Preventing Amazon Suppressed Listings and How to Fix Them

Amazon suppressed listings can be a common occurrence for online sellers, especially for those who are new to the business and who sell many different products. Amazon suppressed listings occur when a product listing does not satisfy Amazon guidelines. Losing your Amazon Buy Box can also result in an Amazon FBA suppressed listing.

As mentioned above, Amazon suppressed listings happen when a product listing does not satisfy Amazon’s guidelines. According to Amazon, such guidelines are in place to ensure a better shopping experience for its customers, allowing them to locate, research, and purchase products on its platform. As a result, those listings that do not abide by said guidelines are suppressed. That means your listing will not appear to shoppers. The next section of this article reviews Amazon’s suppression guidelines.

More often than not, Amazon suppressed listings are standard; only a few brands become immune to it. Here are some of the reasons in detail; check them out to have a better understanding of Amazon suppressed listings: 

1. Not including an image

Amazon considers a listing without an image incomplete; it will suppress these types of listings until a primary image is displayed. As a result, product images will always be important to the success of Amazon listings.

2. Not including a compliant image

Despite adding an image to your listing, it is still suppressed. This may be because your product is not compliant; it is not using the proper white background with the image.

3. Cross-promoting products

If you are using the description space on your product listing to cross-promote other items, this is a surefire way to get suppressed as it violates Amazon’s rules. Your product’s description should entail information about the actual item for sale only. For example, you cannot use unused space to hock additional items you are selling.

4. Using a promotional title

Using words such as “best,” “cheapest,” or “top-rated” in your listing title is not within the best practices and screams suppression. Messaging like this is considered too promotional for a platform like Amazon. Instead, try more creative and subtle adjectives.

5. Lengthy title

While it depends on your selling category, having a long title is one of the easiest and quickest ways to get your listing suppressed. It is customary for titles to be 100 characters or less.

6. Inserting your business information in the product description

Your product description should include just that: a description of the product. Some sellers use selling gimmicks and do not follow Amazon rules and regulations. Amazon strictly prohibits addresses, phone numbers, websites, or email addresses in your listed item’s description as it violates the Amazon Seller Policy.

7. Omitting key information

When listing a product on Amazon, be sure to include every product attribute that will help customers make a well-informed buying decision, such as the UPC, product description, bullet points, and brand information. If you are missing any of this information, your listing will most likely get suppressed.

8. Inadvertently duplicating listings

Using the Create a Product link to list your items will inadvertently create duplicate products in Amazon’s catalog. Sellers do this because they do not feel like searching the catalog; however, this is a costly mistake.

 9. Requesting positive reviews

Asking your customers to leave your product positive feedback indirectly manipulates Amazon’s feedback system and results in listing suppression.

If you are unsure about how to fix a suppressed listing matter or if you disagree with Amazon’s decision to suppress your listing, you can contact customer services through Amazon Seller Support. However, Amazon does not provide a contact number; sellers must provide their contact information and wait for an adviser to respond. While you wait for Amazon’s response, you can download the DataHawk 2022 eCommerce Calendar, to start planning your strategies for all the most important dates for Amazon sellers this year.

Most of the time, sellers are not aware of the fact that Amazon has suppressed their listings. Therefore, it is essential to pay attention to ensure that Amazon does not tell you before or when your product has been suppressed. Amazon does not include monitoring services as part of being an Amazon Seller.

As a seller, you have to be sharp and keep yourself updated regarding Amazon’s rules and regulations. However, it may seem daunting to stay up to date with regulations and check the status of your listing constantly. To avoid product suppression and the extra work that comes with preventing it, consider investing in reputable Amazon seller software.

To determine if you have a suppressed Amazon listing, you should regularly check the status of your listing. To do this, navigate to the “manage inventory” button located below the “inventory” tab in Amazon Seller Central. You will immediately see a “suppressed” button in the top navigation pane if you currently have any listing suppression. If you do not have any Amazon suppressed listings, this option will not be visible on your dashboard.

t is not evident to know if you have an Amazon suppressed listing; sellers are not notified. Therefore, it is essential for sellers to routinely check for listing suppression to fix it as soon as possible. Do not panic if Amazon suppresses your listing as it is quick and easy to rectify when not a lot of time elapses between the suppression and the resolution.

