What is Suppressed Amazon Listing and How To Fix it?

Fix Amazon Suppressed Listings

Online shopping or social distance shopping has become the need of the hour for the customers as it helps in cutting down the COVID chain and protecting themselves & others from the virus. But do you know that selling a product or a service on the biggest e-commerce platform, Amazon, is not as easy as just spending money and purchasing items?

Yes, it is true that running a seller account can be challenging on the Amazon marketplace whether you are an experienced or a new member of the platform. When your product listings are not created as per Amazon’s standard and guidelines, Amazon suppresses or deactivates your product listings which are called suppressed Amazon listings. Sellers need to fix Amazon blocked listings immediately to prevent loss in business.

Suppressed Amazon listing is one of the common problems that many Amazon sellers are facing nowadays. It mostly occurs when your product listing is either incomplete or is not correctly formatted. Also, suppressed Amazon listings can occur when one of your product listings is noncompliant with Amazon standards or the listings are missing the required data as per Amazon’s policies.

The major impact of the suppressed listing is on product searches as your listings won’t be visible to the customers even if they will still be there in your inventory. With suppressed listings, an Amazon seller will see minimized sales figures and may lose thousands of dollars within a few hours.

The major challenge is that the Amazon seller will be losing sales without actually knowing about it. Though it is not the biggest of the e-commerce problems that cannot be solved, the thing is that you have to be dependent on the Amazon seller software to make you aware of such situations so that you can take the necessary actions and can avoid lowering your sales figures which otherwise can make you suffer a huge loss. You can also take Amazon optimization services and optimize Amazon SEO to boost sales of the products on your store.

Read here to know more about optimizing Amazon product listings in detail.

What is the Cause of Suppressed Amazon Listings?

Amazon Seller

Suppressed Amazon listings can occur due to multiple reasons, and these include cases where the listings were suppressed because of simple mistakes. But one of the most common reasons for the suppressed Amazon listing is not adding the main image or uploading the main image that is not set against a plain white background. Another reason for suppressed listings can be not adding the required values in the Category field. These common errors can easily be rectified by entering the missing values or adding the image as per Amazon’s guidelines.

In brief, we can say that suppressed Amazon listings occur when Amazon’s standards or guidelines are not followed for a specific product listing. Amazon has set these standards and guidelines to make sure that the consumers can search and locate required products easily so that they can have an excellent customer experience while purchasing products and services on the biggest e-commerce platform.

To make sure that Amazon will not suppress your product listings, the sellers should follow all the standards and guidelines while creating product listings or updating product-related information.

Following are the few examples which will help you in determining what all are the cases when Amazon can suppress your product listings:

  • If you have not added at least one main image for your product listing.
  • If your product listing does not have a detailed product description.
  • If any of your clothing items or an accessory includes a title that is longer than 80 characters.
  • If any of your product listings do not have a category type defined.

How to Fix Suppressed Listings on Amazon?

Fix Suppressed Listings On Amazon

Suppressed listings on Amazon can be identified and rectified without many efforts, but the challenging part is that sellers on Amazon need to check their product listings regularly to ensure that they are not missing anything and everything is updated and running smoothly.

Following are the six steps that a seller account holder can follow to fix Amazon blocked listings on Amazon:

  • Reach the seller account and select the Manage Inventory option after clicking on the Inventory tab.
  • Now, in the top navigation pane, select Suppressed. Note: You will see the Suppressed option in the top navigation pane only if you will have any suppressed listing, else the option won’t be available.
  • In the next step, select the viewing option (All Suppressed Listings), which can either display all the Suppressed Listings available or another option (Image Missing) that will display only the specific type of suppressed listing.
  • Select a product listing, and then click the Edit button. Now, either select Edit (top option) or Manage images.
  • Moving to the next step, select the tab that shows the alert indicator located at the Amazon Product Summary page. Note: A red exclamation point is used to indicate a suppressed product listing. Also, a Quality alert is indicated using a yellow triangle.
  • Finally, click on Save and finish if you are done rectifying all the alerts for your product listings.

After you have followed all the steps mentioned above, the suppressed product listings on Amazon will disappear within a few minutes following the updates that you have made are saved. But the alerts will still be there on the Listing Quality and Suppressed Listings Report for more than 48 hours.

How to Prevent Suppressed Listings on Amazon?

As an Amazon seller, you can get suppressed listings now and then, but there are a few common mistakes that you should avoid to make sure that your product listings are not suppressed by Amazon quite often. Following are the few common mistakes:

Missing Main Image

Uploading the main image for a product is one of the most important parts of the listing. For Amazon, a product listing without at least one main image will be considered incomplete. Therefore, if you won’t upload the main image for your listing, Amazon will suppress the specific listing.

