Amazon has an almost singular goal: to connect consumers with the products they are looking for as efficiently as possible. Amazon duplicate product listings hinder this goal by clogging up search results and making it more difficult for customers to decide which of the identical listings to choose from. This is why many of Amazon’s processes and regulations focus on identifying, eliminating, and suppressing duplicate listings.
But Amazon is not the only entity who should worry about this issue. Duplicate listings are often created by unauthorized sellers trying to capitalize on the popularity of a product already featured on Amazon. They create a listing using the same images and information, often winning the buy box in the process and taking impressions away from a brand’s legitimate listings. This hurt the seller both by siphoning sales away from the listing and by increasing the risk of penalties or listing suppression.
In this blog post, we’ll look at why Amazon duplicate listings are created, how they impact seller accounts, and what steps sellers can take to minimize the negative impact of duplicate listings.
What Are Amazon Duplicate Listings?
Amazon duplicate listings are when multiple listings point to the same ASIN. They might have been legitimately created by the brand for different SKUs for the same ASIN, such as an FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) SKU and an FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) SKU, or they might have been created illegitimately by unauthorized sellers attempting to create a new page to compete with an existing featured product.
Duplicate listings might contain identical pictures, titles, and content, which is why they can often confuse the consumer, making product searches and purchasing decisions more complicated. They are one of the most common seller violations, which is why they are so important to be aware of and monitor.
How Duplicate Listings Impact Seller Accounts
As we’ve already discussed, there may be perfectly legitimate reasons for having created duplicate listings for a single ASIN, including having separate FBA and FBM SKUs ready as part of your inventory management strategy or allowing authorized third-party (3P) sellers to have their own listings for the same products. We’ve also discussed how illegitimate duplicate listings created by unauthorized sellers are created to directly compete with a brand’s existing listing.
The impact with duplicate listings is twofold. On the one hand, any duplicate listing, whether legitimate or not, will naturally compete with the original listing. This is why many Amazon consultants and agencies advise against creating duplicate listings. While you can manually track and identify additional sellers, the benefit of working with an agency is they offer in-house brand monitoring services to help brands quickly identify and either merge or eliminate these duplicate listings.
The other impact of listing duplication is suppression by Amazon. Duplicate listings are one of the most common seller violations and are easily identified and suppressed by Amazon, even if they were created by the brand for legitimate reasons. It is therefore imperative that brands constantly monitor their listings for potential duplicates and take swift action against counterfeit and rogue sellers.
Steps to Minimize the Impact of Duplicate Listings
To avoid suppression, Amazon has an easy step-by-step process in place to help sellers identify potential duplicates with options to accept them if they are legitimate or reject them if they are suspicious. Here are the exact steps listed on Amazon’s Seller Central site to help sellers manage potential duplicates:
- In your Seller Central Account, Go to Inventory > Manage Inventory.
- At the top of the page, click Potential Duplicates.
- Click the Review Duplicates button for the ASIN you wish to review.
- Read the instructions and review your ASIN and its potential duplicates.
- Confirm at the bottom of the page whether the ASIN is a duplicate or not.
- Repeat these steps for all remaining ASINs
For sellers with only a handful of ASINs, manually completing these steps is a relatively straightforward process. Sellers with larger catalogues, however, may not have the bandwidth or manpower to go through each ASIN one by one, which is precisely why so many duplicate listings are able to slip through unnoticed until they reach a point where they are directly competing for your customers. Fortunately, there are many options to assist sellers with this process, and most Amazon agencies offer brand monitoring and protection as part of their services.
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