If you’re an eCommerce retailer, you already know that the title that you assign for your products is critically important for all organic searches as well as paid campaigns and keyword optimization. This is especially important for Amazon product listings where your products are surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of similar products within the same marketplace.
There’s been a lot of abuse when it comes to how some sellers and vendors assign product titles on Amazon but not anymore. Amazon recently announced that on July 22 it will be “suppressing ASINs from Amazon Search that violate Amazon’s title guidelines.” According to the announcement, the reason behind this new enforcement is that titles that don’t comply with Amazon’s guidelines “result in a poor customer experience.”
In other words, if your listing isn’t in compliance with the official style requirements, your product will not show up in searches. That alone, should be a good reason to make any changes to comply with the enforcement of the new policy.
As shown in the above article, the new policy mentions some specific requirements:
- Title containing promotional keywords and phrases (for example, free shipping, 100% quality guaranteed, etc.)
- Title containing non-readable characters including emojis.
- Title exceeding more than 200 characters.
- Title not containing any product identifying information (no product type name and no product characteristics – for example, a single word title such as N/A)
In addition to the above requisites, Amazon’s own style guide also includes a number of other Title rules that are more on the cosmetic side of things such as using all caps, special characters emojis, etc. Rules that nevertheless, are still important to remain in compliance.
As will all things Amazon, some of the rules are open to interpretation, however, the consequences could be quite drastic and hurtful for all business. As the release mentions, “When an ASIN is suppressed for any of the above reasons, you will be notified through the Manage Your Inventory screen in Seller Central, with the specific reason the ASIN was search suppressed. Once the issue is fixed on the title, we will remove the search suppression and the ASIN will appear back on Amazon Search.”
Basically, if your product title is not compliant, the product will disappear completely from all search results. Think about the consequences of it. At the very least, you will spend a couple of days updating your conflictive title/s, dealing with Amazon and hopefully, getting your products to appear on searches again. By then, the loss of revenue could be substantial.
If you have any questions about the actual Amazon Style Guide definitions, you can take a quick look at it here >
How MGR Amazon Services Can Help You Stay Compliant
One of the situations that we’ve noticed is that they majority of our Amazon clients were unaware of this announcement. Those who were aware of it, were not really sure if their Titles or any other elements of their products listing would be affected. Unfortunately, Amazon’s decisions seem to be more in the way of “suspend now and ask later” which leaves Sellers and Vendors quite frustrated.
If you’re a current MGR Amazon Services client, you don’t have to worry about that. We will not only let you know when a new rule or requirement comes up but we will also provide you with specific recommendations to remain compliant. The last thing that you need is to see your sales drop drastically simply because your products are not being listed anymore while you’re unaware of the reasons why.
If you need any type of assistance getting your product listings optimized for compliance with Amazon’s product title guidelines or any other issue, you can Contact Us here. Our team will get back with you right away.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, this is Manuel Gil del Real (MGR).
