Amazon Hacks

Jump to a Product Using Its ASIN

Once you have a product’s ASIN, you can jump straight to its product detail page.

Having a product’s ASIN means you’re never more than one click away from its product detail page. The easiest path to the page is to put the ASIN in any Amazon search box, as seen in Figure 1-5.

Figure 1-5. Searching by ASIN

Rather than displaying a list of search results for you to choose from, you’ll be taken directly to the product’s detail page.

You can also skip the searching altogether and just type in the URL. Once you’re familiar with the URL pattern, you can plug in any ASIN and get the page you’re looking for. Either of these URLs will take you to the product detail page for the corresponding ASIN:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/insert ASIN here
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/insert ASIN here/

Warning

It is Amazon’s prerogative to change their URL syntax at any point. Amazon.com is a constantly evolving application, and its interfaces change from time to time. You can always find the latest information about linking to Amazon through their Associates site (http://www.amazon.com/associates/).

If these URLs aren’t bringing up a product detail page, you may have an item that isn’t in Amazon’s catalog. Chances are good that a book is in the catalog of at least one of Amazon’s properties; it just may not be available at Amazon.com. Try changing the base URL to amazon.co.uk for books from the UK, or amazon.ca for books from Canada. Amazon’s international sites all follow the same URL conventions:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/insert ASIN here/
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/insert ASIN here/