Amazon Prime Day: BSR Ranking Adjustments and Responses

As the 2025 Prime Day approaches, a series of adjustments to Amazon’s platform rules have put many sellers on edge. Among them, the “return” of the BSR category ranking, which had been missing for nearly a month, has become a focus. Meanwhile, the subsequent rule changes and newly emerging malicious tagging issues have also been affect ing the hearts of numerous cross-border e-commerce practitioners.

Previously, Amazon’s BSR rankings had abnormal fluctuations: product sales rose, but the rankings fell instead of rising, and some products even did not display rankings on the front end. At that time, the industry speculated that this was the platform testing new regulations, only displaying the top 100 rankings in the category, and the test scope gradually expanded from the US, UK, and German sites to categories such as beauty and pets, making sellers worried about the upcoming promotion sales.

Now, although the BSR category rankings have gradually resumed display, unlike the previous real-time updates, the new ranking mechanism has obvious delays. For products ranked in the Top 100, the fastest data update takes 30 minutes; for products outside the top 100, the update delay may exceed 12 hours.

Industry insiders analyze that this delay stems from the adjustment of the BSR weight calculation method. In addition to the traditional sales data, multiple new factors such as conversion rate, return rate, advertising ROI, and user dwell time have been included in the calculation scope. These new factors make the ranking update logic more complex, thus slowing down the update frequency.

In addition to the calculation rules, Amazon has also optimized the display interface of BSR rankings.

The ranking position has been moved from the bottom corner of the Listing page to above the five-point description, becoming a must-pass node for consumers when browsing. This change significantly improves the visibility of the ranking, strengthens the psychological implication of the “best-selling” label, and can accelerate consumers’ purchase decisions. However, this change is still in the testing stage and is only visible to some buyer accounts.

At the same time, some accounts have begun testing the “floating ranking bar” to display the ranking gap between products and competitors in real-time. This strategy can not only stimulate consumers to place orders through a sense of urgency but also allow sellers to intuitively understand the position of their products in the market so as to adjust their operation strategies in a timely manner.

Regarding this adjustment, the industry believes that it is “both good and bad” for sellers.

Top sellers or products ranked in the Top 100 may benefit more. As the promotion approaches, the adjustment of ranking positions and dynamic display strategies can make them more likely to attract consumers’ attention, thereby consolidating market share and driving sales growth.

However, products with lower rankings and small and medium-sized sellers are facing challenges. The update delay and complex calculation methods make it difficult for them to capture market changes in a timely manner, and they are likely to miss adjustment opportunities. At the same time, the “Matthew effect” may become more obvious, the gap with top sellers may further widen, and it will be more difficult to improve the ranking.

Just as the recovery of BSR rankings brought a sigh of relief to sellers, another problem emerged quietly. Some sellers reported that their store links were maliciously marked as adult products by competitors on June 30. Although the links themselves remained unchanged, the backend account status and advertising were normal, the products could not be displayed in front-end searches, and the natural ranking of keywords was also lost.

Through inquiry, it was learned that the product was classified as an adult product, and the relevant search queries prohibited the display of adult products. After the seller contacted customer service, the reason for the marking was not found out, only confirming that the copy was updated on June 30, and the copy, pictures, classification, etc. did not contain sensitive words. The seller speculates that the malicious tagging may be done by competitors, and the large scope of operation does not rule out that the pranksters have VC accounts.

Similar situations are not isolated cases. Some sellers said that their products had been suddenly marked as adult products, and after opening a Case, they found that sensitive words such as “adult” or “insecticide” had been added to the attributes; other sellers have encountered such situations many times, each time losing their natural ranking, which recovered a few days later, and the system reply could not provide practical help.

However, some sellers learned through paid managers that this may be caused by a system failure. Not only small and medium-sized sellers but also large local sellers in the US have been mistakenly marked, and a large number of ASINs have similar problems.

It is now the Prime Day promotion, and amzn888.com suggests that sellers remain highly vigilant, check product links, copies, and attributes in a timely manner to ensure that there are no wrong tags. If similar problems are encountered, they should actively communicate with Amazon customer service and take effective measures to avoid greater impact on store operations.

Facing the adjustment of platform rules and potential risks, sellers need more refined operation strategies to gain a firm foothold in the fiercely competitive promotion.