Amazon Rank--something smells off, a little rant

[sarcare]

I'm not really much of a one for controversial topics, but I've spent a couple years working in a library and so can get quite hot under the collar about the topic of censorship. Just this past week in two job interviews I was asked about how I would help people who want info relating to something I find distasteful or offensive. To me I thought these questions were silly--why would it EVER matter what I thought, for/against/or apathetic?

Now Amazon.com is not a library, but they have changed the way their search works so that topics they find "distasteful" will not come up even when searched more or less directly. They have redefined their sales ranks so that many books are not ranked at all, meaning they will not come up as readily in searches. In an effort to exclude "adult" material, they have removed the rankings of the vast majority of works that have GLBT characters mentioned anywhere in the record, even if they are Young Adult works with no explicit material.

Anyway--as part of an effort to get Amazon to change this--one of my favorite blogs is making an effort to google bomb them to bring attention to this. Here is a post explaining this effort, to redefine what Amazon Rank means.

This just made me so mad, so I wanted to see this got out there.

 

[Nanci]

(I thought you were going to talk about ATBs!) But I'll look at it!

 

[sarcare]

Haha, I didn't even think about that! I've just been following this lately, so I didn't even think how else it could be viewed!

Here is another good post http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-rank/

 

[Hypancistrus]

At least they included het romance novels along with the GLBT ones. Equality rocks. D'oh!

 

[sarcare]

It isn't just romance novels--they also delisted one of the books we gave out for teens in our last SRC "Rainbow Boys" and Foucault also was delisted--I suppose for adult ideas.