[telchar]

I think the depth is inversely proportional to the utility of search - the better I can search for the combination of features, price, etc that I need the less deep the shelf gets. The endless generic white-labeled junk plus poor metadata really makes the problem bad though.

[luckylion]

Okay, that sounds conspiratorial, but: is that why Amazon's search is atrociously terrible, so that they can sell the top spots for more? If you could search by attributes reliably, the top spots lose relative value.

[preommr]

Well I doubt they actively try to make it worse.

But I would believe it if because of the lack of incentive, they din't make active efforts to improve it.