I really hope that it will remain only as a test. Search traffic is nothing, compared to the New Items traffic, which was the main traffic source for new items.
New Items traffic is a kind of natural selection. New items, if they are good, get sales and appears at the weekly top. If they are really good, they stay at the top for a while, getting buyers attention and more sales.
But now, new items may get lost for potential buyers. It is really demotivating for authors, who wants to create something new.