A real horror story has been slowly building for the last year or so and I'm getting a lot of emails on the topic so it's time to deal with this head-on: what the hell is going on with Also Boughts?

For those unaware, the strip of books right which are usually placed underneath your product description on Amazon, headlined with "Customers who bought this item also bought" are popularly known as "Also Boughts" and have become the subject of much attention lately, as our knowledge of their importance grows in tandem with Amazon's seeming desire to muck about with them.

First their importance: if you have read Amazon Decoded you will already know just how critical Also Boughts are and can skip ahead. For the rest of you, Amazon's system is always trying to determine what kind of products you personally are most likely to purchase, so that it can display more of those to you. One thing it looks at very closely is the connection between products. People who buy printers tend to buy ink, for example, and recommending a printer-buyer some ink to purchase will elicit a lot of clicks.

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