Amazon’s Alleged ‘Project Lighthouse’ Is Quietly Reshuffling the Buy Box
A rumored internal Amazon initiative is reportedly reweighting Buy Box algorithms in ways that are blindsiding established FBA sellers — and insiders say the timing is no coincidence.
By Michael Thompson ·
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7 min read
Something unusual has been happening inside Seller Central since late May, and the chatter at the most recent Prosper Show afterparties — and in the private Slack channels where serious Amazon operators live — has reached a low boil. Sources close to the matter say Amazon is quietly piloting an internal program, referred to in at least two separate seller community leaks as “Project Lighthouse,” that is allegedly recalibrating how the Buy Box is awarded across high-competition categories including home goods, supplements adjacents, and consumer electronics accessories.
Amazon has not confirmed any such initiative. But the circumstantial evidence, according to multiple sellers and agency operators who spoke with Ecommerce Times on background, is hard to ignore. Conversion rate anomalies. Suppressed Buy Box eligibility for accounts with pristine metrics. FBM sellers suddenly winning Buy Box share in categories they haven’t touched in 18 months. Something, operators say, is moving under the surface.
📊 Amazon & Marketplaces · By The Numbers
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0.1%
Growth
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30%
Impact
What Is ‘Project Lighthouse’ and Why Are Sellers Rattled?
The name first surfaced in a private Discord server run by aggregator-adjacent consultants in early June, according to two sources independently familiar with the conversation. The alleged initiative is described as an A/B test — or possibly a phased rollout — that introduces new weighting factors into Amazon’s Buy Box eligibility scoring. Specifically, sources allege the new model places heavier emphasis on seller-level return rates, AI-generated listing quality scores, and a newly introduced “customer lifetime value signal” tied to the purchasing cohorts a seller’s products attract.
“If this is real, it would explain why we’ve seen three of our top-performing ASINs lose Buy Box ownership to sellers with worse pricing and slower shipping,” said one operator running a nine-figure FBA catalog, speaking anonymously because of ongoing vendor agreements with Amazon. “Our ODR is 0.1%, our IPI is 780, and we’re still getting suppressed on spot checks. That doesn’t happen without a rule change somewhere.”
“The signals we’re seeing don’t match any documented Buy Box criteria. Either Amazon changed something and didn’t announce it — which they do all the time — or there’s something bigger happening at the algorithm level. Neither option is great for sellers planning Q4 inventory buys right now.” — Senior strategist at a top-10 Amazon agency, speaking on background
💡 Article Summary
Key Insights
1
What Is ‘Project Lighthouse’ and Why Are Sellers Rattled?
2
Which Seller Categories Are Reportedly Affected Most?
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Is Amazon Favoring Its Own Private Label or Preferred Vendors?
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How Are PPC Strategies Being Disrupted Alongside Buy Box Changes?
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What Are Amazon’s Vendor Managers Actually Saying?
Source: Ecommerce Times
Which Seller Categories Are Reportedly Affected Most?
The pattern, according to agency operators tracking client accounts, is not uniform. Sources describe the disruption as concentrated in specific category clusters:
Home and kitchen: Multiple aggregators with large home goods catalogs reportedly flagged Buy Box instability beginning around June 3rd, with some ASINs cycling between three or four sellers in a 48-hour window — behavior typically associated with pricing algorithm churn, not eligibility reshuffling.
Consumer electronics accessories: Sellers in phone case and cable categories have allegedly seen FBM-fulfilled competitors win Buy Box despite 3-5 day shipping estimates, which directly contradicts Amazon’s publicly stated preference for faster fulfillment.
Sporting goods and outdoor: At least two brand aggregators — including one reportedly backed by a major PE firm out of Austin — have raised the issue internally with their Amazon vendor managers, sources say, and received what one described as “non-answers that felt scripted.”
Thrasio, which declined to comment for this story, is understood to have a dedicated internal team reviewing Buy Box performance across its catalog on a weekly basis. Sources familiar with their operations say the team flagged anomalous patterns in June and escalated to account management — with no resolution confirmed as of press time.
Is Amazon Favoring Its Own Private Label or Preferred Vendors?
The more incendiary interpretation circulating in seller communities is that Project Lighthouse — if it exists — is designed to quietly advantage Amazon’s own private label brands or its vendor-direct relationships at the expense of third-party FBA sellers. This accusation is not new; the FTC’s now-settled Project Nessie investigation raised similar concerns about algorithmic self-preferencing. But sellers say the current pattern feels different in texture.
“The old self-preferencing argument was always about pricing. This feels like it’s about something deeper — who the algorithm thinks is a ‘quality’ seller at a cohort level,” said James Dihardjo, founder of Seattle-based agency Cartograph, in a conversation at a recent industry roundtable. “If Amazon is building LTV modeling into the Buy Box, that is a fundamentally different product than what sellers signed up for.”
