Troubleshooting Amazon Suppressed Listings

Creating an Amazon Listing that generates sales and builds a brand takes a lot of work but fixing it takes more. Amazon suppresses product listings that don’t meet its requirements.

If you’re selling on Amazon, watch our webinar archive to ensure that your Amazon listings do not get suppressed.

We talk about what they are, why they happen, and how you can protect your Amazon Listings from getting suppressed. We also talk about how you can fix this issue for your Amazon FBA Listings and how you can improve your Amazon Product Listings Here’s how you can set up some simple systems to decrease listings downtime & increase profits.

Hello everyone. And welcome to DataHawks webinar. Let’s talk about the
fundamentals first while a suppressed listing can come as an initial shock. The
great news is that it is easy to fix. And in this quick live session, we will examine
together what they are, why the suppression on Amazon happens, and what you
can do to prevent them from happening again? My name is Pooja and I’m the
Amazon content specialist at DataHawk. And we’ll talk about Amazon listing
suppression. And as I said, let’s talk about the fundamentals first. You will
probably agree here with me when I say that what many Amazon sellers think
mostly is about? Are my listings optimized? Is my pricing strategy built better
than my competitors? Are the other sellers buying from me? Do they complain
to Amazon about items, quality or delivery? Is there something I’m missing or
haven’t thought of? How can I drive more organic traffic to my listings? How can
I optimize my pricing? Right.

Amazon can be very significant and a valuable platform for brands looking to
reach huge markets, move merchandise and create widespread brand
audiences. Sure. But what many sellers miss out on when they ask these
questions is that listings on Amazon require constant and problem maintenance
and upkeep. You cannot just update a product and not check it for a long time. It
does not matter if you are an FBM, FBA, private label, multichannel, Amazon
seller, optimizing parts of your business gives you a sure edge. And while there
are plenty of steps sellers must take before products on Amazon, as we have
discussed in our listings optimization webinars also. However, substantial work
also needs to be done after a product goes live on the site. Now, what could be
the main reasons behind constant monitoring or need for regular constant
maintenance? Well, it is necessary because if a listing fails to meet Amazon’s
requirement over time, it’ll be suppressed or deactivated until the issue is
resolved.

And the main problem with suppress listings is that they will not appear to
anyone unless someone looks for it using the ASIN, and no one really looks for a
product using an ASIN. People search for the keyword or the search term. And
even if you do a search with the exact word, Amazon won’t show your listings.
Now the question is what causes a suppressed Amazon listing? In simple terms,
suppressed listings on Amazon can happen when a seller creates a specific
product listing that does not meet Amazon standards. Well, according to
Amazon the suppression guidelines are in place to make it easy for the
consumers to locate research and actually purchase products on its platform.
And in order to ensure that your product listing will be suppressed by Amazon
will not be suppressed by Amazon as a seller. You must include all required
details and information correctly. And to take a few examples of missing or
insufficient information that can lead to suppressed listings.

I mean, we could start with any product listing without a primary or a main
image. Any listing, excluding specific categories, such as apparel books or shoes
without a proper product description, or any clothing or accessories items with a
title, having more than 80 characters. Or any product listing without a defined
category type. We could also think of a listing which is violating one or more
Amazon selling policies. And not only that Amazon may suppress listings for
more various complex reasons that can be time consuming and difficult to
rectify. To take an example, I would say, if you have received a complaint
regarding the listed items, or if there is an attempt to sell a used item as new, or
if there is an attempt to sell an expired item. It could also be because if you’re
not found to be the route a rightful owner of a product listed, right? So all these
things I will take a few examples to better explain all the causes of why an
Amazon listing is suppressed.

The first one being Amazon product image. Well, of course, Amazon considers a
listing without an image to be incomplete. It will suppress these types of listings
until a primary image is displayed. And this makes your product image very
significant to the success of your Amazon listing. And not only that even after
having an image on your listing, it is still being suppressed. It could be because it
is most likely to due to the fact that your product is not compliant. In more
simple terms, you are not utilizing a proper white background with the image
maybe, while there could be many other reasons also for your image not being
compliant. And this tends to be the most common reason that sellers face for
their Amazon listings being suppressed. The next one is cross-promoting
products. Now, if you are using the description space on your product listing to
cross promote other items, well, this is a short-fire way to get suppressed, as it is
a violation of Amazon’s rule.

Your descriptions, your product description should be reserved for information
pertaining to the actual item for sale only. You cannot use unused space to hawk
additional items you are selling, right? The next one will be using a promotional
title while using words like best or cheapest or top rated in your listings. Title is
not within the best practices and screams suppression. Words like these are
considered too promotional for a platform like Amazon. Like if you are tempted
to throw words like the ones mentioned in the product listing, do not try that,
try more creative and subtle objectives instead. Not only are they according to
Amazon’s guidelines, but also they sound more appropriate, right? Another one
is using lengthy titles, while it tends to depend on your selling on one of the
easiest and the quickest way to get your listing suppressed is having long titles. It
can really mess up with your Amazon listings and to stay clear, create titles that
are 200 characters or less. So your listings do not keep getting suppressed again
and again.