Image Not Compliant

If there is a situation that your listing has been suppressed, even if you have included an image for that particular product listing, the most common reason here will be that the main image you have included is not compliant as per Amazon’s guidelines. Amazon has set some standards and guidelines for the seller’s account on the e-commerce platform, which includes that the main image for your listings should have a white background, so there are chances that your listing has been suppressed as your main image does not have a white background.

There can be other reasons too for your main image not being compliant but not having the white background is the most common one.

Too Long Title

One of the common mistakes which can get your listing suppressed by Amazon is using long listing titles for your products. Though the title length and limit depend upon the selling category, you should always remember to create titles that are not exceeding 100 characters. Creating listing titles that are 1of 00 characters or less will help you avoid your listing getting suppressed by Amazon. Also, always check for Amazon’s guidelines to avoid such common mistakes.

Using Promotional Title

If you have created your listing title including words like “top-rated,” “best,” cheapest, etc., there are good chances that Amazon will suppress your product listing as your title is not as per Amazon’s guidelines and is rather too promotional to use. So, if you are creating a listing title for your product and are using such promotional words, then you will definitely get your listings suppressed by Amazon. Therefore try using creative and less promotional words instead of the above-discussed words.

Duplicate Listings

There are good chances that you, as an Amazon seller, can accidentally create duplicate products in Amazon’s catalog with the “Create a Product” link used to list your products on the e-commerce platform. Most of the time, sellers use this link to list the products as they find the catalog time-taking. So, you should remember that going with a shortcut can actually become a costly mistake.

How to Determine if You Have Suppressed Listings on Amazon?

Amazon does not tell its sellers whenever it suppresses product listings, therefore most of the time, sellers are not even aware that their product(s) listings have been suppressed by the e-commerce giant. In fact, being an Amazon seller, Amazon doesn’t include monitoring services. This brings the need that the Amazon sellers should have a close look at their listings and rather check the product listings quite often to identify if any of their product listings have been suppressed by Amazon. If a product listing is suppressed by Amazon, the particular product won’t be available on the website, and the customers won’t be able to purchase it even if it would be available in your inventory.

As an Amazon seller, it is your duty to keep yourself up to date with respect to the rules and regulations created and updated by Amazon. If you know about each and every detail of the guidelines that Amazon has set for the listings, it will definitely become easy for you to avoid your product listings from getting suppressed by Amazon. But when it comes to determining your suppressed product listings, checking them manually and regularly is not the only option that you have by your side as an Amazon seller account holder.

It is true that as you are running a business on the e-commerce platform so you might have other important tasks to do to keep your business up and running, and therefore you can always think to invest in the reputable Amazon seller software that will not only identify your suppressed product listings for you but will even save your time, that you can utilize in doing other important business tasks and activities. Also, if you do not want to use software, you can hire an Amazon virtual assistant to do the required tasks on your behalf.

To identify the suppressed product listings using Amazon seller software, all you need to do is reach the ‘inventory’ tab in Amazon Seller Central and locate the ‘manage inventory.’ After clicking on the ‘manage inventory’ button, you will get to know the details regarding your current suppressed listings. If you have a suppressed product listing on the platform, then you will see a ‘suppressed’ button that will be located at the top navigation pane. And if in case you do not have any active suppressed product listing on your account, then the ‘suppressed’ button will not be visible on the dashboard of the software.

How Amazon Suppressed Listings Can Impact Your Business?

The chances of your product getting suppressed by Amazon increases when your product listings do not match with the set of standards and guidelines created by Amazon for the product listings. Therefore following the guidelines set by the e-commerce giant is the only way by which you can make each product in your inventory visible for the customers on the website to ensure that you are not losing sales for any of your products that may ultimately impact your business if it gets unnoticed.

If Amazon suppresses one of your product listings, then that particular product won’t be able to make it in the search results and therefore won’t be visible to the customers on the website. And you can understand well that if a product doesn’t show up in the search results, then it will not attract the target audience, which will bring the sale of that product down to zero. You cannot imagine that even if the suppressed product listings go unnoticed for a few hours, you can lose up to thousands of dollars depending upon the category of products that you are selling on the platform.

Amazon Suppressed Listings will not only impact the sales figures of your e-commerce business, minimizing the profit and overall income but will also impact the customer base. Unavailability of a certain product will make the customers redirect to other brands on this marketplace, which will affect your brand image that will ultimately reduce your customer base.

Conclusion

Following Amazon’s standards and guidelines thoroughly is very important while creating product listings for your e-commerce business. Any of the simple and common mistakes will get your product listings suppressed by Amazon, which will definitely be going to cost you a lot in the long term.

In this article, we have discussed in detail the causes of suppressed Amazon listings along with the ways to prevent and fix the suppressed listings on Amazon. Also, we have talked about how to determine suppressed Amazon listings and how Amazon suppressed listings can impact your business.

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If you are one of those facing suppressed Amazon listings intermittently, then you can hire our professionals that will help you minimize your sufferings. Write to us today at info@data4amazon.com.