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Alexa Picks 1-2 Brands. And the other 28?

The search box is dying.

I was searching something “special” for my wife and I to do on Friday nights 💓 Yes, it’s exactly what you think. A Settlers of Catan expansion pack. …and before any products loaded, Rufus/Alexa had written me a paragraph trying to help me out. Interesting. Veeeery interesting.

I closed the app and opened Google. Same search. AI Overview at the top with a recommendation in the first sentence. Blue links below the fold there too.

And now, Apple says LLM Siri is shipping later this year. Probably iOS 26.5. Every iPhone gets a real conversation layer.

Amazon. Google. Apple. The three places I start every day on my phone. All three are putting an AI answer first. 

For 15 years I have been getting paid to win the search box.

Keyword research. Title stuffing. Sponsored Products on exact-match. Backend keywords. The whole stack assumed a human typing letters and clicking a list.

Strip out the typing and the list. What's left?

→ Keyword stuffing is bye-bye: The LLM reads your listing like a person. "Garlic Press" 11 times is invisible.

→ Keyword research dies slower. Cerebro still tells you what your category cares about. But shoppers stopped typing those exact phrases. They ask Rufus a full question in their language of choice.

→ Detail-page-as-destination dies. Amalytix studied 1,300+ products Rufus actually recommended. 87.2% used A+. Median 2,991 reviews. Median rating 4.5. Most titles maxed at the 199-char cap. Rufus is not surfacing underdogs. It is quoting listings the system already trusted.

→ Does Sponsored Products change as we know it? Today you pay to rank #4 on a page of 60. Tomorrow Rufus picks 2 brands and that's the whole page. You're one of the 2 or you don't exist. There is no page 2 of an AI answer.

Here's where it gets weird: Surfer SEO indexed 36 million Google AI Overviews. For commerce queries, here is where the citations go: YouTube 32.4%, Shopify 17.7%, Amazon 13.3%, Reddit 11.3%.

Read that again. YouTube gets cited 2.4x more often than Amazon. Every brand on its own Shopify site beats every brand on Amazon. Reddit is nipping at Amazon's heels.

The thing that wins the AI answer is mostly built outside of Amazon. Every Amazon business I know (including mine) was built for the test that is about to end. If the search box vanished tomorrow, would anyone come looking for you by name?

(I don't love my answer either.)

The IVS

Big thanks to JD Sass for supplying this week’s IVS. When JD isn’t spending time with his kiddos in Georgia, he’s running a huge return operation to get Amazon Sellers their hard-earned money back with Axiom.

It’s 9pm. Do You Know Where Your Removals Are?

Hey Selling from the Beach!! Most Amazon sellers I talk to have no idea what happens to their inventory after a removal order is created. Was it liquidated, removed or disposed? It leaves the warehouse, goes somewhere, and that's the last they think about it. What they don't realize is that a meaningful percentage of what Amazon flags as unsellable is in new or like-new condition. This means the shrink wrap is still on, unopened, and never touched by a customer. I’ve even seen it as high as 84%!

The other thing few people are doing is filing claims on the removal itself. If units are missing from your removal shipment, if a customer returned something that clearly wasn't what they sent back, if the box shows up with components missing, those are all claimable events with Amazon. But you can't file the case from a spreadsheet. You have to physically receive the inventory, photograph the shipping label, the packing slip, the contents of the box, and upload those images directly into Seller Central. That is what Amazon requires to open the case. We do this on roughly 10% of the inventory we receive and the success rate is north of 90%. Most sellers have never filed a single one. 

There is a field in Seller Central called Manage Your Source Cost. Amazon bases your reimbursements on whatever number is in there. If you have never updated it, Amazon is guessing, and those guesses may not favor you. Fix it today. It takes five minutes and affects every claim you have ever filed and every one you will file going forward.a

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Why I Drank Two Herbalife Smoothies in a Stranger's Driveway

Last weekend Jackson had a two-day chess tournament about an hour from home, just him and me on the road. He finished second, beat some much higher-rated players, and walked away with cold hard cash. Already a pretty good weekend.

During a lunch break, we had time to kill. The tournament was in a non-touristy area. All Ticos, zero English, not much commercial stuff around. I checked Google Maps and saw a "protein bar" listed nearby. Perfect. We walked 100 metres down the road and found it.

And by "protein bar," I do not mean a shiny smoothie shop with stainless steel counters and açai bowls. I mean a small desk, a few outdoor chairs, and what looked like the front of someone's house. But this is Costa Rica, so the lady running it greeted us warmly, handed us a menu, and started chatting away in fast Spanish. I did my best with broken Spanish. Jackson understood more than me but was too shy to rescue dad.

We ordered two drinks. Basically scoops of Herbalife protein powder mixed into something. She even showed us the containers. After we paid, she kept the presentation going and started showing me more Herbalife products. I am pretty sure she was explaining the benefits, the program, and gently trying to recruit me.

I knew enough to recognize the MLM pitch, but I didn't know enough Spanish to escape it gracefully….. So I smiled, nodded, tried to be polite, and eventually we made our way back to the tournament. On the walk back, I explained to Jackson what MLMs are and why "business opportunities" are not always what they sound like.

Were the drinks good? Not really, since I ended up drinking both of them. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

That is one of the things I love about living here. Sometimes you wander off the path and find a hidden gem. Other times you find yourself drinking a questionable "Herbalife" smoothie in front of someone's house while being pitched in rapid-fire Spanish. Either way, you get a story.

Say yes to small adventures. Walk 100 meters down a random road because Google Maps said "protein bar." See what happens.

Sometimes you find a great meal.

Sometimes you find a MLM.

Pura vida.

It’s Curtains for Rufus

Amazon "killed" Rufus this week, which is mostly a rebrand (Rufus is being folded into Alexa for Shopping). But…. the name change isn't the story. The story is that Amazon is moving the AI shopping agent from a side-bot few people opened into the default search bar, with the ability to compare products, watch a year of price history, set alerts, schedule purchases, build carts, and even buy from other retailers through "Buy for Me."

Rufus was a feature. Alexa for Shopping is a platform. For shoppers, the question is whether this delivers better recommendations or just a more persuasive Amazon sales funnel (I'd bet the latter). As I mentioned above, this is an important thing to remember: when an AI agent does the comparing instead of the customer, your listing isn't selling to a human anymore. It's selling to whatever Alexa decides is "the better option."

That being said, I’m not sure how that would change from our current strategy of optimizing the usual stuff (Title, bullets, images, etc).

Don't Volunteer for the Bump Until You're the Last One Standing

When the gate agent asks for volunteers, don't raise your hand.

Not first, anyway. Oversold flight:

The agent opens with a low offer. 200 bucks in voucher, maybe a meal. If nobody bites, it climbs. 400. 600. 800. Cash sometimes. Hotel and a confirmed seat the next morning if it gets desperate.

Wait.

If they hit your number, you take it. If they don't, you board the plane you were going to board anyway.

Here's the leverage. If the airline can't find enough volunteers, they have to bump people involuntarily, and federal law caps that payout at $2,150 USD. Voluntary compensation has no cap. The airline would much rather pay you a price you say yes to than hand someone $2,150.

Works on most airlines.

When the agent asks for volunteers, they have a problem. The closer to push-back, the more it's worth to them to solve it.

Stop volunteering first.

To your success,

Rob & Max