The next one is inserting your business info in the product description. Well,
your product description should include just a description of the product. Some
sellers use these as selling gimmicks and sort of avoid Amazon’s rules and
regulations, including addresses, phone numbers, websites, or email addresses
is strictly prohibited by Amazon. And they do not belong in your listed items
description. And this widely is the Amazon seller policy. Another one is omitting
key information. When listing a product on Amazon, be sure to include each and
every product attribute that will help customers make a well informed buying
decision. This commonly includes the UPC, the product description, the bullet
points and brand information. And if you’re missing any of this information, you
are most likely going to get suppressed.

You should also try to avoid duplicating your listings by using the create a
product link to list your items, you will create duplicate products in Amazon’s
catalog and sellers mostly go through this route because they do not feel like
searching the catalog for it, but this can be super costly in terms of getting your
listings suppressed. The next one is requesting positive reviews. Positive reviews
are great. We all like them, but it sounds very simple to do since you want to
ensure that your customers are satisfied and it reflects on your account, but
asking for a positive feedback in the description of your products, you’re
indirectly manipulating Amazon’s feedback system. And you can expect your
listing to be suppressed just because of that. Now, I also received a question
regarding trademark violation. Well, of course, yes. This means that you have
included a huge brand name in your product title when it does not belong there,
or you have not followed Amazon’s phrasing guidelines for including trademark
items.

Well, Amazon is very strict about its rules for the usability of brand names in
your listings. You could do it only when you are offering a compliant product
such as, this is compatible with so-and-so product. For instance, if I say
compatible with iPhone X, however, you are still under the red light if you do not
follow the rigorous phrasing guidelines. For instance, if a seller offers a specialty
cable that is compatible with the Kindle [inaudible] and the cable is compatible
with Kindle, this generally is not trademark infringement, as long as the
statement is true and not confusing. However, you should know that similar
claims such as stating that goods are similar to Kindle or better than Kindle are
against the policy of Amazon. So you should definitely avoid that. If you’re not
sure on how to fix a suppress listing issue, or you disagree with Amazon’s
decision, you should contact customer services through Amazon’s seller support.
Amazon does not provide a contact number.

Sellers are required to provide their contact information, which is responded to
by an advisor, of course. Okay. What happens when a product is deactivated
from Amazon? What happens? When Amazon suppresses or deactivates a
listing? It is not visible on the search and browse functions to the time the
issuing policy breaches within it are the result. Though it remains visible in your
seller dashboard. So if Amazon suppresses a product listing, a customer will not
be able to find the listing in the search result. We have made that clear already,
and eventually the sales on that product listing will drop. And with all this, your
product and brand image could go for [inaudible] basically. But the question is,
how did it come to mind if you have an Amazon suppressed listing and how can
you find it and fix your Amazon suppressed listings? So most of the time sellers
are not even aware of the fact that Amazon has suppressed their products or
product listing. It is essentially to pay attention to the fact 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.
So checking on your listings is a task that you have to do on a regular basis, and
to check for listing suppression, you need to navigate to your managed inventory
button found under the inventory tab in your Amazon seller central. If you
currently have any listing suppression, you will immediately see a suppressed
button. As you see here in the top navigation pan. And if you do not have any
suppressed listings this option will not be visible on your dashboard. On the
suppressed page, you will have the list of all the suppressed listings along with
the inventory count and the reason as to why your listing is suppressed. So what
do you need to do? You need to choose the suppress followed by a viewing
option, such as all suppress listings, or only a specific type of suppress listing,
such as image missing. You can filter it and then select individual listings and
click on edit button and then select edit, and manage the images. Now on the
Amazon product summary page you need to select the tab with an alert
indicator besides it.

Suppressed listings are indicated by a red exclamation mark, though you may
see quality alerts, which are marked with a yellow triangle as well. After you
have resolved all the alerts for a listing, just you need to click on save and finish.
So it’s that easy finding and fixing suppressed listing things is super easy. And a
process you can manage through your managed inventory section in the seller
central. Now, once you’re done, Amazon will quickly remove the suppression
and your listings will become visible once more. But the best way to save
yourself from getting suppressed is to save your listings beforehand. And how to
avoid listing suppression is what we are gonna talk about next. You can
implement some quick techniques and I will show you how you can develop a
whole system to stay on top of your listings and make sure that your listings do
not get suppressed. So first things first, what you, what you need to do is to
make sure that your listings are well optimized.

