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Latest Product Enhancements
View Your Products Your Way
The View Products page under the Products tab in Seller Central allows you to see all the products that were successfully uploaded. Now you can customize the view for this page.
The default view is to show you all available data: Amazon Category, Price, SKU, Amazon Title, Date Created, ASIN/ISBN, Merchant URL, and Searchable.
If you’d like to customize this page, click on the Preferences link.
When setting your preferences, you have the option to:
- Specify the maximum number of products per page
- Sort by method - SKU, Start Date, Title, Price, Category, or Searchable
- Set your Default View - Product listings based on your sorting criteria or the Search Products page
- Select which columns you want to see. (Your SKU will always be displayed in this report.)
You only need to set your preferences once and we’ll remember this for next time. If you decide you need a different view, you can edit your preferences at any time.
Customize your Products view to meet your needs today. Log into Seller Central and go to Products tab>View Products>Click on the Preferences link.
Learn more about the view products page here.
New Data in Processing Reports
We recently introduced an “Excluded" column in our Processing Reports (found in the View Products section of the Products tab). This column sums the products from your feed that have been excluded from your upload.
Products will be excluded for the following reasons:
- Items flagged as not orderable in your Yahoo XML file
- Items flagged as “product-ads-exclude" in your Yahoo XML or Google TXT file
- Items flagged as Gift Certificates, Downloadable, or with a SKU value of ‘NONE’
The column will only show when you have had excluded items in any of your last 10 uploads.
In conjunction with this change we have also updated the Feed Processing Summary in the downloadable Processing Report. The report also includes a sum of excluded items.
| Feed Processing Summary: |
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| Total records processed |
1829 |
| Rejected |
-69 |
| Excluded |
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| Excluded by merchant |
-296 |
| Gift certificate |
-9 |
| Not orderable |
-33 |
| |
======= |
| Accepted |
1422 |
More Places Your Ads are Seen
We’re focused on driving high quality traffic to your website. This month we are excited to announce that your products can now be found in more places on Amazon.com.
Customers will now see Product Ads in the left hand column under Listmania in search results. Only those products directly relevant to what the customer searches for will be shown. No additional work needs to be done on your end for your Product Ads to be displayed in these targeted placements and you will continue to pay your normal CPC rates.
We will continue to work on initiatives to put your ads in relevant placements making your products available to even more Amazon.com customers.
Here is an example of the new placement on Amazon.com:
New Category Value in Product Reporting
We’ve added a new category value called “Closed." to
View Products and the Product Report found in Seller Central.
This new category value is used to indicate products that
were not successfully listed. There are two reasons why
a product may have been assigned a classification of “Closed."
- Restricted products - Amazon prohibits the sale of a range of products. If the product you upload falls under our restricted products, it cannot be listed for sale on Amazon.com. View a full list of product restrictions.
- Unavailable category -Product Ads is currently open in select categories. Your product may have been matched to an existing product page on Amazon.com that is not open to Product Ads. View a complete list of Categories Eligible for Listing with Product Ads. If you think your product is incorrectly matching to a product outside your desired category, try providing more detailed Title and Category information and/or a UPC.
Learn more about the Closed category here. 
Optimize Your Ads
Make Your Customizable & Exclusive Products Searchable
Each time a new product is uploaded, we analyze the product
information to determine if the offer should be matched
to an existing detail page or a new product page needs
to be created. The data you upload is key in helping our
systems make this decision.
There are some products which will definitely need a new product page:
- Exclusive products - Products for which you have exclusive distribution rights in the USA
- Customizable & Personalized Products - Made to order products
If you have products that fall into one of these types, let us know by following the four steps.
- Click Get Technical Support (also located at the bottom of every Seller Central page)
- Choose Product Listings and Other Product Listing issues in Step 1 "What is the Problem?"
- Enter "Customizable, Personalized and Exclusive Products" in the "Ask your Question Here" box
- Provide the following information in the main body box:
- What type of products you have (exclusive, customizable, personalized, or made to order)
- Links to the products on your website that you would like reviewed.
Our Technical Support team will review your request and can speed up the process of creating product detail pages. Let us know about your exclusive, customizable, and personalized products today and make it easier for customers to find these products through search and browse.
Learn more about Customizable, Personalize and Exclusive Products here.
