Back in early 2023, an Amazon rep from the Amazon Seller Growth Program told me that I should put my brand name at the beginning of every listing. For example, if you look at Nike shoe listings, they are “Nike men’s running shoe” for example.
I’ve been updating my listings and changing the titles around, but often it is leaving off the brand name in the change. In the inventory list and edit pages, it shows the new title including the brand name, but not on the live listing.
New Title: MyBrandNane 2024 Novelty Sticker
Displayed Title On Live Listing: 2024 Novelty Sticker
I’d say those listings aren’t correctly linked to your brand. i.e. you don’t have enough detail page control.
Typically, based on what I recall, I usually see this where the listing is showing as listed against the ASIN instead of the product identifier (or the first/initial creation of the ASIN)
I know this one - you are being subjected to an “A/B Test” that Amazon has been running where they DELIBERATELY REMOVE brand names from listing titles, and see if sales are affected. You can make matters worse by editing the listing, adding the brand name back in, and forgetting to UNCHECK the pre-checked box that makes Amazon run an A/B test ON YOUR CHANGES.
The nested levels of A/B tests can become like those Russian Matryoshka dolls, one inside the other.
Try changing it back, and if they remove it again, you need to complain bloody murder, if your brand is a legit brand that has an identity outside of Amazon, and is not a brand name created specifically for the Amazon market.
They apparently realized just how much generic plastic crap from China was being listed with Amazon-Store-Ersatz brand names just to allow the seller to NOT have to share an ASIN with a dozen other people reselling the same exact crap on Amazon. So, they started eliminating the Ersatz brand names from the listing titles to see if removing the gibberish brand name (“MYUFOU”, “NERLAN”, etc) from the listing helped matters, as they had painted themselves into a corner.
My brand name IS the product name, so I got medieval on Amazon when they tried this crap with my listing, as many customers search using only that brand name as the search term, and they had better FIND MY PRODUCT doing so.
The tactic was supposed to not affect search, only how the page looked. Don’t care, don’t FSCK with my listing.
That simply means that the ability for you to conduct such split-testing isn’t available, but - no such prohibition exists for Amazon itself.
For the last several months, the NSFE mods have been explaining that the removal of Brand Names - this, just a few short years after the rather-draconian initiative requiring Brand Names to come first (admittedly, simply enforcing what had long been published policy) - is an ongoing experiment, with no ability to opt-out provided beyond pleading with Seller Support (or Brand Registry Support, as applicable) for a one-off exception.
It is not limited to unknown brand names; even Vendor Central-enrolled Nationally- & Globally-known brands have been experimented upon.
Amazon is always tinkering - and as we all know, sometimes the results can be…unfavorable.
Here are just a few of the recent NSFE discussions re: this experimentation:
Thank you @Dogtamer - this makes me wonder - should I bite the bullet and register for NFSE? I just passed the deadline to roll over my old account (probably for the best).
Have any of our concerns come to light about business information being exposed to the unknown masses?
I’m still very concerned about this - but feel I might be a little out of the loop as an immediate consequence.
I have yet to see any reports, in the NSFE or elsewhere, of consequences resulting from the exposure being as dire as the extreme possibilities envisioned as the worst-case scenarios when the Screeching Harpy’s Abomination was first revealed to be coming down the pike.
That being said, the possibility still exists, so if you do decide to onboard, I’d bear that in mind - it’s still the reason why I don’t actively participate over there; I simply monitor the discussions because it’s p/o my job description.
Example - I can pull up store fronts on most posters. IF I wanted I could use the info nefariously and I have no doubt that some do/will. There are just those kinds of people out there.
… this still does not mean you have control of the ASIN with the SKU you are using to try to effect changes.
Specifically, as I somewhat mentioned, are you using the “original” SKU associated with the ASIN creation? These SKU’s give more control. This can often be checked by Manage Inventory > Edit Listing > Product Details > External Product ID … and look at the Product Identifier part of the SKU.
If your title updates won’t go through then I’d say next would be to see if you can make any changes on those ASINs … or maybe I just wouldn’t worry at all about it.
Are you sure it’s not taking? Our brand name has been taken off our listings but when you search the brand name, the titles do display with the brand name, just not any other actually relevant search terms.
A/B/C/D/BS testing has been shut off for months. Still won’t revert.
On search page results, it shows in bold above the item title.
On the detail page, it doesn’t show on the page - but the title in the browser tab does show the brand name as we updated it - so this would support that they are filtering the brand from showing on the item detail page heading above the bullet points.
I have all the same symptoms you do. Brand name exists everywhere (edit page, tag, search results), no A/B testing authorized, brand name yanked from title (which makes it look like we don’t know what we’re doing). I got this from support:
As per communication from our team they have informed that in order to improve the customer shopping experience, we have launched a new way to show product titles that brings the most important information about the product and brand to the forefront with the focus of driving higher conversion and increased sales.
In certain cases, we are giving more space in the title to displaying additional product features that will be more helpful to the customer instead of the brand name. Brand name will continue to be displayed on the product detail page in the “Brand” byline.
I particularly dislike the Orwellian “we are promoting the brand by eliminating it.” I also dislike that some of our products have too few sales to enroll in A/B testing, while that same testing ostensibly tells them which title works best without a statistically significant sample size (how can a company so metric driven be so bad at math?).
I think this is restraint of trade: by eliminating well know brands, Amazon makes knock-offs (including their own and China’s (why do they favor them so heavily? what is in it for them?)) more competitive. And they increase the impression that this stuff is all just “sold by Amazon” (while maintaining that they’re “just a platform” where it’s legally convenient) and that there’s no such thing as a quality brand making quality products, there’s just products with good and bad reviews and sellers (except Amazon) with good and bad feedback.
The saddest part is our primary registration (Offi) isn’t how customers know our brand best (Offi & Co.). So now the “improved” listing simply looks 'tarded:
Please let me/us know if you find a hack for fixing this. For us, it’s a really big deal, and looks really wrong in many cases. It’s depressing to look at how long and how extensively Amazon has mangeld our titles, which we have opted to express for clarity, not SEO-friendly word-saladness (which seems to be Amazon’s preference d’jour). One of our parent/child set of products started with all the titles like this (because people too often thought they were ordering the color in the first twister, regardless of the color actually selected):
Teenager Molded Stacking Chair by Offi & Co, Color = Green
and now these once-identically titled products look like:
OFFI Teenager Molded Stacking Chair Co., Color = Blue
Offi & Co. Teenager Molded Stacking Chair Gray
and then there are the products I previously mentioned that simply look like:
“& Co. Authentic …”
No matter what justification Amazon might give for taking away control of my product titles, there can only be one best answer, as opposed to this randomizing function, that isn’t ever going to stop.
Oh, that’s very helpful, and makes sense because it’s very stupid (on Amazon’s part): Assume the brand name is first because we said to do so, then delete the start of the listing if it matches the brand.
I changed: & Co. Authentic Mag Table in White High Pressure Laminate (HPL)
to:
Authentic Mag Table in White High Pressure Laminate (HPL) by Offi & Co.
and ended up with (OFFI is our primary registered brand): OFFI Authentic Mag Table in White High Pressure Laminate (HPL) Co.
I think they have another, prior algo pulling the brand from within the title and putting it at the start, and later another bot can run through and nuke it. I don’t expect it to stay this way, and it’s still suboptimal, but it did temporarily solve the problem sort of.
At the same time, without me making further edits, the titles of the other children updated inconsistently, but are much closer to what I am asking for. That may have been a coincidence, but it seems unlikely. Maybe try changing one child to see if all other children revert to the title in your flat file or edit-this-product screen.
