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SeedPublished 2026-10-23

Small sellers under platform algorithms

Business growth is a rising keyword across the tracked journals, and small and medium-sized enterprises are a large topic, but only 19 of 431 recent SME papers carry a platform, e-commerce or algorithm keyword. Millions of small firms now depend on marketplace search rankings. What happens to them when the algorithm changes?

managementplatforms

What prompted this#

"Business growth" grew across all journals (25 papers in July–September 2026 against 15 expected) and in management (see the trends page). Since October 2025, 431 papers carry an SME or small-business keyword (157 in management journals, 121 in economics, 117 in finance); only 19 of them carry a platform, e-commerce, algorithm or marketplace keyword, and "platform dependence" appears on 3.

Questions#

  • When a marketplace changes its ranking or fee rules, how much do small sellers' sales move, and do they leave or adapt?
  • Are sellers that sell through several channels more resilient?
  • Do rules such as the EU's Digital Markets Act change how platforms treat small sellers?

Data that could help#

Seller-level sales and rankings from marketplace data providers, announced changes to algorithms and fees, and SME surveys.

Next step#

Collect announced ranking or fee changes on one large marketplace and track the sales ranks of a panel of small sellers around them.

The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26
KeywordPapers, last 30 daysRankPapers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26*Papers, last 36 months
small and medium-sized enterprises16#53865
e-commerce platforms5#393151
platform dependence0–9

Markdown version of this note: /ideas/small-sellers-under-platform-algorithms.md

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Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Small sellers under platform algorithms. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/small-sellers-under-platform-algorithms

@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-small-sellers-under-platform-algorithms,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Small sellers under platform algorithms},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/small-sellers-under-platform-algorithms}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}

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