| Blog | 
13 Mar 2026
Amazon Expands Shop Direct with Product Feeds: More Visibility for Merchants Through Search, Rufus, and Buy for Me
Amazon has introduced a new way for merchants to join Shop Direct more easily. Brands can now connect their catalogs through third-party feed partners like Feedonomics, Salsify, and CEDCommerce, which lets Amazon sync product data, pricing, and inventory in real time. Instead of building a custom setup from scratch, merchants can use the same feed infrastructure they already use with other channels.
This matters because Shop Direct is not just another traffic source. It is part of Amazon’s bigger push to become a discovery layer for products, even when those products are not sold in Amazon’s own store. When customers search for relevant items, Amazon can now show products from external merchant sites, clearly labeled as Shop Direct, and in some cases offer a Buy for Me option where Amazon completes the purchase on the customer’s behalf.
Shop Direct is already large in scale. According to Amazon, it now includes over 100 million products from more than 400,000 merchants, with tens of millions of products eligible for the AI-powered Buy for Me flow. Amazon also says it has already referred customers millions of times to products sold across the web. (Amazon News)
What Changed With Shop Direct
The main update is simple: Amazon is reducing the friction for merchants who want to participate.
Until now, joining programs like this could feel limited or unclear. With this update, merchants can connect through established syndication partners and automatically keep their assortment updated inside Amazon’s Shop Direct experience. That includes catalog data, pricing, and inventory, synced in real time. Amazon says these products can appear not only in standard search results, but also inside Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant.
Amazon also says more participation options are coming. In addition to future feed syndicators, the company plans to add an Amazon merchant portal with a merchant-direct feed.
What the Customer Experience Looks Like in Practice
Shop Direct is designed for moments when a customer is searching on Amazon, but the exact product is not currently sold in Amazon’s store.
In that case, Amazon may show relevant external products labeled Shop Direct. From there, the customer can choose one of two paths:
– Shop Direct → go to the merchant’s website and complete the purchase there
– Buy for Me → let Amazon complete the purchase on the customer’s behalf using their saved Amazon shipping and payment information, when the item is eligible
Amazon says merchant names are clearly shown, so the customer understands who they are buying from. If the customer leaves Amazon through Shop Direct, they are notified before the redirect happens. If they use Buy for Me, Amazon handles the checkout flow inside its own interface, then securely passes the encrypted details needed to place the order on the merchant’s website. The merchant still handles fulfillment, returns, exchanges, and customer service.
Where This Can Help Merchants Day to Day
1) Getting discovered even when you do not sell that product on Amazon
This is the biggest strategic shift.
A brand no longer needs every relevant product to be sold directly inside Amazon’s store to show up during Amazon-based discovery. If Amazon sees a relevant match, it can surface an external product and still keep the customer inside Amazon’s shopping journey long enough to create the connection.
That means Amazon is becoming more than a marketplace. It is also becoming a product discovery engine for the wider web.
2) Reaching customers through more than one Amazon surface
The new feed-based setup is not only about standard search placement. Amazon says merchants can reach customers through both traditional search results and Rufus. That matters because Rufus is becoming a bigger part of how people search, compare, and evaluate products on Amazon.
Amazon said in its latest quarterly results that Rufus was used by more than 300 million customers and helped drive nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales last year. That does not mean every brand will benefit equally, but it shows that Amazon is putting real volume behind AI-assisted shopping paths.
3) Joining with less operational work
For merchants already using feed tools like Feedonomics, Salsify, or CEDCommerce, the update removes a lot of manual work. Instead of maintaining a separate setup only for Amazon’s external traffic program, they can use an existing feed relationship to keep product data current.
This is especially useful for brands with:
– large catalogs
– frequent price changes
– inventory swings
– products sold mainly through DTC channels rather than Amazon FBA or Seller Central
4) Keeping the customer relationship while gaining Amazon visibility
One important detail in Amazon’s positioning is that merchants can participate while still maintaining their own customer relationships. Amazon’s VP of Core Shopping described feeds as a way for merchants to sync their data in real time, maintain those relationships, and still gain meaningful traffic and sales from Amazon-driven discovery.
That makes Shop Direct different from a normal marketplace listing model. The brand can gain reach from Amazon demand without giving up the full transaction environment in every case.
Why This Matters Strategically
Our view: this is another sign that Amazon wants to be the place where shopping starts, even when the final transaction does not always stay inside Amazon’s store.
When you combine Shop Direct, Rufus, and Buy for Me, Amazon is building a system where the customer can search once, compare options, and buy almost anything through an Amazon-led experience. Some products will stay on Amazon. Some will redirect out. Some will be purchased agentically by Amazon itself. That is a bigger role than “retailer” or “marketplace.” It looks more like Amazon wants to become the default shopping interface. This is an inference based on Amazon’s rollout across search, Rufus, and AI-assisted checkout.
For brands, this creates both an opportunity and a warning:
– opportunity, because Amazon can send new traffic to products not sold in its own store
– warning, because discovery on the internet is becoming more platform-controlled and more AI-mediated
What Amazon Says Is Coming Next
Amazon says it plans to expand Shop Direct participation further by adding more feed syndicators and launching a dedicated merchant portal with a merchant-direct feed.
The experience is currently available for all U.S. customers on Amazon.com, the Amazon Shopping app, mobile web browsers, and inside Rufus.
How We’d Use This as an Agency (Fast Checklist)
If you are a brand with a strong DTC store, this is how we would approach Shop Direct first:
– Audit which products customers search for on Amazon but cannot currently buy from your Amazon catalog
– Clean up product feed quality before pushing traffic into the experience
– Make sure pricing, availability, and product detail data are synced correctly
– Separate products that are good for the Amazon marketplace from products that are better kept as direct-store offers
– Track whether Amazon-referred traffic converts profitably once it reaches the merchant store
– Watch how your brand appears inside Rufus and other AI-led discovery flows
Tools like this are valuable only if they move real business outcomes. For some merchants, Shop Direct could become a new discovery layer with low setup effort. For others, it may simply reveal that feed quality, landing page conversion, and pricing discipline are now even more important than before.
If you want help understanding how this could fit into your Amazon and DTC growth strategy, contact ANavigator at info@anavigator.co.
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Author: Oleksandr Kovalov
Founder & CEO @ ANavigator
— The ANavigator Team
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