If you’ve ever seen competitor product pages that looks identical to yours, you may have stumbled upon Amazon duplicate listings. Amazon sellers can create duplicate listings accidentally, but some sellers make these listings deliberately in an attempt to boost their own search result rankings and steal sales from the competition.
Duplicate listings can impact your Amazon account and confuse buyers, too. If you find duplicate listings for your own product pages, it’s best to remove them quickly to prevent penalties from Amazon and avoid losing sales.
Below, learn more about best practices for Amazon product listings, how duplicate listings can hurt sellers, and what to do if you find duplicate listings under your account.
What Are Amazon Duplicate Listings?
Duplicate listings get created when multiple product pages point to the same Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN). This can happen accidentally when sellers don’t check their product’s Universal Product Code (UPC) against the GS1 Company Database (GEPIR) before listing it on Amazon. Sellers who skip this step won’t know if their UPC is also used for another product, which can lead to a duplicate Amazon listing.
Some companies create different Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) for the same ASIN, too. For example, sellers can have different SKUs for Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) and Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) product pages.
Nefarious sellers will sometimes make duplicate listings on purpose to improve their SEO and trick customers into buying from them instead of their competitors. These duplicate listings have the same content, images, and product title as legitimate listings, which makes it hard for customers to tell which product is the real one.
How Do Duplicate Listings Hurt Seller Accounts?
Whether created accidentally by well-meaning businesses or purposely by shady sellers, Amazon duplicate listings impact your account in a number of ways, which we describe below.
Amazon Account Violations
Duplicate listings are in direct violation of Amazon’s Seller Code of Conduct, which states that sellers must:
- Provide accurate information at all times
- Not attempt to damage other sellers, their listings, or ratings
If Amazon detects duplicate listings, it will send you an email notifying of actions you need to take. Failing to address your duplicate listings can have the following consequences:
- A hold on your payments for up to 90 days
- Listing deactivation
- Removal of seller privileges or account cancelation
You’ll want to respond to Amazon policy violation notifications as soon as possible. If Amazon thinks your product is a duplicate, you’ll need to provide proof that it’s unique, such as original photos you’ve taken.
Reduced Sales
If another seller has a product page that’s identical to yours on the Amazon marketplace, customers will have trouble figuring out which item is the right one. These sellers can also run PPC ad campaigns to outrank you for your own keywords, which means their duplicate listing will show up higher in Amazon search results. Fewer buyers will see your listing if it’s at the bottom of the search results page, since most customers won’t scroll too far to find the item they need.
Damage to Your Reputation
When customers buy a counterfeit or restricted product through a listing that’s identical to yours, they’re likely to feel disappointed with their purchase. Counterfeit items are typically low-quality, which means they can break quickly or may lack certain features compared to authentic products.
Angry customers can go straight to your product page and leave negative reviews – even if you’re not the seller they purchased the item from. If you rack up too many bad reviews, customers will be less likely to buy from you in the future.
Diverted Reviews
Customers who were happy with your product may want to leave you a good review, but if they click on a duplicate listing, they could end up reviewing the counterfeit product instead. As an Amazon seller, you rely on positive reviews to inspire confidence, inform customers, and encourage visitors to buy from you. If you lack good reviews because your competitor is stealing sales from you, customers may not see you as trustworthy, which means they’ll purchase from someone else.
How to Manage Duplicate Listings
On Amazon, you can manage inventory and merge duplicate listings into a single listing on the Merge Duplicate Product Page. You can also use this page to report ASINs from competitor listings that are duplicates of yours. Amazon asks you three questions:
- Which ASIN should we keep?
- Which ASINs are duplicates and should be removed?
- Why should these products be removed?
To answer the first question, choose the product that has the lowest Best Seller Rank (BSR) – lower BSRs indicate higher sales. Next, enter the ASINs of the duplicate listings you want to delete.
For the final question, you can simply say that the products are identical and you’d like to merge them. If you’re reporting a competitor listing, include proof that your listing is the original, if possible. Without proof, Amazon may deny your request.
Amazon also alerts you to possible duplicates on the Potential Duplicates page, which you can find in the Seller Central hub. When Amazon finds a duplicate, you have 30 days to respond before the listing gets suppressed from search results. Listings that don’t show up in search results won’t earn sales, so if you receive a potential duplicate email notification, it’s best to respond as soon as you can.
Notifying Amazon of duplicates is relatively easy if you only have a few product pages. With a large catalog, though, monitoring and reporting duplicates can take up a lot of your valuable time. If managing duplicates is too much of a hassle, consider hiring an Amazon agency to handle the process for you.
Do You Need Help with Your Duplicate Listings?
As you’ve seen, Amazon duplicate listings and restricted products can impact your seller account and cost you sales that your business can’t afford to lose. If you need help managing duplicate listings or other aspects of your Amazon account, schedule a call with Click Fluency now! Our full-service Amazon agency offers brand store optimization, ad management, and growth strategies that can turn your business into a high-profit powerhouse.