My most popular blog post has 7408 views in the 3+ years since I posted it. It mentions three things and I just saw those three things listed on Amazon under “Frequently bought together” when I visited the page for one of them.

These are not especially similar items and there are plenty of alternatives for each one. So these three together mean that Amazon is mining very, very deep into the long tail for similar items. 7408 page views might only mean 74 purchases. Or 15 purchases.

The original post is Better Yamaha CM500 Audio with PTT on Elecraft KX3. A clumsy title, yes, but it is descriptive. I wrote the post because I was tired of replying with the same information over and over again on mailing lists. Now, either on lists or Facebook, I link to the post.

What are the items?

• A hand-held pushbutton, for turning on the transmitter (“push to talk” switch). This is the page I visited to see the “Frequently bought together” list.
• A stereo to mono splitter cable. There are hundreds of these, all pretty much the same, but Amazon is showing the exact one I mentioned in my blog post.
• The Yamaha CM500 headset, an affordable, popular headset for amateur radio use. There are lots of other choices cheaper and more expensive, so this is also a strong hint.

Mostly, there is no reason in the world to associate a hand-held pushbutton switch with these other two items. There are plenty of other hand switches, many of them pre-wired. There are many, many stereo to mono splitters.

Hint for savvy shoppers, the Hosa splitter was $6 when I wrote the article. It is $5 now.