I am not going to go into details of how you can do it. We have a video on
YouTube, you can check that out. It’s called Amazon listings optimization. But the
point is you can also use the tools on a regular basis to be sure that your listings
are okay and nothing has changed. You don’t want to rely on just finding out
about it out of the blue, and you wanna make sure that you are monitoring your
listings and their quality per Amazon’s guidelines. So what you want is a good
tool and a good system in place. And that’s what we do. The listings analysis tool
that I’m gonna show. You will allow you to analyze the listings page in terms of
textual and visual assets. Let me take you to the platform so that it’s more clear.
You see the listings analysis tool on DataHawk’s platform. We are currently
inside a project and a product, which is the signature sleep memory foam
mattress. And you can click on the listings analysis tab to reach here.

The listings analysis tool will allow you to analyze the listings page in terms of
textual and visual assets. And you can monitor changes and assess the quality of
your listings here. You can assess all the changes that took place in the product
listing for the tracked product that will save your time. And of course, help you
maintain your brand reputation. So when you click on this tab, the first thing
that you see is the current version of your listings. That includes your titles, your
bullet points, and your description. You can also see the word cloud and the
number of media. You need to simply hover your cursor over the dates on the
left panel to have a glance at the history of listings of that particular product on
that particular day. So basically it is a product listing timeline that gives you the
detail of all the changes made with the dates on which they were applied. Now,
when you click on the desired data parameter, in order to view the details of
updates made, you can click on updating the selected timeline

And in order to increase or decrease the range of timeline. So you can also
compare the current version with the previous version as displayed here, you
can see that the green is the other words that have been added. And the red is,
are the keywords that are removed. It also gives you the detail of the number of
keywords updated as compared to the previous version. And this will give you an
overview of how your listings look and how they have been changed, so that you
can decide to optimize your listings, given the change was irrelevant or
unwanted by you. Now, what is most helpful within this tool for correcting is the
listings quality tab here. So when you click on the listings quality tab, it gives you
a score on your listings based on how to comply with Amazon’s guidelines. So
we are looking at the signature sleep memory from the mattress here, you can
see the overall score, as well as the sub scores here, that give you the detailed
information and suggestions to improve your listings

Now, for instance, if you see the title as you see the title has 78%, and you can
see that close to 200 characters have only 20% score. If we go back and we see
the current version of this listing, you can see that there are only 53 characters
that are used in the title. So it is against the, it is not fulfilling Amazon’s
guidelines completely, which is why it has a lesser score. So you can always
correct this one. The next is, if you see the bullet points, they have way less than
255 characters along with the absence of special characters and numbers as
numerals. They also lack punctuation, as you can see here. So you can use this
tool to monitor all your listings in a similar way. There’s one more thing that you
can do to protect products and get notified on any change in your listing. And it
is the listings alert which is inside DataHawks alerting tool. Let me show you how
you can do it.

When you’re within a project or a product you can set up an alert from within a
product by clicking on the product action here, and then clicking on the setup
and alert from the dropdown menu. What you could do alternatively, is that you
can click on the core here on the navigation bar. This will take you to the alerting
section from where you can access your alerts. You can click on manage alerts
and then set up an alert here. This will take you to the edit monitor information
and rules section, from where you can set your alerts. It’s very simple. You just
need to name your group. You need to name your monitor. So for instance, let’s
name it Listing Monitor. You can choose from projects or products. So if you’re
choosing a product, let’s say we want to set an alert for Casper Sleep. We’ve
chosen the product, and then you have the trigger templates which are already
customized templates for you. So you can see if a product enters the top 10 sales
rank, it will alert you. For us in terms of suppress listings. What could be very
important is the buy box is lost because this could be a clear indication of your
listing being suppressed.

And the other one is changes in product listing, which alerts you on any change
in your title, description, bullet point media, or A+ content. So like that you can
make sure that there is no change in meaning. And if there is a change made in
your product listing, which is unwanted, you are immediately alerted about it
and you can take immediate actions. So you can select your required templates
from here. And also you can create custom templates using custom rules. You
can choose whichever property you want and create your own custom
templates. So once you have saved your alerts, you will start receiving daily
email alerts with all the changes on your listings, and you can see them in detail
on the alerting page, if you click on alerts again. You can choose the alert group
in which you selected your alerts. So we did the listings alerts, and you can see
all the different alerts that are here. You can see all the changes that happened
to the listings of the product that were being tracked.

So you can see that for instance, the description was changed. You can see that
here it was removed, which is why it is in red. And here, these keywords were
added, which is why it is in green. So you can set multiple alerts like this, for
instance, this one, there was a change in the number of media. Change in the
number of images, which is a great indication. So that’s how you can manage
your suppressed listings and make sure that your listings are always optimized
and you regularly track and monitor your listings so that you do not end up with
a suppressed listing or a suppressed buy box. All right. So this was it from my
side. I hope I could deliver some value. And with this, I hope that this helps you
power up your Amazon game. And if you have any questions please feel free to
write to me on my email, which is [email protected]. Thank you guys for
joining in