When an Amazon customer searches for a product, Amazon may show different variations (child ASINs) of the same product (same parent ASIN) at different time periods.
At DataHawk, when you're looking at the keyword rankings of a specific variation or child ASIN of a single product or parent ASIN, our software will automatically and intelligently show you how the product is ranking for different search queries that you're tracking, while simultaneously telling you which variation is actually the one being shown prominently in the search results by Amazon's algorithm.
Some day, Amazon may decide to display your black color variation in the search results of a specific keyword, and some other day, it may choose to display the brown color variation.
Variations rankings in our web application
We help you spot those afore-mentioned differences in two ways:
Through color signals and the background of the cells representing the daily ranks, and the message appearing when you point your mouse over its cell.
Through a number shown on the left side of the table, representing the number of different child ASINs we spotted in the search results for each keyword.
1. Color signals or background of the cells and mouse-pointing message
As shown in the image below for the child ASIN B00PAMD76M (a brown messenger bag), there is a striped background on Mar 4 on the search term "full grain leather bag" for this variation as opposed to other adjacent cells/days. When pointing my mouse over the striped cell, I can see that it's actually a different variation of the same parent ASIN or product that was prominently displayed by Amazon in the search results when DataHawk collected the data: the child ASIN or variant B07KWWL525 (a different color version).
2. Number of various ranking child ASINs
As shown in the image below for the same child ASIN B00PAMD76M (a brown messenger bag), the number in blue in the left side of the table represents the number of different variations or child ASINs that have ever ranked for the same search query, in the sense of being picked to be displayed by Amazon in the search results of that search query.
In this example, it seems like Amazon plays with two different variations that are shown in the search results for "full grain leather bag".
When clicking on that figure, you get to a view showing you the exact differences and details of which child ASIN was shown in the search results at different days - when our software collected the data.
Variations rankings in our Excel exports and from our API
While the above helpful tricks and signals we provide in our web application show you an aggregated view of a product performance, whichever the child ASIN you're looking at, that is not the case when you look at the data on our Excel and API exports.
Indeed, at this time, and when looking at our keyword rankings exports for a specific child ASIN, you would effectively see the ranks of that child ASIN solely. As such, when a different variation would be picked by Amazon's algorithm, our Excel exports may show you "Not Indexing" (in the raw "Keyword Ranking Source" tab, or a blank value in the formatted "Keyword Ranking" tab), despite the fact this may mean that a different variation was shown in the search results.
We would recommend making exports for all your different child ASINs and building your own spreadsheet template to aggregate the data to circumvent this.
We're working on finding a suitable solution and welcome your feedback on that matter.