For years, Amazon’s search algorithm felt like a black box that rewarded whoever yelled the loudest: keyword stuffers, category gamers, and short-term sales spikers. But over the last 18 months, Amazon has quietly—and decisively—rewritten the rules.

Welcome to the A10 era, where Amazon increasingly behaves less like a storefront and more like Google. And in many ways, this shift is good news for indie publishers and authors—because it rewards the one thing AI-generated books can’t fake: Real author signals. Real reader engagement. Real credibility across the web.

And yes, this shift is very intentional. Amazon is battling the rise of low-quality, AI-generated books, protecting consumer trust, and—very Google-esque—rewarding titles with real credibility, real engagement, and real signals across the web.

According to industry analysts, Amazon’s A10 update increased the weighting of external traffic by an estimated 20%-35%.

So, if you’re serious about building long-term sales, the A10 update gives you more leverage than ever. But it also demands clarity, professionalism, and consistency across every touch point of your publishing ecosystem.

Let’s break down what's actually happening and what to do about it.

Why Amazon Changed the Rules (and Why This Shift Is Smart)

Amazon’s challenge is the same one Google faced years ago: too much low-quality content entering the system. I remember years ago an SEO person told me that people would put up low-content websites that served one keyword, so let’s say the word: vacuum. And then sell lots of ads to anyone trying to sell vacuums and make a lot of money. Sadly, this bait and switch worked well for a long while. But now that’s (thankfully) gone. But in this new AI era, Amazon is facing a similar problem.

From 2023-2024, Amazon saw a surge in AI-generated books, keyword-stuffed nonfiction, fiction books written quickly to serve a trend, and duplicate content—much of it designed to “game” visibility. This frustrated not only consumers but those of us selling legitimate, well-crafted books that we’ve poured our hearts (and sometimes our souls) into.

The Four Big A10 Shifts Every Indie Publisher Must Understand

1. External Traffic Is Now a Ranking Superpower

Amazon has made it very clear: Traffic that originates from Amazon now carries more ranking weight than ever.

This includes:

• Author and publisher websites
• Blog posts
• Social platforms (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube)
• Email newsletters
• Podcast features
• Articles and interviews
• Goodreads

Why is Amazon rewarding this? Because all these links tell Amazon: “Hey, people outside your ecosystem care about this book.”

This is similar to Google’s “backlink logic,” and it’s a very smart move on Amazon’s part. AI books can flood the store, but they can’t build real external signals, or at least not easily. And often these books utilize Amazon’s advertising system to build traffic, but now all of that has changed. Consistent traffic (even if it’s not a huge number) from outside sources now outweighs a big internal ad push. And ever-crafty Amazon has a second reason for doing this: This also builds more links to the Amazon website, which benefits Amazon’s overall online visibility and strength.

If you’ve been doing things the right way—clean product pages, thoughtful descriptions, real platform-building—this update is your moment.

2. Your Relevancy Score Matters More Than Ever

In our podcast and in my books, I talk a lot about Amazon’s “relevancy score,” which is their internal metric for gauging how well your book aligns with its intended audience. To be clear, this isn’t an Amazon term per se; this is actually a term Google assigns to search.

Relevancy score wasn’t impacted by the A10 shift. It’s something that’s always been a part of the Amazon ecosystem. The idea being that if you send traffic to your retail page from, let’s say, Facebook ads, and the ads do very well in that they send lots of traffic to your book page but conversions are very low, or in some unfortunate cases, nonexistent, this signals to Amazon that your book isn’t aligning with your audience, and your retail page can drop in relevancy. Which means that Amazon won’t show it as much.

If you’re reading this and thinking, “This sounds like my situation. So, what do I do?” Well, first off, turn off the ads and polish your retail page (which we’ll discuss in a moment) and make sure that you picked keyword strings that align with your reader audience.

But here’s the upside: Even if your relevancy score has tanked, making thoughtful fixes can absolutely remedy this. At the end of the day, Amazon wants to sell stuff, so if you make your book more appealing to the target audience, Amazon will take notice.

3. Retail Page Quality Is Now a Critical Part of Your ‘Amazon Relevancy Score’

As I mentioned above, Amazon is measuring everything on your product page and assigning it a “score” that, sadly, only Amazon is privy to:

• Your cover: Does it match genre/reader expectations?
• Your subtitle: Does it clarify the value?
• Your description: Is it reader-focused? Scannable? Not keyword-stuffed? Does it lead with a stand-out review?
• Your A+ Content: Is it adding clarity and appeal?
• Your categories and keywords: Are they aligned to how readers search?

Solid reader-focused retail pages have always been important to Amazon, but now even more so.

So, does this mean that you shouldn’t use keywords on your retail page descriptions anymore? I’m a huge fan of using keyword strings on retail pages as long as they fit organically with the description. Why? Because, as we’ve already seen, Amazon mirrors Google in many ways, and Google scans websites for keyword strings to help identify the intended audience. Amazon does the same. Utilizing keyword strings wherever it works on your retail page is still a win, as well as in your book’s subtitle.

