How I Avoid Unwanted Shopping Recommendations Based on Past Purchases

Product recommendations are a great feature on modern shopping websites, letting you discover products you might not even know existed. However, this feature can sometimes become frustrating and show unwanted recommendations, but there are ways to fix this.

1

Make a Fresh Start

Online shopping websites incorporate algorithms to refine recommendations and show you products that you might like. These algorithms consider your clicking habits, the products you have opened, or past purchases. With this data, websites show products you might like, but sometimes they can get misaligned.

So, the ideal way to avoid irrelevant recommendations is to create a new account so the algorithm can start fresh and learn from scratch. But that might not always be possible or something that you would want to do. Yet, with some tweaks, you can align the existing algorithm.

2

Refine and Curate Saved Items

Shopping websites like Amazon have wishlists, which are lists of items you have saved for later viewing. Amazon considers this list when recommending products to you. If you have irrelevant products on your wishlist, you’re more likely to see similar suggestions. Therefore, you need to remove irrelevant items from your wishlist or add items you want the website to recommend, effectively telling the website what products you like.

For example, if you shop for gadgets and electronics on Amazon but have also added a skincare product to your wishlist, you will likely receive recommendations related to skincare products.

In order to access your lists on Amazon, you can do the following:

1. Hover your cursor on your account name, in the top-right corner.
2. You’ll find your wishlists on the left half of the dropdown menu.

Now, work through your wishlists and remove any irrelevant or outdated items.

3

Fine-Tune Preferences

Another data point used to recommend products is your viewing history—the products you have clicked on in the past and spent time viewing. Amazon and other retailers use your viewing history as an indication of the products you like, and subsequently, it shows you those. To fix this, you need to remove irrelevant items from your history or past purchases.

1. Hover your cursor on your account name, in the top-right corner.
2. Click on Browsing History.
3. Under each item, you will find “remove from view.”

You can further improve your recommendations by:

1. Hover your cursor on your account name, in the top-right corner.
2. Select Recommendations.
3. Click on any product, then Remove this recommendation.

Unfortunately, it’s not completely guaranteed to work as new products are frequently added, but it can help you remove specific items.

4

Intentionally Interact or Search for Things

On websites like Netflix and YouTube, the content you see is heavily influenced by your searches, views, and interactions. When you intentionally interact with posts or movies, the algorithm assumes you like these items, which is why your YouTube recommendations can also show irrelevant results. The same translates to shopping websites as well. When you intentionally search for items or open them, you are essentially training the algorithm to recommend similar things.

For example, if I’m interested in buying tech gadgets or hardware for my PC setup, I’ll head over to Amazon and start searching for them and interact with similar items. Over time, the website will recognize this and start recommending tech-related products. This is exactly what you need to do for the category of products you want recommendations for. Additionally, when shopping online, it’s best to take privacy measures to save yourself from targeted ads, as websites can track your internet activity and show ads, spoiling the internet experience.

5

Use Separate Accounts for Different Interests

The best approach when you need to buy something unusual, such as gifts or other product outside your normal purchasing patterns, is to use a separate account. This way, any purchase you make remains in the secondary account and doesn’t affect your main account. You can create multiple profiles on Amazon with their respective purchase history, lists, and recommendations. This way, whatever you do in the second profile remains there. This can help maintain a distinction between off-pattern purchases and browsing effectively.