Amazon Disputes Article It Altered Search Algorithm for Profit

An article reporting it prioritized searches in a way that profited Amazon “is wrong,” the company tweeted Monday. “We have not changed the criteria we use to rank search results to include profitability,” Amazon said: “We feature products customers want, regardless of whether they are our own brands or products offered by our selling partners.” The Wall Street Journal had reported Amazon “adjusted its product-search system to more prominently feature listings that are more profitable for the company.” The company was said to have “optimized the secret algorithm that ranks listings so that instead of showing customers mainly the most-relevant and best-selling listings when they search -- as it had for more than a decade -- the site also gives a boost to items that are more profitable for the company."