Breaking News! Numerous seller listings mysteriously tampered with by Amazon

The end of Amazon is full of mysteries.

Strange incidents happen every year, but this year seems to have an abundance.

As the second half of the year, the peak season is approaching, but the Amazon marketplace is still not calm. After passing through the Amazon PD checkpoint and various verification hurdles, sellers discovered that things were far from calm. Some sellers found their listings inexplicably tampered with, and others found that certain major keywords for ASINs had naturally disappeared...

01

Listings mysteriously tampered with

A seller posted on the official Amazon forum, asking, "Why does Amazon have the right to adjust the product category and other information of one's listing (or some unknown algorithm), while the seller oneself has no authority to make changes? Moreover, the platform can also add bullet points and delete product images in the listing."

The seller wants to know which clauses or legal documents stipulate that Amazon has the right to modify a seller's listing without notification, request, or authorization from the brand or seller?

Amazon's "automatic adjustment" can undermine or damage the brand image and affect the seller's sales. It's hard not to be curious whether this automatic modification of listings is due to an algorithm problem or the actions of Amazon employees.

And it's not just one seller who has encountered Amazon's "automatic adjustment."

One seller discovered that Amazon added new size attributes to their products, making it a choice between "from Small" and "to Small," while the original option was only "Small." The seller can only make the manual modification, but the system prompts that the ASIN does not match the existing dimensions. Helpless, the seller has to delete the entire listing first and then create it again.

Another seller reported a similar situation. They had a clothing listing with the phrase "small dog pattern" in the title. Then, Amazon changed the product category to pet clothing, which is quite amusing. It is reported that this listing has been under the clothing category since 2017.

This operation by Amazon undoubtedly harms the sellers.

When sellers upload listings, the more accurate the category node selection and the higher the match of product information, the more beneficial it is to improve conversion rates. Amazon's "self-modification" undoubtedly affects the number of orders for sellers, but it is unclear whether this is a bug or due to other reasons.

Currently, if sellers find themselves in such a situation, they can only manually modify the listing or seek assistance from customer service.

02

Changes in keyword matching mechanism?

In addition, some major keywords for ASINs have disappeared, which is another major issue sellers have encountered recently.

One seller discovered that several of their links, with ABA frequency within 10,000 and constantly advertised, had keywords that previously naturally ranked on the upper part of the homepage, but now cannot be found through natural ranking (they can't be found even on the first 7 pages). The same situation has occurred with products handled by their colleagues.

As a result, they began to question whether Amazon secretly changed the keyword matching mechanism again.

Posts about the disappearance of natural rankings for keywords have resonated with sellers:

"I have the same situation. Two variations, A and B, with A having better sales. But one day, all the natural rankings for A disappeared, and only B had natural rankings. Now A can only rely on ads to generate orders, which is frustrating."

"It's somewhat similar. I only advertise Variation A for a particular keyword, and it has a sufficient budget, and the click-through rate is good. But the natural ranking for that keyword only displays other variations and not Variation A. It never reaches the front... It's a headache."

"The same thing happened to me. I suspect it's a problem with the links. Yesterday, both the ads and natural rankings were there, but today, they're all gone. Either there are only natural rankings without ads, or only ads without natural rankings. I have never seen such a significant change."

Currently, Amazon has not responded to this issue. Sellers can only refer to some improvement methods mentioned by other sellers.

Possible reasons for the disappearance of natural keyword rankings:

Competitors reducing prices, resulting in a decrease in your conversion rate;

New products or links that were previously behind you occupying your position;

A9 Algorithm Update

Some sellers have regained their keyword advertising conversions by reducing prices and increasing the ad budget, and within about two weeks, the natural traffic for the keywords returned.

There are also sellers whose product, which has been BS (bestseller) for many years, had natural rankings and advertising rankings, including some long-tail keywords, in the top four slots. However, one day during the PD, they suddenly dropped to the tenth position, then slowly climbed to the third or fourth position after PD, and a few days ago, dropped to almost the second page. Although it is still a bestseller, the sales have decreased by about one-third, and they can only rely on ads now.

Some sellers discovered that the ProductType was changed, so the product no longer appeared in the search results for normal category keywords. To check this, go to the editing page through the backend and scroll to the end, where "productType=xxxxxxx" will be displayed. If it is incorrect, file a case and ask customer service to correct it.

Currently, if sellers encounter the same problem, they can refer to the improvement methods mentioned by other sellers, such as opening several cases to ask customer service and checking for issues with PT, item type, and node properties in the links.