Improve Ad Performance by Including Shipping Costs
You may be missing out on valuable holiday sales if you do not include shipping costs in your Product Ads. Qualify the traffic to your website and improve your ad ranking by adding shipping costs for all your products.
Offers without shipping costs are displayed to customers with the message “No Shipping Info". This means customers are missing a key piece of information limiting their ability to make a buying decision. Providing customers the product and shipping price will better qualify them before they click through to your website.
In addition, Product Ads offers are prioritized by the total cost to the customer, price + shipping. When we don't know the total price, we decrease the placement rank of that ad. Setting your shipping rates will improve your Product Ads ranking.
You can configure your shipping in Seller Central or in your product feed. There are three ways to set shipping prices for your products using the Shipping Settings feature in Seller Central:
- Flat fee per shipment - Applies to all your products. To show “free shipping" select this option and enter 0.00 in the "Per shipment fee" box. If there is an additional handling fee, use one or both of the Additional Shipping Charges options.
- Different fees per shipment - Set different shipping rates based on product price range. If your products require an additional handling fee, use one or both of the Additional Shipping Charges options.
- Additional cost per pound - Use this option if you charge shipping based on product weight (in pounds).
Alternatively you can submit shipping rates per product in your Product Ads feed. Product-level shipping rates in the Shipping Cost field will override any rates set with the Shipping Settings feature in Seller Central. To use the information from the Shipping Settings feature, delete the rates from your feed and reload.
Learn more about shipping here.
News and Announcements
Identifying Product Ad Clicks
If you use referral URLs to track your website traffic, your reports may not accurately reflect all of the traffic that came from Amazon.com. Depending on the customer browser, the referral URL may be dropped. This means that you will not be able to see that Amazon drove that click to your website. Instead this traffic will appear as “type-in" traffic.
Work is underway to ensure the referral URL is passed regardless of customer browser and we anticipate being able to deploy this in early 2010.
Learn more about tracking clicks here.
Process Change for Listing Lighting and Office Products
Amazon.com recently launched an initiative to improve catalog quality for Lighting and Office Products. As a result, products that have previously been listed without a Universal Product Code (UPC) will no longer be available in search and browse results. Lighting and Office Products which have been listed with a UPC will not be affected.
Sellers using Product Ads to list Lighting and Office products without a UPC will continue to be displayed in targeted placements. We will also implement a new review process to determine if the item is unique or should be matched to an existing product page. As we work through this process you can expect to see your items become available in search and browse results.
We strongly recommend you add UPCs to your product feed. This will make your products available in search and browse results immediately. If your products are customizable, or you are the sole distributor in the USA, please let us know using Get Technical Support, choose Product Listings - Other product listing issues.
Q&A
Everyday our Technical Support team answers questions that are submitted by you. Here's the answer to one of the most commonly asked questions.
Question: I received an alert on the homepage of Seller Central that says my listings have been put on hold because my products do not meet the Content Guidelines. What should I do?
Answer: Your ads were taken off Amazon.com due to content violations found in your product data. To get your ads live you will need to submit a revised product feed to your account. Review our Content Guidelines page to identify products with violations in your feed. The most common reasons for content violations are:
- Customer lands on a page other than product page on the website. Your feed must contain the URLs where the product can be purchased on your website. Make sure you submit working URLs that point to the correct product page on your site.
- Product information on your site is different from what’s displayed on Amazon.com. When customers click on your product from Amazon.com they expect to see the same product information on your website. This includes the same price and shipping information for your products. Be sure to submit the accurate data that reflects your website.
After you have updated your product information to your
account, contact Technical Support. Request an account
review in order to get your products live and back on site.
Here's how to submit your request:
- Click on the “Contact Seller Support" link at the bottom of every page in Seller Central or click on the
 button in Seller Central Help.
- Choose “Account Status"
- Choose “Account blocked or suspended." In the text box supply an explanation of the reason and causes for your account suspension and explain how the issues identified by Amazon will be resolved by your company. Choose how you would like to be contacted by our support team. Submit an email or select "Click to call" and we'll call you back immediately.
Along with messaging in Seller Central we also send you an email when your account is suspended. We suggest you have at least two email addresses for each notification to keep you up to date on the most important events involving your Product Ads account.
Direct emails to the appropriate contact at your company by logging into Seller Central> Settings tab > Account Info> Edit Notification Preferences.
Learn more about Managing Alerts here.
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