Spamming Google search is old news. How about spamming Amazon? I was recently doing some Amazon shopping and decided to check how bargain hunter friendly the website is. So I entered a few terms that popped up in my mind not really expecting much (why would Amazon want to promote discounted products? 
) but what I discovered totally threw me out of track. Take a look for example at these results to the search term “coupon”:
The first positions are dominated by Body Stocking products from Leg Avenue, Body Wrappers, and Nyteez. I checked a few related keywords and these same items persistently take the lead.
I don’t have a clear explanation to this phenomena right now. One thing I know is that last summer Amazon introduced new feature called “Search Suggestions” which makes it possible for customers to influence search results (here is the press release).
Have search results been really spammed or is it some sort of software bug?
Update 8/1: Just found an interesting side effect. These products don’t only show in Amazon search results. You can see them on amazon widgets embedded on other sites. Take a look for example at the widget I embedded below for a test. By design it is supposed to be context sensitive. Can you see the same long legged girls? I would assume there are thousands of these widgets out there making nice profits to whoever sells these products.
Hi
In widgets I did not see the same product listings. Those products in widgets looks context based.
Rajesh Shakya
http://www.rajeshshakya.com
Helping technopreneurs to excel and lead their life!
Try refreshing the page and/or clearing Amazon cookies. If you bought from Amazon before they might feed items relevant to your previous purchases.
In the widget embedded with this post I currently see these products:
Another way to spam Amazon search results is to keep creating new companies selling the same products as your original company. When someone searches for a query that your product is highly relevant for, you dominate the search result pages, as no one else’s products can squeeze into the now-crowded page. A company I used to work for did this flagrantly with thousands of products (sometimes 20 - 30 duplicates of a product) and in over a year never received any kind of reprimand or warning.
Not spam. These are products related to your last visits and searches at Amazon. Kinda reminds you about things you were interested
I’m seeing Lonnie Liston Smith CDs on the widget above.
In that case everyone is obsessed with “Leg Avenue” because other people I asked see the same results on their PC’s
In your case, try clearing Amazon cookies in your browser so Amazon forgets what you purchased before
Nice, I visit a bargain hunting site and I’m spammed with lingerie!
Leg Avenue still comes up but I don’t see any of the others. Interesting post anyways. Have you figured out why/how it works