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Amazon's Page Recommender: Foreshadowing A New Web Service?
Amazon is turning its personalization engine towards webpages. You can test it on your site via the new Page Recommender Widget (sorry if the link doesn't work you, it's only open to affiliates). The widget only considers pages on your website. As you can see from the screenshot above, it shows a combination of products and webpages. Amazon provides the following info: In order to generate page recommendations, the Page Recommender Widget must be placed on every page of your site that you'd like to be recommended. Page recommendations will appear in the widget over time, as Amazon analyzes traffic patterns on your site. You'll typically see recommendations for your most popular pages first, with the remainder of your site filling in over time. The length of this time depends on the characteristics of your web site. During this period, we'll still display individually targeted Amazon products in the widget. The widget learns from your visitors and how they move through your site. If you only have a couple of pages the widget won't do much for you. I do not know if the widget restricts recommended pages to the same domain or if all of an affiliate ID's sites will be included. I wonder if a visitor's Amazon history will be used by the Recommendation Engine. Could this be the next web service from Amazon? A recommendation web service seems like a potential moneymaker to me (Spanish company Strands just got a lot of money to build this service). The Page Recommender widget will be able to track Amazon users habits across a wider variety of sites. Learning more about their users habits will bring on a lot of valuable data. However, many sites won't want to include the commercial product referrals. How long till Amazon puts out a referral-free version (or makes users pay for the service)? How do you feel about Amazon knowing your web browsing patterns? I stopped staying logged into MyBlogLog because I didn't like seeing my face on other people's sites and my traffic patterns shared with the site-owners that I had not established a trusted relationship with. It doesn't bother me if Amazon knows my patterns, especially if I'll get better book recommendations out of it. I am eager to see this working, but I don't want to put it on Radar just yet. If you put it on your site let us know in the comments. Since many people won't be able to get to the FAQ I've copied the content after the jump. What kinds of sites will find the Page Recommender widget useful?
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Comments: 9
aaron wall [ 1 July 2008 09:36 PM]
Seems of limited value. Why have Amazon recommend your most popular pages when you can just put them in your navigation yourself?
Col [ 1 July 2008 10:20 PM]
Re: "Seems of limited value. Why have Amazon recommend your most popular pages when you can just put them in your navigation yourself?"
- This widget will identify the most relevant pages (not the overall most popular - they may not be the most relevant to you).
- The widget will do this automatically. Imagine trying to update your recommendations automatically every few seconds, customized for each visitor.....
Web 2.0 Asia [ 1 July 2008 11:57 PM]
Strands is a US company, not a Spanish one. (Their CEO comes from Spain but that alone doesn't make them a Spanish company..)
Ian Kennedy [ 2 July 2008 11:33 PM]
Sounds like the WordPress plug-in, Similar Posts
http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/
which is highly configurable and limited to posts on your own domain.
I'll have to try the Amazon widget out, just to see what it comes up with.
Ian
adrian [ 3 July 2008 04:39 AM]
thanks for the input, will check this widget...
@ian kennedy - nice plugin for wordpress, thanks!
David Knight [ 3 July 2008 10:03 AM]
I've added it to my site to give it a try. I see why you'd do this from a programming perspective - the processes are very similar. I've not decided if this is useful from a reader's perspective. I'm giving it a run to see how it goes.
Sachin [ 4 July 2008 02:49 AM]
I see this outsourced recommender in the same category as outsourced search (a la Google) for websites.
I see the value of this service for content heavy websites. Not every such website has the capabilities to develop sophisticated algorithms that identify trends and patterns in user behaviour and map these to content items and maintain such 'indexes' for real-time recommendations.
My only issue with both these services is that they are focused on eCommerce websites - I guess for obvious reasons, but I would like to know how this works for Content only sites who do not have any products to sell - think New York Times.
I'd be interested, if any one has seen either of these in action on Content only website.
Web Traffic Analysis [ 9 July 2008 04:13 AM]
Great update and you explained it very well. .Thanks.Traffic analysis is one of the imperative aspects of a website. You can not promote your site effectively if you do not know the amount of traffic in your site plus the popular entry and exit points in it.
brady forrest [ 9 July 2008 08:33 AM]
@Web 2.0 Asia - My understanding is that they still have offices in Spain.
I want a page recommender for Radar. I just don't want to have the product commerce on it or the branding. It seems that Amazon gets enough from the data that it would be worth having a white label version.