How sellers outsmart Amazon's product-ranking system to boost sales

The scams are used to outsmart Amazon's automated system that ranks products in search results

Every day, dozens of young men crowd into tiny rooms with 30 computers each in northern Bangladesh. Their mission: Trick Amazon.com Inc.
 
They open Amazon.com and repeatedly type in search terms, each time clicking on the links of products they were paid to boost, according to people familiar with the practice. Amazon’s algorithms begin recognizing that these products are popular, ranking them higher in the search results. The higher the ranking, the better chance of sales.
 
The scams are used to try to outsmart Amazon’s automated system that ranks some half-billion products in search results, according to interviews