What a shopper sees
When a shopper types a search, Amazon returns a search results page (often shortened to SERP). Most of it is the organic grid: product listings Amazon chooses to show for that search, in an order Amazon decides. What we know about how that order moves is on Organic and Paid. The grid is not a fixed size. On most searches page one holds 48 organic listings, but on many it holds 16, and on some it holds 60. One listing on the search “vapo pads” sat at organic ranks 46 to 55 across repeated checks, and only some of those checks had it on page one. A rank number alone does not tell you which page a listing is on. Three kinds of things share the page:- Organic listings. Each one is a tile: a product image, title, price and rating.
- Sponsored listings inside the grid. These are ads that look like organic tiles but carry a “Sponsored” label. They take grid slots, so they push organic listings down.
- Modules. Rows that sit outside the grid, such as carousels and banners. Some modules hold ads. Module listings do not take grid slots, and from the page layout alone we cannot tell which ad product (Sponsored Products, Brands or Display) a module ad belongs to.
The three ad placements
Amazon sells and reports ads by placement, meaning where on Amazon the ad appeared:
The same keyword can win all three, and each converts and costs differently. See Placements for the numbers and The Auction for how a bid reaches each one.
Organic rank
A listing’s organic rank is its position among the organic listings for a search. There are two ways to count it:- Grid slot: count every tile in reading order, ads included. This number moves whenever an ad is added or removed above the listing.
- Dense organic rank: count organic tiles only, skipping ads. This is the number we use everywhere a rank is shown.