Amazon Cross Branding?

June 11, 2005 12:59 AM

I just went to this page to look at reviews on something I wanted. Then I found this and this . Whassup? Are the same 3 guys writing all these reviews?

A search of the text of just ONE of the reviews turned up 21 results. Are these reviews being poached? Does Amazon own all these places? Or do these reviewers just post everywhere. (I'm guessing answer #1)
It's weird.

posted by asavage to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Those places are Amazon affiliates, and the items are being sold from Amazon via these sites.
posted by taz at 1:43 AM on June 11, 2005

They basically exist to shunt traffic to Amazon. So when you do a search on your product of interest half of the resulting hits just end you back up at Amazon.
posted by shoos at 2:29 AM on June 11, 2005

I don't know if it's the case in all the examples, but Amazon provides a free web services API that enables affiliates to repackage pretty much any of their data in order to sell books. Someone can legally create a web site that contains just about all the information on an Amazon product page as long as it points to Amazon for the sale.
posted by i love cheese at 5:26 AM on June 11, 2005

Yeah, it's just folks using the Amazon API to build their own amazon store. It's pretty cool for the most part -- you can make your own interface like Amazon Light, or create special views of the data like on Dealazon. Some folks try to setup clones of amazon and use it to drive money into their associates account, and that's kind of lame (and looks like the original examples above), but I've seen some specialized "stores" setup where a person only shows off certain stuff they like or products they use, which is a limited slice of the Amazon store.
posted by mathowie at 1:04 PM on June 11, 2005