Instapundit Reports Sales of Atlas Shrugged are Soaring

[Reidy]

My method is to google "amazon 100" and click on the first result, http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/283155.

This is weird. Selene's link in #24 finds Atlas Shrugged at #82. Mine finds The Time Traveler's Wife at #82 and Atlas Shrugged not on the list at all.

[Selene]

Let's get Gulch in here and find a conspiracy!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Pete,

I looked at this, compared, and did the Google search in the manner you did to check it.

There is a number, 283155, that is tacked onto the end of the URL in the Google search (your URL). This is not present in the direct search on Amazon.

I have no idea what this number means, except usually this kind of thing is a tracking number for measuring statistics.

In Internet marketing, there is a routine called split testing where you publish two different texts (or images or whatever) for the same search, balance the traffic evenly to both, and then see which performs better, but I can't imagine what use that kind of thing would be here. I could understand Amazon wanting to know how many searches came from Google. I can't understand the changes in Top 100 Bestsellers in Books results.

I just had a thought. I know that Google has done a total overhaul of its search algorithms and now automatically includes local geo-targeting information to the mix (and other new goodies it is offering like universal search and wonder wheel and so forth).

It's a pain because I now have to clear my browser cache and cookies if I want raw search information without local things being added.

Maybe Amazon is returning these different results because the purchasing habits of people in your and my region are being added to the mix. In other words, Amazon gets the Google result and knows (from Google) the search came from place XXXX, so it offers the Top 100 of what the people in that region are buying according to its statistics. But when Amazon is searched by directly a user going there without Google, Amazon uses a more global calculation.

That's the only thing I can think of right now (without pointing the finger at the Illuminati ) that explains this.

Michael

[Selene]

Michael:

Now you have me fully intrigued. I used dogpile as my search engine with the term "amazon top 100". Therefore, did my search not necessarily go through the "google search bar"?

I have never consciously searched with Google.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

I did a Dogpile search as you did and the URL did not end with the tracking number.

Dogpile does not go through Google.

(It is used for part of the results for the Wordtracker keyword research tool, but that is another issue.)

btw - I rarely use Dogpile for a reason. It has a cool little thing called SearchSpy, which gives a scrolling window of keyword terms people are searching for in real time. I always spend too long looking at it.

I guess I am a keyword voyeur.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Just to let everyone today Atlas is listed at 82.