Amazon Store Manager's product and product search display is based on Amazon.com's SearchIndices and BrowseNodes values. SearchIndices are product subject areas such as
Books,
Music,
DVD, ...
while BrowseNodes are numerical identification of each subject of the SarchIndex
"1" for "Art & Photography" books,
"27" for "Travel" books,
"508528" for "Musical & Performing Arts" DVDs, ...
Values of SearchIndices and BrowseNodes are determned by Amazon.com and cannot be changed by the webmaster or scriptwriter. What can be changed, however, are the equivalents to these values, which can be set as display values in ASM category and product display pages.
SearchIndex
SearchIndex values for Amazon Store Manager are listed in the script/nodes/*_browse.inc files, the star (*) replaced by appropriate us, uk, ca, fr, fe or jp locale the script is set up for. One thing to remember is that not all SearchIndices are available for all locales. You can always check this out at Amazon Web Services: Search Index Values.
For niche product stores where product categories are limited, disable the categories you do not want displayed by removing the category line or by adding the hash sign (#) to the line. You can rename the name of the category to whatever name you choose, as long as it points to the correct "SearchIndex" value.
BrowseNodes
Harvesting BrowseNodes can be quiet tedious if you are doing it manually from Amazon.com itself. This you do by visitng each and every category and product page at Amazon.com and start picking the BrowseNodes one by one from the URL displayed on your browser's location bar. Study the table below if you are still not sure what BrowseNodes are or how to harvest them.
Amazon URL
BrowseNode
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/30
30
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/5
5
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=3890411
3890411
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=1044440
1044440
A faster way to do it manually is to harvest it from the source code of each product or sub-product category page. Pick the BrowseNodes from the menu listing that is offered for that product or sub-product category.
BrowseNode Lookup Service
If you are setting up your Amazon shop sites more than just casually, using the services of a BrowseNode Lookup service might be just be the tonic to get you going. BrowseNode lookups enable you to easily harvest the BrowseNodes of a product or sub-product group, mix and match them to your fancy (in ASM as long as they are from the same SearchIndex category).
As mentioned earlier, you can use our trial BrowseNode Lookup page here, or use a more established one available at BrowseNode.name. Both services displays BrowseNodes preformatted for ASM2 *.inc files.
The code below is for a dummy script/nodes/us.inc file. Copy the whole code and make a new us.inc file out of it, enable (by removing the # sign) the nodes you want to activate in your shop. Place your harvested BrowseNodes within the brackets ( ) of each $node, upload and your shop should be up and running in no time.
Example : Classical Book Store
If you setting up shop for US classical books, for example, you can change the category display name in the script/nodes/us_browse.inc file for Books to Classical Books, while still retaining the SearchIndex as "Books".
Harvest the BrowseNodes for Classical Books and have only this selection embedded in the $nodes[Books] section of the script/nodes/us.inc file. In the example below, the selection below is harvested from our trial BrowseNode Lookup page.
