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TL;DR: “How does Amazon choose its choices? Do humans have a hand in the decisions, or are they governed by an algorithm? The company won’t say.”

...followed by theories.

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Well, also some information on what happens when you change the keywords in the search.

"toothpaste" and "best toothpaste" return different results; which is interesting.

Also, it mentions that, unsurprisingly, there are external companies attempting to reverse engineer the algorithm.

That the company won't say that it's hand-curated, with the observations that the article makes, seems to suggest that automation is being used to some degree. Which wasn't obvious to me as a customer.

I always assumed it was just a top seller for rough search term (i.e. algorithmic, but simplistic).

Yes, it's the #1 search term by their algorithm, with some badging to psyochologically nudge you toward confidence to buy. It's conceptually no different from a floor salesman telling you that whatever item you are currently looking at is the best choice.

It's similar to how almost every Amazon product is a "best seller" in an extremely narrow category.

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