As a reminder, Amazon suppressed listings hinder sales. Consequently, resolving suppressed listings promptly should be a top priority. To address suppressed listing issues, you should do the following:

1. Choose “suppressed,” followed by a viewing option such as “all suppressed listings” or only a specific type of suppressed listing, such as “image missing.”
2. Select an individual listing, click the “edit” button, and select “edit” or “manage images.”

On the Amazon product summary page, select a tab with an alert indicator beside it (suppressed listings are indicated by a red exclamation mark, though you may see quality alerts marked with a yellow triangle). After you have resolved all alerts for a listing, click “Save and finish.”

Finding and fixing Amazon suppressed listings is a quick and easy process in the “Manage Inventory” section of Seller Central. Each of your product listings also has an Amazon Product Summary page containing complete information about the reasons behind the item suppression. Once you have resolved all listed issues, Amazon should quickly remove the suppression, and your listing will become visible again.

Abiding by Amazon guidelines is the only way you can safeguard your product listing visibility to customers. Therefore, many brands and merchants hire SEO services to maintain their Amazon account to facilitate the management process.

What makes secret suppression different from normal listing suppression? Well, secret suppression is attributable to trademark violations. In other words, it is when you insert a unique brand name in your product title and when you fail to comply with Amazon’s phrasing guidelines to include trademark items.

Amazon is very strict about its rules for the usability of a brand’s name in your listings. For example, you could do it only when offering a compliant product, such as “compatible with iPhone X.” However, you are still under the red light if you do not follow their rigorous phrasing guidelines.

Here is Amazon’s policy regarding the use of someone else’s trademark in the creation of a detail page:

When making truthful statements that a product is compatible with a trademarked product. For example, if a seller offers a specialty cable that is compatible with the Kindle E-reader, and states that the cable is “compatible with Kindle,” this generally is not trademark infringement as long as the statement is true and not confusing.

Note, however, that “similar to” claims (such as stating that goods are “similar to Kindle” or “better than Kindle”) are against Amazon listing policy.

Additionally, if your listing violates any of the guidelines mentioned above, your entire product page could be suppressed and hidden from customer search results. There is, however, an equally harmful version of Amazon suppression known as Buy Box suppression.

Most sellers understand the significance of the Buy Box. This valuable tool allows shoppers to click through to purchase with a single hit of the “Add to Cart” button. Because the Buy Box makes it much easier for shoppers to complete a purchase, the seller with the Buy Box tends to make more sales.

Without the Buy Box, sellers will always see a loss of sales, and without the option to add products to their shopping cart, shoppers will undoubtedly purchase less or might even become irritated. Instead, they are forced to click through to see additional buying options where the likelihood of them making a purchase from your store drops even further, and all this does is mess up your brand image.

The only and best way to restore the Buy Box is to resolve the problem that caused it to disappear in the first place. This means comparing your prices to competitors across Amazon and making adjustments where needed.

More often than not, sellers make the following two mistakes:

1.  Scads of Amazon sellers barely understand their competition Amazon is a powerful search engine. Fifty-five percent of the product search starts on Amazon. One in every two people, who are searching for a product, log into Amazon before searching anywhere else.
2. Sellers do not properly take care of their feedback score Most customers ignore buying a product because of the negative feedback they read. It spoils the ratings you want to be at the top.

That is where your seller account optimization comes in handy; it removes negative feedback and increases your buy box share time and, consequently, sales.

DataHawk can provide you with routine Amazon Buy Box alerts and Amazon product listings alerts via email notifications whenever something changes in your product listing. Essentially, you will know if there is a change or you have lost the Buy Box for some reason, which you can further enquire. In addition to this, DataHawk’s software gives you the ability to protect your brands from hijackers, enforce your MAP policy, track your products’ data and performance, and shield your reputation, keeping you in complete control of your listings and business.

Have a question or need additional information about DataHawk’s eCommerce acceleration software? Reach out today to simplify and improve your Amazon business.