Also from “The Register”, it appears that Amazon have again created ‘interesting’ relationships in their data that have had uncomfortable results for their customers.

We previously reported on the IQ trainwreck that occured when Amazon sent email recommendations for sex toys to people who’d never bought such items from Amazon. Today they seem to have gone one better with a search for “Spiderman Watch” on Amazon.co.uk returning a quite prominent sex toy.

The Register posted their story at 15:03 GMT+1 today, and at 16:14 this correspondent found the same item, this time TOP of the search results.

I’ve uploaded a screen grab of my search results and clicking here will bring you to my search string… rather than risk offending readers the screen grabs are linked to rather than displayed as thumbnails.

Spiderman Watch Search Result (Image not presented for fear of offending)

As Amazon uses linkages within its data to present recommendations, purely in the interests of research I followed a few links on the product page for the unexpected result to see what might have lead to the association being created.

Under the product detail for the sex toy Amazon proudly lists that customers who bought items like this also bought “Spiderman – The Animated Series” and a number of innocent children’s toys.

The sex toy and a number of others of similar kind (which revealed themselves when I clicked on the producer name) appear to be categorised “Toys and Games” in the Amazon database… which means that they may (indeed WILL) appear in other searches. For example, if you search for “Rabbit” under the “Toys and Games” category, look what appears in the “New Arrivals” section on the left hand side…

Link to Screenshot of Search results for ‘Rabbit’ in ‘Toys and Games on Amazon’.

Further investigation indicates that the root cause here is the nature of the classification and tagging of these particular ‘toys’ in the Amazon database… searching for “Rabbit” under “Toys & Games/Dolls & Accessories” produces an interesting result on the first page… Example of classification/metadata issue

Why is this an IQ Trainwreck?

1. Reputational Damage – The fact that the item is returned in a search for a children’s product is damaging to Amazon’s reputation as a retailer. As the story has appeared on The Register, it is possible that a ‘slow news day’ will result in it appearing in local nor national press in the UK (and it has been mentioned here).
2. Derived from information – Amazon search results are returned from Amazon’s database… somewhere in the database a relationship has been created between the term ‘spiderman watch’ and this particular sex toy. This may have happened by accident or through malicious intent on the part of an individual. However the fact that it can happen suggests a lack of control over the information (should it be ‘consistent’ for a search for a children’s watch to return a sex toy? What controls might Amazon consider to improve the quality of their searches and prevent possibly inappropriate content from being shown to children?)
3. Information is of poor quality – it fails to meet or exceed expectations.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to have to explain to any kids what those particular toys were for.

I am reminded of a story I heard about a particular court case in Ireland a few years ago where a children’s party hire shop sued a classified directory enquiries provider for listing them in the Adult party hire section of the directory….