Amazon Banned Keywords List
Your listing performance could be negatively impacted by an the inadvertent inclusion of a keyword, language or other terms banned by Amazon. Check the Amazon Banned Keyword List regularly to ensure you haven’t fallen foul of recent changes and keyword inclusions.
Amazon has a habit of changing the banned keyword list regularly. However, most of the time sellers are unaware (particularly if you have existing products containing new words that have been added to the list).
But don’t worry, here we tell you everything you need to know about protecting your listings from penalisation on Amazon. You can also download our updated Amazon Banned Keyword List here.
Amazon Banned Keywords 2022
Does your business sell on Amazon? Protect your performance by ensuring you are aware of the Amazon Banned Keywords List 2022.
You may or may not be aware that Amazon has a list of banned keywords that could seriously impact the success of your listings.
Your brand or business could have everything right in terms of branding or optimisation. Perhaps you’ve taken control of your brand on Amazon, and have invested in optimising the five creative pillars of your listings to appear higher up the Amazon search results? Or you are pumping money into Amazon ads in order to get a jump-start on your competitors?
You’ve ticked every box, including speedy delivery and high customer satisfaction. But, you’re still not seeing the results you want.
If this is the case, there is a chance that your listing could include one of Amazon’s banned keywords, which is severely suppressing your listings success.
Amazon has a list of keywords that are outright banned, and others that are ill-advised. Inadvertent inclusion of one of these banned words could be the reason your product is not appearing as it should.
Book authors have long suffered from this issue, since often they can have profanities, banned words, or controversial terms in the book title. Little-be-known to the author, their sales are inhibited on the largest online marketing platform on the planet because their titles or descriptions have fallen foul of the Amazon banned keyword list.
Amazon Banned Keyword List – A+ content & Storefronts
It is essential not to use the words and phrases that have an outright ban on A+ or Storefronts. This list includes terms such as:
- Buy with confidence
- Black Friday
- Special offers
- Price
- Guarantee
- Worlds leading
- Worlds best
- Award-winning
- affordable
- cheap
- bonus
It also outlaws environmental claims such as ‘eco friendly’ or terms such as ‘certified’. Ensure that you do not use any of these words or any variations of the phrases whatsoever.
To see the full list of the Amazon Banned Keywords here in our continually updated document, which we’ll email you free of charge.
Content Restrictions
In addition to the banned keywords, there are also a number of content restrictions. These are less cut-and-dry than the Amazon banned keyword list. Meaning there is more room for interpretation from Amazon.
Because of this grey area, it’s sometimes more difficult to tell if your listing copy has fallen foul of Amazon’s restrictions.
The content restrictions cover areas like:
- Warranty or guarantee information, including references to off-Amazon return or refund policies, is strictly forbidden in A+ Content.
- Any violations to restricted product policies, category requirements or programme policies are prohibited.
- Do not reference or compare products with competitors, regardless of how competitors are mentioned (for example, specific names, described as ‘other(s)’, or otherwise). This content is intended to build the brand and provide additional product details, not to discuss competitors.
- Do not include pricing, promotional details or discounts, promotion references such as ‘affordable’, ‘cheap’, ‘bonus’, ‘free’ or language directing customers to purchase such as ‘buy now’, ‘add to cart’, ‘get yours now’ or ‘shop with us.’
- Content on adult products that violate any of Amazon’s Adult products policies and guidelines or content that includes any mention of criminal activity is not allowed.
Again, you can see the complete checklist in our free Amazon Banned Keywords download.
Claims and Awards
When referencing awards or endorsements, include a note in the text with the date when the awards or endorsements were achieved and the organisation granting the award. Do not mention awards received more than two years ago.
Any Certification claims must be substantiated by a note in the text with certifying or awarding body, study, publication or other evidence, and year.
As with the keywords, environmental claims with words like ‘eco-friendly’, ‘biodegradable’ and ‘compostable’, including their symbols, are not allowed either in text or in images. Claims that a product is ‘recyclable’/’ecological’ must be substantiated by a note in the text with supporting information, such as materials used or certifying body and year.
Satisfaction claims (for example, ‘100% satisfaction guaranteed’). Or boastful claims such as ‘#1 rated’, ‘top-rated’, ‘best selling’ and so on are simply not allowed.
It goes without saying that you cannot make medical claims about any product that hasn’t been through official medial approval processes.
To see a full list of the claims and awards restrictions, get a copy of Amazon’s restricted keyword list here.
Product Detail Page
Not only does Amazon have restrictions relating to the use of keywords and content, there are also further strict rules specifically relating to the product detail copy:
Titles
- Titles must not exceed 200 characters, including spaces (this may vary depending on category)
- They must not contain promotional phrases, such as “free shipping”, “100% quality guaranteed”.
- Titles must not contain characters for decoration, such as ~ ! * $ ? _ ~ { } # < > | * ; ^ ¬ ¦
- However, they must contain product-identifying information, such as “hiking boots” or “umbrella”.
Titles, descriptions, bullet points or images
None of the following are allowed in product detail page titles, descriptions, bullet points or images:
- Information that is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of other’s privacy, hateful or racially/ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating to or encouraging money laundering or gambling, pornographic, obscene or offensive content or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever.
- Details of availability, price or condition. When listing a product for sale, sellers must follow the Amazon offer listing process. Within the offer listing process, sellers are given an opportunity to note their item’s condition, quantity, price and other details that are relevant to a specific listing.
- External contact information such as but not limited to: Phone numbers, physical postal addresses, email addresses, social media handles or website URLs.
- Links or references to alternative ordering information. For example links to other websites for placing orders. Or alternative delivery offers, such as free delivery.
- Spoilers on Books, Music and Video or DVD (BMVD) listings. This includes giving away plot details crucial to the suspense or surprise ending of a story.
- Reviews, quotes or testimonials.
- Requests for positive customer reviews.
- Adverts, promotional material, or watermarks on images, photos or videos.
- Time-sensitive information, such as dates of tours, seminars or lectures.
- Display of trademarks on generic products
- Information containing software viruses or any other computer code. Or files/programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource.
- Information violating any law of the marketplace country for the time any such law is in force.
Policies for adding detail pages
- You cannot add details which infringe upon the IP rights of other parties or individuals. For more details, check the Intellectual Property Rights for Sellers page.
- You must not use Add a Product, inventory files and Amazon Marketplace Web Services (Amazon MWS) listing APIs for any purpose other than listing products on Amazon.
- You must not use false product identification information in product detail pages. This includes UPC codes and publication dates.
- You must not create a product detail page for a product already in Amazon’s catalogue. This includes products listed on other Amazon marketplace websites (i.e. amazon.ca, amazon.jp, amazon.co.uk, etc.)
- Your product listings must not use detail pages to cross-merchandise or cross-promote a product.
- You must provide only information that pertains to the features of the product in general. Not the condition of your particular item. Product detail pages can be used by any other seller to list the same product.
- For Books, Music, Videos and DVDs (BMVD), you must not use a single product detail page to advertise more than one product. BMVD-only product bundles must be defined by the publisher or manufacturer. Additionally they must have a single ISBN, UPC or EAN that is different from the product identifier of any single item in the bundle.
- For car and motorbike parts, do not include vehicle information in the titles. With Part Finder , buyers can select their specific vehicle make and model and seamlessly find compatible products. However, it might be confusing if buyers are shown a product with vehicle information in the title that does not match the make and model that they have selected.
See the full list of Amazon Banned Keywords 2022
You can download Optimizon’s full Amazon Banned Keywords 2022 list here. The list is continually changing, but we keep it up to date so that both you, and our existing customers, can keep on top of Amazon listing optimization.
