had no way for vendors to showcase their product ... Would you want to live in a world in which you CAN'T bump your placement?

Agreed about it not being static, but I don't see why ads should be that answer. The easiest way to "bump" a product is just sell it for less for an introduction period, so that people sorting Low->High will see it before the current highest rated one, at least until they get high ratings, and then can increase the price. If they're going to be losing money on marketing, it would be nicer if it goes to consumers.

This is a weird hack to avoid the obvious concept of "telling people your product exists".

You're also just one step away from suggesting it should be put higher up in the search results - which is the entire complaint!

If "the best" was stuck in 2005 it probably actually would still be better than what it says "the best" is today.

Amazon has turned the search ranking into a contest for who can give Jeff Bezos the most money. How is that an improvement on anything?

> Would you want to live in a world in which you CAN'T bump your placement?

Yes. I’d rather compete on quality and customer satisfaction than who can burn the most money on ads.

By making it almost necessary to buy their ads, Amazon is harming my margin.

I don’t hate all advertising, but I do hate this form, where it’s perverting search.

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