Amazon has lifted the veil on its Amazon’s Choice program and now appears to be showing the criteria behind some products’ selection for its recommendation badge. Criteria such as “low return rate” and “highly rated” are now appearing below the Choice badge on some Amazon pages. 

It seems that Amazon is still tweaking how the information is revealed. Earlier today we noticed some products had the information full exposed as in this example of an Acer laptop:

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However, a couple of hours later we couldn’t find an Amazon’s Choice product with the information exposed. Rather, it’s revealed when you roll your cursor over the Amazon’s Choice label or “Why we love this product” link next to the badge — as in this example below for the Bose Quiet Comfort 35 II:

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I also checked the same products on my mobile phone and the extra “Why love this product” info wasn’t available on Amazon’s mobile site. 

Amazon didn’t immediately respond for comment on the changes we observed, which were first reported by Geekwire yesterday.  The online retailing behemoth is likely doing A/B testing on how the information is presented, so how — and to whom — it’s appearing will continue to vary until and unless it rolls out the change across the board. 

As CNET reported last month, Amazon Choice badges — designed to help you quickly narrow down your choices and streamline the buying process — have begun to appear on more and more products in recent months. To date, not a lot was known about how Amazon’s Choice products are selected.

Even if the Amazon Choice badge is yet another version of the Amazon algorithm at work, however, this added transparency should at least say why the products got the Choice nod.