How to retrieve all valid 'ProductGroup's with Amazon Product Advertising API

Question

I need to retrieve all the valid "ProductGroup"s an Amazon product can have to match it with my website categories. Unfortunately I haven't been able to retrieve this list both using the API or browsing the Amazon website as per the docs that state:

You can find the complete list of product groups by going to www.amazon.com and clicking the tab that says "See All 32 Product Categories."

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01/DG/ItemLookup.html

Any help is really appreciated.

Answer 1

This page seems to have a list of all the available nodes

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01/DG/BrowseNodeIDs.html

Edit: @bahmait points out to use this link http://www.browsenodes.com/node--2000.html It does not seem official, but it does seems to be auto-generated by what you would get from the api.

I tried to search the same content from the link i posted above, but the closest i have now is http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/BrowseNodeIDValues.html

here is the nice content they had before (thanks internet archive!)

http://web.archive.org/web/20130109093331/http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01/DG/BrowseNodeIDs.html

The bottom line: Their vendor api has zero categorization, just like their site.

Answer 2

The closest thing to "ProductGroup" is BrowseNode. I think that Amazon has stopped providing an updated list of top-level nodes.

Try something like the following:

Pick a SearchIndex from the the list they provide in the doc.

Do an ItemSearch with keywords that specify the kind of thing you're looking for, and that specify the BrowseNodes response group.

Parse the BrowseNodes you get back for Ancestors, per the doc, going back as far as you think you need to.

If you have a fixed list of products, and you have the the ASIN for each product, then you can do an ItemLookup as above.