“We’ve been advising clients to treat the Buy Box as a stable, rules-based system for years. If those rules are quietly shifting without disclosure, the downstream damage to Q4 planning could be significant. You’re talking about brands making six-figure inventory commitments based on velocity assumptions that may no longer hold.” — James Dihardjo, Founder, Cartograph
Cartograph confirmed Dihardjo’s participation in the roundtable but declined to comment on specific client account behavior.
How Are PPC Strategies Being Disrupted Alongside Buy Box Changes?
The Buy Box instability isn’t happening in isolation. Sources say the alleged changes are compounding existing pressure from Amazon’s Sponsored Products cost-per-click environment, where average CPCs in competitive categories hit record highs in Q2 2026. If a seller is spending aggressively on PPC to drive traffic to a listing but intermittently losing Buy Box ownership, ad spend efficiency collapses — the click happens, but conversion goes to a competitor who owns the Add to Cart button at that moment.
Several Amazon PPC platform vendors, including Perpetua and Pacvue, have reportedly seen increased inbound inquiries about dayparting and bid suppression rules tied to Buy Box ownership signals. Pacvue did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Perpetua said the company does not comment on “unconfirmed marketplace algorithm behavior” but confirmed that its platform dynamically adjusts bids based on real-time Buy Box eligibility data.
Sellers running Sponsored Products on ASINs where they don’t currently own the Buy Box are effectively paying to send traffic to competitors — a known risk, but one that becomes acute during algorithm instability.
Some operators are reportedly pulling back PPC spend by 20-30% on affected ASINs until Buy Box ownership stabilizes, effectively surrendering rank momentum heading into peak season.
At least one major seller tool vendor is allegedly building a Buy Box volatility alert into its dashboard in response to seller demand — though the product has not been publicly announced.
What Are Amazon’s Vendor Managers Actually Saying?
This is where the story gets murkier. Multiple sellers and agency operators report that when they’ve raised the Buy Box anomalies with their dedicated Amazon Vendor or Seller Success contacts, the responses have been unusually uniform — describing the behavior as “within normal algorithmic variance” and directing sellers to existing help documentation. For operators who’ve managed Amazon accounts for years, that scripted deflection is itself a signal.
“When Amazon tests something real, the vendor managers go quiet in a very specific way,” said one consultant who works with mid-market aggregators and asked not to be named. “They don’t deny it. They redirect. That’s what’s happening right now.”
Ecommerce Times reached out to Amazon’s PR team with specific questions about Project Lighthouse, Buy Box algorithm changes, and seller-level LTV scoring. Amazon responded: “We continuously work to improve the shopping experience for customers and selling experience for sellers. We don’t comment on unconfirmed reports about internal programs.”
“That response is almost verbatim what we got when the Nessie stuff started leaking. I’m not saying history repeats, but sellers should be documenting their account anomalies right now, not just complaining about them in Facebook groups.” — Senior Amazon consultant, speaking on background
What Should FBA Sellers Do Right Now to Protect Their Position?
Whether or not Project Lighthouse is a real, structured initiative or simply an accumulation of smaller A/B tests, operators and agency leaders are converging on a few near-term defensive plays:
Audit Buy Box ownership daily through Q3: Tools like Helium 10’s Market Tracker 360, DataHawk, and Seller Snap all offer Buy Box ownership tracking. If you’re not running daily snapshots on your top 20 ASINs by revenue, you’re flying blind during what may be a transitional algorithm window.
Stress-test FBM fallback capability: Given the reports of FBM sellers unexpectedly winning Buy Box share, operators with warehousing capacity should confirm their FBM listings are live and configured correctly — particularly for ASINs where FBA inventory is high and you’d rather not get caught flat-footed.
Improve listing quality scores now: If the rumored LTV and listing quality signals are real, the sellers with the cleanest listing fundamentals — accurate titles, complete A+ content, high-resolution images, robust backend search terms — will have the most defensible position. Run your catalog through Helium 10’s Listing Analyzer or Jungle Scout’s Listing Builder and address the gaps before August gets deeper.
Document anomalies formally: Several attorneys who work with Amazon sellers are reportedly advising clients to create timestamped records of Buy Box suppression events tied to competitor and pricing data — not for immediate legal action, but as a paper trail if regulatory scrutiny of Amazon’s marketplace practices intensifies in Q4.
Reduce PPC exposure on volatile ASINs: Until Buy Box ownership stabilizes, consider shifting budget to Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display formats that drive brand awareness without being directly dependent on Buy Box ownership to convert.
The broader concern among experienced operators is about timing. Q4 2026 inventory planning is happening right now. Sellers making FBA restock decisions in August are basing those decisions on Q2 and Q3 velocity data — data that may have been distorted by an algorithm in transition. If Project Lighthouse is real and the rollout accelerates into October, the sellers who planned aggressively around their historical Buy Box share could find themselves overstocked, underconverting, and facing long-term storage fees heading into the new year.
Nobody Ecommerce Times spoke to is predicting catastrophe. But the word “uncomfortable” came up in nearly every conversation. And in Amazon circles, uncomfortable tends to precede expensive.
