Amazon sales rating?

[Juan Aneiros]

Can someone explain to me what the sales rating refers to in Amazon? For instance, what does a rating of 345,256 mean?

[Richard Davis]

Hi Juan! The figure you mentioned is the sales ranking for an item. In other words, if the item is a DVD it indicates how popular that item is compared to other DVDs. It works the same way as a bestseller list or a Pop chart. Here is Amazon's explanation:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/bro...4378811-7759856

[milady 82]

Does this sales rating affect the price of the item you are buying?

[Charles Prepolec]

No, the price is not affected by Sales Ranking. It is simply an internal indicator of how a particular product is performing sales-wise against other products.

Say there are 400,000 items listed in total and the one you are interested in has a sales ranking of 345,256, this simply means that 345,255 items have sold more copies and 54,744 items have sold less copies. The sales ranking changes as more copies are sold. A newly listed item will, by nature, have a very low ranking, but as customers buy it, the ranking increases (which is to say that the number itself decreases). An item with a sales ranking of 1 is the very best seller, an item with a sales ranking of 400,000 is the poorest selling item.

To customers, the ranking is really pointless, unless you have a strange compulsion to know how well products are doing against one another.

Cheers!

[Juan Aneiros]

Thanks for all the explanations.;)