Posted on

March 1, 2023

How to Read a Keepa Graph

‍Keepa charts help understand product prices and sales history. For Amazon sellers involved in online arbitrage, wholesale, and other types of Amazon sales, it is vital to know how to read Keepa charts to make informed product purchase decisions.

Keep reading to learn how to read Keepa charts and use them in Amazon product research.

What Is Keepa?

Keepa is an Amazon price tracking tool that provides detailed product data in the form of charts.

If you’d like to install Keepa, you can use this link.

Keepa allows tracking price fluctuations of products, monitoring sales rank trends, and estimating how quickly a product sells. Keepa charts are available for most products in the Amazon catalog.

What Are the Keepa Graph Elements?

Keepa graph shows product price history. The left-hand side of the graph shows the price levels. At the bottom, it indicates the dates. The right-hand side displays the sales rank figures.

To the right of the graph, you can see the menu that lets you customize your view. You can select to display only the Amazon graph, New or Used products, Sales Rank, or Buy Box.

Additionally, you can set a period to view the data — day, week, month, 3 months, year, or all.

Keepa Graph Color Key

Orange shows Amazon;
Blue shows Marketplace New (the lowest product offer in the New condition from a 3rd-party seller or Amazon);
Black shows Marketplace Used (the lowest product offer in the Used condition from a 3rd-party seller or Amazon);
Green shows Sales Rank;
Magenta diamond shows the Buy Box;
The orange triangle shows New 3rd-party FBA (the lowest FBA seller product offer in the New condition);
Blue square shows New 3rd-party FBM (the lowest FBM seller product offer in the New condition).

What Does Keepa Graph Show?

Amazon’s position

Keepa shows if the product is sold by Amazon, not as a marketplace, but as a seller, and how long Amazon sells it. The graph displays Amazon’s price offer.

The shaded orange area shows Amazon is in stock. If you see the white area between orange slots, that means Amazon was out of stock during that time.

Example of Amazon in the listing as a seller on the Keepa graph

Interpretation

If Amazon is in the listing as a seller, it’s tough to compete with them. The internet giant has the most favorable conditions from the suppliers and can afford to offer a lower price. Also, they are reluctant to give away Buy Box to 3rd-party sellers.

For that reason, Amazon in the listing is a red flag for sellers who prefer to avoid competing with it. Products sold by Amazon are not suitable for inexperienced sellers as well.

New and Used Price

The ’New’ blue line shows the lowest product offer in the New condition from a 3rd-party seller at any given time (the figure indicates the offer price, not the product’s sale price).

The ’New’ blue line shows the lowest product offer from a 3rd-party seller

The ’Used’ black line shows the lowest product offer in the Used condition from a 3rd-party seller. That is also the offer price, not the product’s sale price.

Interpretation

The lowest product price offer gives the picture of the minimum current price level, helps set a price, and better estimate potential profit.

When you set your own price, remember that the lowest price doesn't mean the optimal one. If you significantly cut your price, that can hurt your profit margin. Usually, when creating the offer, FBA sellers consider other FBA sellers’ pricing, while FBM sellers look at FBM offers.

However, if you want to consider the lowest-priced offer as an FBA seller, you must remember that it may come from an FBM merchant and not include shipping fees. In such a case, shipping costs must be added on top of the price.

If you deal with product research, the Used parameter is optional.

Private label seller listing

From a Keepa graph, you can understand if a product is sold by a private label (PL) merchant. Private label is a trademarked item for which only one seller holds all rights. Online arbitrage merchants can’t sell such products.

Interpretation

From a graph, you can see that a product is PL. The items with a single seller in the listing are usually PL, while products that are not PL usually have multiple sellers. In the example below, the product is sold by one merchant during 195 days, which means it’s a PL product.

Example of the Private Label product on the Keepa chart

Sales Rank

The right-hand side of the graph displays the sales rank figures, and the green line shows rank history.

Interpretation

Sales rank helps estimate how well the product sells. Amazon doesn’t show how much the product sells. It shows how the product sells compared to other items in the category.

However, the sales rank indirectly indicates sales levels. The lower the rank, the better the product sells. Because sales rank changes, you must analyze the average figure and the trend — upwards or downwards — to see if product sales increase or decrease.

Also, if, during specific time periods product’s rank goes down to zero, that may indicate a seasonal product. Such products only sell within a particular season, not throughout the year (e.g., summer or winter shoes). Suppose the Keepa graph shows that the rank goes down to zero in the high season and after seasonal sales start to increase, that may indicate a seasonal product. When doing product research, online arbitrage sellers must remember that such products do not sell all year round.

Example of a seasonal product on the Keepa graph

Buy Box

Keepa displays a magenta diamond when it spots a change in the Buy Box. To see details, hover your mouse over a mark.

Interpretation

Around 80% of sales happen in the Buy Box. Therefore, it’s crucial to win the Buy Box. The number of sellers fighting for the Buy Box and how they share it indicates the level of competition. It helps estimate your potential sales and profit in a specific deal. Identifying if Amazon is in the Buy Box is also essential. That is because if Amazon is a seller, it’s challenging to compete.

Also, you must look into the Buy Box dynamics — it shouldn’t drop or fluctuate too much. If it does, that means you won’t be able to sell a product at a stable price, and you must consider the average Buy Box price. When the number of sellers grows, the Buy Box price can drop because the sellers engage in a price war. That means price dumping and low margins.

Price wars and Buy Box price dumping example

Adversely, when the sellers leave the listing, the Buy Box price can go up.

When the number of sellers grows, the Buy Box price can drop down

New Offer Count

New Offer Count, Review Count, and Ranking are shown in a separate graph at the bottom. New Offer Count figures are displayed on the left-hand side and indicate the number of offers on a listing.

Interpretation

A New Offer Count means other sellers on the listing are trying to sell the same item. Increased competition can show that a product is popular and it’s worth selling. However, if more than 10 merchants sell the item, the competition may be too high.

Review Count and Rating

Review Count and Rating figures are displayed on the right-hand side and indicate the number of product reviews and the average number of stars it earned.

Interpretation

A product with no or bad reviews will likely not sell or generate many returns. Therefore, focusing on products with more than 10 reviews and a rating of 4 stars and up is better.

If you’d like to install Keepa, you can use this link.

Final Thoughts

Amazon sellers research hundreds of products daily to resell them on Amazon for profit. Keepa helps sellers analyze product sales history by showing product graphs.

However, there are seller tools created explicitly for product research that have additional advanced features. Seller Assistant App is one such tool. It’s a powerful product research extension for Amazon sellers engaged in online arbitrage, wholesale, and dropshipping.

Seller Assistant App includes built-in Keepa charts and shows products’ price history, average prices, BSR, the number of FBA and FBM, and other data available from Keepa. On top of that, the extension’s Advanced IP Alerts feature can immediately tell you if a product has any sales restrictions or has led to problems with account health in the past. It combines an FBM&FBA profit calculator, Quick View, Stock Checker, and Restrictions Checker in one tool.