On June 17, 2019, a post was made in Amazon Seller Central’s discussion board by Amazon stating that it would start suppressing ASINs that violate product title requirements. This is slated to start happening on July 22, 2019. The message encouraged sellers to review the FBA Product Title Requirements before July 15, 2019 to ensure their listings are not suppressed in customer searches.
Obviously, this caused a lot of reactions from sellers, who voiced their concerns (or agreement) with the announcement in replies to the post. Some sellers were happy to hear that listings would start being penalized for using keyword spamming in their titles, while others pointed out how this could potentially be catastrophic for non-brand owners who have little control over product listings.
Many questions were raised in the post for two days following the original announcement. A moderator posted a response with some more details on June 19th, 2019:
There were several initial responses from sellers who were concerned about the 50 character “general rule” as many product titles need to use more than 50 characters in order to adequately describe the product. This response from the moderator thankfully clarified that titles may contain up to 200 characters without facing possible suppression.
Sellers were also worried about not being notified when an ASIN is being suppressed due to violations, which the moderator’s response cleared up as well. Sellers will be “notified through the Manage Your Inventory screen in Seller Central, with the specific reason the ASIN was search suppressed” and after the seller has fixed the issue(s), Amazon will lift the suppression in searches.
Throughout the thread, many sellers spoke about their continued confusion about the requirements for various categories, the differing information listed in articles on Amazon and what they’re told in forums or from Amazon Seller Support, etc.
TameBay has a great list of best practices for product listing titles to help avoid getting your ASINs suppressed:
ASIN Titles Length
Use 50 characters maximum as a general rule. However some product categories allow longer titles, so be sure to follow category-specific instructions.
ASIN Titles Capitalization
Capitalize the first letter of each word.
Do not use ALL CAPS.
Conjunctions (and, or, for) and articles (the, a, an) should not be capitalized.
Don’t capitalize prepositions with fewer than five letters (in, on, over, with).
ASIN Titles Numbers and Symbols
Use numerals (2 instead of two)
Spell out measurements ( 6 inches not 6″ )
Don’t use symbols, such as ~ ! * $ ?
Don’t use Type 1 High ASCII characters (Æ, ©, ô, etc.)
ASIN Titles Product Information
Include the size and color in “child” ASINs for variations
Don’t include price or promotional messages, such as “sale” or “free ship”
Don’t use subjective commentary, such as “Hot Item” or “Best Seller”
Your merchant name for Brand or Manufacturer information should not be included, unless your product is Private Label
ASIN Titles for Variation Relationships
In Variation Relationships, only the title of the parent ASIN is shown on the detail page. The title for the selected child ASIN will appear once the ASIN is added to the customer’s cart, so it is important to include the variation attributes (such as size and color) in the title for the child ASIN.
Example parent: Crocs Beach Clog
Example child: Crocs Beach Clog, Lime, Medium (Women’s 8-9 M US/Men’s 6-7 M US)
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