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Duplicate Amazon Listings and What You Must Know
Amazon works every day to not allow anyone to beat them when it comes to giving customers the finest experience possible. They have a number of systems and automation in place to ensure this doesn't happen so that nothing (and no one) may frustrate their customers and hinder the buying process.
Exactly why duplicate listings are viewed as an aggravation resulting in violation.
Duplicate listings really mess up the search results. Talk about infestations of low-quality duplicate pages, copyright/ trademark infringements, and counterfeit and unauthentic products that are a big problem for all open marketplaces. Amazon must keep its platform clear of any clutter that may clog the search results, confuse customers, and hurt sales as the market grows in size and fierce competition. Hence they capitalize on ensuring that each product is listed once only.
Plus, there is more to the story.
Amazon isn't the only one negatively affected by duplicates…
Businesses suffer majorly too. If the duplicates are created mistakenly on your own account, they eat away at your account health, cause suppression, hinder product performance and result in lower product visibility and ranking.
If they are illegitimate duplicate listings by black and gray hat sellers, it is also a nuisance. It is common for sellers with popular products to experience sales hijacking by unauthorized sellers trying to steal the profits from someone else's rightful share. If you have ever experienced that as a seller, you know the pain. They hinder your ranking, make it difficult for the buyers to search up YOUR listing, blur up the authentic product, and make it more difficult for the customers to purchase from identical listings.
This blog post will look at the whats and hows of duplicate listings and how you can protect your account health and performance from their negative impacts.
Why Are Duplicate Listings Created?
Duplicate listings are the ones that point towards the same ASIN. Sometimes they are created legitimately by the brand or their authorized sellers while staying under Amazon's allowed criteria which we will discuss below. However, most of the time, they are either created mistakenly, putting your account health at risk, or by unscrupulous sellers trying to employ black hat tactics to win the buy box.
Amazon doesn't allow two SKUs under the same ASIN with the same fulfillment type and condition but considers it acceptable in the following scenarios:
- Same ASIN - Same Fulfillment - Different Product Condition
- Same ASIN - Different Fulfillment - Different Product Condition
- Same ASIN - Different Fulfillment - Same Product Condition
So, how to keep your account clear from any mistaken violations and your brand protected by monitoring unauthorized duplicates from rogue sellers? Read on to find out.
Dealing With Duplicate Listings On Your Seller Account:
The first step, of course, is to figure out the basic questions, such as if any duplicate listings exist on your account, how many duplicates are there, and what kind of duplicates are there. Once you figure that out, you can take the necessary steps in the right direction.
To know if you have any duplicates on your account, follow the instructions from Amazon's official duplicate listing information page as listed below:
- Go to Inventory > Manage Inventory in Seller Central.
- Click Potential Duplicates at the top of the page.
- Click the Review Duplicates button for an ASIN.
- Read the instructions at the top of the page and review your ASIN with its potential duplicate.
- Select the appropriate button at the bottom of the page to confirm whether your ASIN is a duplicate or not.
- Repeat the procedure for the remaining ASINs.
If the same product has a variation, make sure that you don't have a split variation. Amazon requires all variations of a single product ( such as variation in size, color, flavor, etc.) to be listed on the same product detail page under the same Parent ASIN, instead of having different parent ASINs and listing pages. This will benefit your listing performance by increasing the BSR, sales, and reviews and can be done by contacting seller support.
Similarly, you should contact seller support immediately if duplicates are created by Amazon's own system errors, and they will guide you through the necessary plan of action required to get your listings back in shape.
If you find these issues too complicated to resolve or just have too many products in the catalog, you can always use Mr. Jeff's services to keep your listings super clean and polished. In part 2 of this series, we will discuss counterfeit and unauthorized duplicate listings by unethical sellers that affect brand performances negatively and the measures you need to take to get rid of them.
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FAQs
Duplicate Amazon Listings happen when a single item is listed multiple times on Amazon.
Amazon requires each unique product to be catalog only once so ASINs are only unique to a product on which there is a possibility for multiple sellers to sell (with authorization) Sellers who create different ASINs for the same unique product create duplicate listings which end up being problematic for sellers.
Amazon duplicates negatively affect your account health and hinder your visibility. Also they can result in your original listings getting suspended if Amazon’s system attempts to clean up the search results.
You need to first identify the type of duplicate listings you are dealing with. Amazon is okay with duplicate listings in some special cases.. However, if you are dealing with the wrong type of duplicate, a simple way is to send a merge request to Amazon after taking certain precautions. You can read our two-post series on Amazon duplicate listings that cover the topic in detail.
