Custom Categories

Custom Categories in Shopper Intelligence lets you define, manage, and analyze personalized product categories at scale. Whether you're a brand defining a niche, a retailer segmenting internal assortment, or an investor building a competitive set, Custom Categories gives you the control and visibility to work the way you want.

 

 

 

The Value of Custom Categories

With categories tailored to the products you need to monitor, you’ll find richer insights that will enhance your product planning with comprehensive views. 

• Align insights with internal organizational structures
• Compare performance across regional or niche product groupings
• Build and monitor custom-defined competitive sets
• Identify growth pockets not surfaced by Amazon’s fixed taxonomy
• Improve team workflows through reusable, shareable assets

 

Feature Location and Set Up

1. Under either Sales Performance or Search Optimization, go to the Products report.
2. It may present you with two things:
   • Analyze a Single Product (which is great to analyze one product). However, to begin the Custom Category creation, just click on the Create a Custom Category tab to the right of it.
   • A previously run report. If so, click on the arrow in the upper left corner, then click on the Create a Custom Category tab.
3. Once you're on the Create a Custom Category selection, go through the filters to set up your Custom Category.

 

Filters Available:

• Categories and Brands: the categories and brands that will make up your Custom Category. You can group multiple Amazon categories into one Custom Category. For brands, you can analyze either one to see the performance of its products, or select a shortlist of brands which allows you to focus on a specific competitive set.
• Product Name: input any part of the name of the product/s that you'd like to analyze. This could range from a branded product like "iPhone" to more generic descriptors such as "stainless steel knives."
• Product Attributes: this sets filters for price ranges, number of reviews, and rating ranges.
• ASIN Overrides: here you can paste ASINs in the box to include or exclude individual products from your Custom Category.
• Result Limit: limit the amount of products that the category can contain

 

How to Use Custom Categories

The feature has been cleaned up to make creating your own Custom Category as seamless and insightful as can be. You'll find two different analyses depending on which module you run the report in.

When running the report in Sales Performance... 

 

 

Product Performance Over Time provides a month-by-month trend of insights for the ASINs within the Custom Category. The metrics included are:

Tip:

Below are the individual products, broken out and sorted by the metric of choice. It defaults to Units Sold. You can filter the table by title or ASIN.

 

When running the report in Search Optimization...

Here you'll find various keyword insights around what's driving traffic to the ASINs selected, and their visibility and performance.

 

 

The Visibility module showcases metrics around how visible keywords.

• Reach: the number of search appearances in the first two search results pages of the ranked keywords.
• No. (Number) of Keywords: the number of keywords the selected products are ranking for in the first two search results pages on either paid or organic results, including SERP features
• Organic Ranking: the share of organic appearances on the first two search results pages resulting from the ranked keywords, excluding SERP features.

 

The Traffic module highlights metrics around the performance of the keywords driving traffic to the selected ASIN/s.

• Clicks: the number of clicks for the selected product/s resulting from the ranked keywords.
• Organic vs Paid: the share of organic vs paid clicks for the selected product/s resulting from the ranked keywords.
• Branded Clicks: how many clicks were from branded keywords of the selected product/s (such as Apple, Microsoft, Pepsi, etc.) versus other brands' (another brand's keyword that drove traffic to the selected product/s) or non-branded (such as paper towels, tablet computer, etc). 

 

The Top Keywords module breaks out all the keywords driving traffic to the select product/s. 

A few things to keep in mind:

• The change columns reflect the time period comparison you selected in the top right corner: year-over-year or month-over-month.
• Keyword Clicks vs Product Clicks: the Keyword Clicks shows you how many clicks that keyword drove altogether. The Product Clicks displays how many times the target product received traffic due to the target keyword.
• Keyword Clicks vs Search Volume: while the Clicks shows how many clicks that keyword drove altogether, the Search Volume highlights how many times the target keyword was searched for altogether.
• Share of Clicks: the percentage of clicks that the target keyword drove to the product/s in analysis out of all search clicks driven to the product/s in analysis.
• Page One Rate is the ratio of products appearing on first-page search results from the in-line keyword out of all selected products.
• You can easily create a new keyword list from these results.

 

 

FAQ
 

Q: Why did this change happen?

We wanted to enhance your experience when creating product groups. Now you have more control, cleaner mapping, and an analysis that fits your actual business — not Amazon’s fixed taxonomy. It solves structural misalignments and empowers better decision-making.

 

Q: Will I lose my current product groups or lists?

No. Your existing groups will be automatically converted into Custom Categories. You’ll still be able to view, analyze, and edit them without needing to recreate anything.

 

Q: How are the products ranked in the category builder?

They are ranked by units sold. 

 

Q: Am I able to paste a list of ASINs?

Yes, in the category builder, you can paste a list of ASINs in the "ASIN Override" filter.

 

Q: Is there a video that shows the new setup process?

Yes! Watch the video above for a quick walkthrough of the process.