Is Amazon Throwing in the Towel on A9?
Written by Jeremy Crane (contact - e-mail) -- October 11th, 2006 |
Share - Save - E-mail
That’s the question we found ourselves asking last week when Amazon announced it would be eliminating several key features of its A9 search engine. What is A9 you ask? Well that my friend may be the true underlying issue at hand.
Amazon launched the A9 search engine back in April 2004 with the core idea that search results could be vastly improved if one could meld consumer behavior and mathematical algorithm. Amazon tried to do this by capturing search history for individual users and improving subsequent search results based on prior behavior. Over the past two years Amazon has added a number of features to the engine including maps (with block level imagery), yellow pages, and a robust toolbar. Amazon also created an attractive marketing plan for the A9 by providing users with an instant reward program where they received a discount on all Amazon.com purchases.
Unfortunately A9 never really managed to penetrate the uber-competitive search engine business. According to Compete numbers their search market share never topped more than 0.01%. Even when you look at their numbers from a loyalty perspective, A9 users aren’t particularly heavy users of A9.
So the first shoe dropped a week ago when Amazon announced that they had “redesigned the A9.com website to make it easier and quicker to discover information.” What that meant in actuality was they were dropping the following; user login, search history, toolbar, maps, yellow pages, block level imagery, and yes the Instant Reward Program with Amazon.com. To replace all that they added a new user interface and continuous scroll search results. A9 has more or less abandoned all of the features that made it unique in the marketplace.
According to our community toolbars are pretty popular. Over 64% of our members say they use some type of toolbar on a regular basis. In fact when we asked about a variety of standard add-on software tools the only type that garnered more use than toolbars was Anti-Virus software.
Our data shows that the vast majority of people using A9 were also Amazon.com shoppers.
As for the search history recall … maybe we can point our fingers at AOL on this one, but right from the start, that was really the defining characteristic of A9. So from where we sit we’re not sure who’s going to be left using A9 with the Amazon discount no longer available and the defining features pretty much eliminated. We’ll have to wait and see but I think I might hear the other shoe about to drop.
Did you like that post? You'll love these.
Done reading? subscribe: To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email enter your email address in the box in the right column.
Link to This Post:
Get the 
October 11th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Is Amazon Throwing in the Towel on A9?
…Unfortunately A9 never really managed to penetrate the uber-competitive search engine business. According to Compete numbers their search market share never topped more than 0.01%. Even when you look at their numbers from a loyalty perspective, A9 u…
October 12th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
“… and improving subsequent search results based on prior behavior … ”
I don’t think A9 ever got to this second step. They did maintain search history (as do Ask, Yahoo, Google, and others), but I have never heard from anyone that they modified search result order based on that history (like Google Personalized Search).
Do you know something different? Where did you hear that A9 was modifying search results based on prior behavior?
October 21st, 2006 at 8:06 am
As a consumer, I loved the old A9 with the combined AMZN 1.57% discount. I was saddened by the new web 2.0/AJAX rollout. It’s less than useless to me.
As a software developer I make heavy use of Amazon’s web services, so I’m quite curious about the future of A9. I’d have to agree that the “old A9″ had features that were unique in the market place; and quite frankly Amazon can afford to sustain those features unil they gain “market acceptance”.
So, what’s up? If you have scoop… spill dahling :)
October 26th, 2006 at 10:30 am
Greg,
The original intent of A9 was to provide better results by integrating past behavior, and to perhaps drive traffic to Amazon.com. You’re right though that this never really got off the ground. The data shows this. I do not have inside information, but my guess is that the volume of queries on A9 never really got to a level where it was feasible for them to start manipulating results.
Several recent key departures from A9 (like head honcho Udi Manber, Clinton, etc) probably hastened its end.
Shameless plug: Check out http://www.compete.com when you get a chance. Compete is taking a stab at providing better results by integrating user behavior of over 2 million members (the largest consumer activity database in existence). The Compete picks are based on what sites our community members find the most useful (based on time on site post query). Our goal is to enhance existing search engine results, and help you pick the best result faster.
- JC
September 7th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Hi
Your home page its great
G’night