San Francisco, Oct 21 (IANS): After facing criticism for allegedly copying popular products and manipulating search results to boost its own brands, especially in India, Amazon has now announced a new tool that will help third-party sellers with detailed insights into what customers are searching for, clicking on, and buying, as well as sales history, pricing trends and more.

Amazon said it is testing the 'Product Opportunity Explorer' feature in a beta programme through the end of the year and will expand the tool to all sellers throughout 2022.

"Identifying and launching new products is key to retail success, but it can be costly and time consuming. Amazon's new Product Opportunity Explorer tool helps take the guesswork out of identifying which products to launch by providing sellers with rich insights into what customers are searching for, clicking on, and buying, as well as not buying," the commerce giant said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The tool, announced during the 'Amazon Accelerate' event, helps sellers identify niches of emerging product opportunities by providing detailed data on search volume and growth, sales history, and pricing trends, so they can identify and act on customer demand.

"Amazon has a long track record of inventing for sellers, and our Product Opportunity Explorer tool is our latest innovation that provides them with insights to help them bring new products to market faster and more efficiently," said Ben Hartman, Vice President of North America Selling Partner Services at Amazon.

The new tool comes at a time when Amazon, as per a Reuters investigation, has been accused of using data from third-party sellers to determine products it would create.

The report reviewed "thousands of internal Amazon documents, that the US company's India operations ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its own private brands in the country, one of the company's largest growth markets".

After the report came out, five members of a US congressional committee have told Amazon that it led them on the wrong road during a probe on business practices.

In a letter, addressed to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the lawmakers asked Amazon to provide "exculpatory evidence" to corroborate the sworn testimony that several leaders, including then CEO, Jeff Bezos, provided to the antitrust subcommittee in 2019 and 2020.