Every day, dozens of young men crowd into tiny rooms with 30 computers each in northern Bangladesh. Their mission: Trick Amazon.com Inc. They open Amazon.com and repeatedly type in search terms, each time clicking on the links of products they were paid to boost, according to people familiar with the practice. Amazon’s algorithms begin recognizing that these products are popular, ranking them higher in the search results. The higher the ranking, the better chance of sales. ...
Amazon's automated algorithms for ranking products are being targeted by scammers seeking to boost certain products and disadvantage others. Some sellers are reportedly paying groups of workers in Bangladesh to repeatedly type in search terms and click on products to boost their position on the site's search results. The scam is so common that Amazon has created a page dedicated to it called "Product Hacking Scams." Amazon says that such activity makes up a tiny proportion of the traffic on its site, and that it is using sophisticated machine learning tools to identify and pursue those behind it.