In situations where keyword strings don’t really work in your book description, there’s a workaround, and it’s via Amazon Author Central.

4. Why Your Amazon Author Central Page Matters More Than Ever

One of the most overlooked assets in an author’s arsenal is the Amazon Author Central page. And in the A10 era—where Amazon is behaving more like Google, prioritizing credibility, consistency, and external validation—your Author Page is part of the infrastructure that signals “this is a real author” instead of another anonymous, AI-generated listing.

And while Amazon doesn’t release exact numbers on how many hits Author Central pages get per year (though some estimates have it around 2 million), here’s the part most authors don’t fully appreciate: Amazon gets roughly 2.7 to 2.9 billion visits every single month.

Even if a tiny fraction of those visitors land on the author pages, the potential visibility is enormous. Author Pages function as “mini homepages” inside the world’s largest bookstore. They collect your books, your bio, your photo, and, most importantly, your branded presence.

Surprisingly, a high percentage of authors either never claim their page or leave it outdated. In a marketplace overflowing with new books every single day, an incomplete Author Page doesn’t just miss an opportunity; it can actually hurt your perceived legitimacy.

Why A+ Content Matters More Than Ever (and Why Readers Respond to It)

One of the quietest but most powerful tools Amazon gives indie authors and publishers is A+ Content—those visual modules that sit below your book description. Most authors think of it as a “nice extra,” but under Amazon’s A10 shift, A+ Content is doing far more heavy lifting than people realize.

Here’s the core reason it works: We process images 60,000 times faster than text (a widely cited neuroscience estimate), and we retain visual information longer than written information. In a marketplace where readers scroll at lightning speed, visuals help to pause the scroll.

Even before the A10 change happened, the goal of keeping consumers on your retail page longer was always challenging. And my goal, whenever I’m working with an author on optimizing their retail pages, is to find more ways for authors to take back more of their retail page real estate.

Anything that keeps readers on your page longer, clarifies what your book delivers, and increases confidence before buying.

While Amazon doesn’t publish conversion numbers tied specifically to A+ Content for books, its broader retail divisions (the original testing ground for A+ Content) have reported the following:

• 3%-10% average sales lift for products with A+ content
• Higher customer satisfaction and fewer returns when buyers understand the product better before purchase

The bottom line is this: A+ Content isn’t decoration. It’s a psychological shortcut that helps readers decide faster, feel more confident, and understand your brand instantly, especially if you’re a new or are still building industry recognition. A+ Content is one of the simplest—and most overlooked—ways to upgrade your book’s performance.

Your A10 Playbook: What Indie Publishers and Authors Should Do Next

Now that we’ve done a deep dive into all things Amazon and A10 algorithm era, let’s prioritize the highest-ROI tasks for the A10 era:

1. Build (or Supercharge) Your Email List

Even outside of this Amazon-centric conversation, I always recommend that authors and publishers have email lists. It’s a great way to communicate directly with your reader, reminding them of your books, what’s coming up, and, yes, even reminding them to review your book(s) if they haven’t already done so.

2. Fix Your Amazon Retail Page

Strong retail pages have always been a must-do, but now that Amazon’s algorithm has taken center stage, it’s more important than ever. Lead off your book description with a stand-out review. Make sure your description resonates with what your reader is actually looking for. Remember to make it scannable with short paragraphs and bullet points (if you’ve written nonfiction).

3. Set Up Sustainable External Traffic Streams

You don’t need to be everywhere, just everywhere that matters, and you need to be somewhere consistently.

Options include:

• Weekly/biweekly/monthly blog posts (great for SEO + external links)
• Short-form video (TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts)
• Podcast interviews
• Newsletter swaps with genre-adjacent authors
• Goodreads list placements
• Guest articles or interviews

If this seems like a lot, I get it. Pick two things to start with and build from there.

4. Make Review Generation Part of Your Routine

Reviews remain one of the strongest credibility signals and often the toughest thing for authors and publishers to get. But when was the last time you actually asked for a review?

Action steps:

• Include a review request in your back matter: This could be a letter to your readers thanking them for reading your book and inviting them to contact you, as well as including a link back to your retail page for a review.
• Add a gentle request in newsletters: You don’t have to beg, but you should ask. Remind readers that if they haven’t already reviewed your book, how much it helps and how much you appreciate it!

A10 Rewards the Authors Who Treat Publishing Like a Business

Thankfully, the days of “tricking” the Amazon system are gone. Now Amazon is rewarding those of us who have been doing all the fundamentals: professional covers, clean retail pages, consistent engagement, and building real relationships. So, while a lot of scary stuff has been put out there about this algorithm, it really comes down to the basics.

But for anyone who has been relying on hacks, loopholes, or launch-week fireworks, this A10 algorithm change will feel like gravity. A10 is meant to encourage solid, steady work. Authors aren’t algorithm-proof because they’re lucky; they’re algorithm-proof because they’re building brands Amazon wants to amplify.

Finally, Amazon has an algorithm that recognizes that.

---