Amazon listing optimization: titles, bullets, images and A+ Content by Amazon's rules

Amazon listing optimization means writing each part of a product page so shoppers find it in search and buy once they land: a title of 75 characters or fewer, three to five clear bullets, backend search terms under 250 bytes, a main image on pure white, and an offer Amazon is willing to feature. Every limit below is from Amazon's own Seller Central help pages, checked on 10 November 2026, and the last section shows how to tell whether a change worked.

Keep this table open while you edit. Amazon changes these rules, and the title limit in particular is far shorter than it used to be, so follow the link to each page before a big rewrite.

Amazon's title requirements cap titles at 75 characters, including spaces, for every product type except media. Amazon's reason is that mobile screens cut long titles off. Older listings with longer titles may be corrected automatically or drop out of search, so check yours in Manage All Inventory.

Amazon gives an order to follow: brand name, flavor or style, product type, key attribute, color, size or pack count, then model number where your category's style guide asks for one. The other rules are short:

• Use numerals: "2-Pack", not "Two-Pack".
• Capitalize the first letter of each word, except short words like in, and, the. Never all caps.
• No word more than twice, and your brand name counts.
• No promotional phrases such as "free shipping", and no subjective words such as "best seller".
• No size or color in a parent ASIN's title; those go on the child variations.

If 75 characters is not enough, use item highlights. They add 125 characters, shown under the title in search and on the page, written as comma-separated phrases rather than sentences. Put the most important attribute in the title and the rest in highlights. After you save, allow 24 to 48 hours before the change shows.

Amazon allows up to five bullet points and its bullet requirements ask for at least three. Length limits vary by product type, so the form for your category is the final word. The format Amazon asks for is specific:

• Start each bullet with a short header and a colon, then the detail: "Wide mouth: Fits standard ice cubes".
• Write sentence fragments with no full stop at the end. Use semicolons to join phrases inside one bullet.
• Write numbers one to nine as words, except in measurements and model numbers, and put a space before units: "32 oz".
• One fact per bullet. Don't repeat the title or another bullet.

Some things get bullets removed or rewritten: emojis, symbols such as ™ and ®, placeholder text like "N/A", ASINs, guarantee wording such as "full refund", links or contact details, all caps, and abbreviations like "qty" or "w/". Watch the claims list too. Amazon names "eco-friendly", "anti-bacterial" and "made from bamboo" among the claims it does not allow in bullets, and it asks you to avoid performance or comparative claims unless they are verifiable on the packaging.

Every listing has a product description, a paragraph that explains use, specifications and care. Amazon's detail page rules forbid HTML in it, apart from line breaks, and forbid prices, contact details, reviews and requests for reviews anywhere on the page.

Brand owners can add A+ Content to the description section: image and text modules, comparison charts and, on the premium version, video. To use it you need a Professional selling account and a Brand Representative or Reseller role on a brand enrolled in Brand Registry, according to Amazon's A+ Content page. Brand Registry is free, but it needs an active registered trademark or a pending application from a trademark office in a country with an Amazon store. A+ Content itself costs nothing.

Those figures are from the A+ Content guide, which also lists what gets content rejected: pricing, shipping details, guarantees, competitor comparisons, links, QR codes, watermarks and images copied from your main gallery. Comparison charts of your own products are fine. Review can take up to seven business days, so don't plan a launch around a same-day approval. Amazon says basic A+ Content can increase sales by up to 8%, citing its own internal data; treat that as Amazon's claim, not a forecast for your product.

Search terms go in the Generic keyword field (Manage Products, Edit, Product details tab). Shoppers never see them; Amazon uses them to match your product to searches. Amazon limits the field to less than 250 bytes, and the field stops accepting text when you reach the limit. Spaces and punctuation are not counted. For English letters and digits one character is one byte, but characters like ä take two or more.

Amazon's search term guidance boils down to this:

• Use synonyms, spelling variations and abbreviations shoppers type, but not misspellings.
• All lowercase, separated by spaces, no commas or dashes.
• Don't repeat words, and skip short words like "a", "and", "for", "the".
• Singular or plural, not both.
• Never your own or anyone else's brand name, ASINs, temporary words ("new", "on sale") or subjective words ("best", "cheapest"). Breaking these can get the ASIN suppressed.

Our habit, not an Amazon rule: spend the bytes on words that are not already in your title and bullets. Amazon notes it may not use every term you supply, so a short list of words people really search beats a long list of filler.

Amazon's image guide sets the technical floor and the rules for the main image, which is the one shown in search results.

Amazon recommends at least six images beyond the main one, plus a video. Use them for what shoppers can't tell from a white-background shot: the product in use, its size against something familiar, close-ups of the material, and what comes in the box. Badges such as "Best seller" or "Amazon's Choice", Amazon logos and pictures of reviews are not allowed in any image. If an image shows photorealistic people made entirely by AI, Amazon asks you to tag the file with the keyword contains-synthetic-performer before uploading.

Here is one listing rewritten to the rules above. The brand, Northfield, and the product are made up for this example; the character and byte counts are real.

What changed: the title lost the exclamation marks, the repeated "Water Bottle", the shouting and the shipping promise, and it now follows Amazon's order. The bullet lost the emoji, the all caps, the comparison with other sellers and the guarantee, and the performance claim, which you'd keep only if the packaging states it. The search terms lost a brand name, someone else's brand, an ASIN and three banned words, and now hold words the title doesn't.

A perfect listing sells little if your offer isn't the one with the Add to Cart button. Amazon calls that the Featured Offer (sellers still say Buy Box). Amazon ranks offers on total price including shipping, how fast and how specific the delivery promise is, free shipping, free returns, and seller performance such as chargebacks and complaints. It says it does not consider reviews or star ratings, the Prime badge, or whether you or Amazon fulfill the order. Since September 2026, Amazon says, every seller's offers are eligible to be considered, but an out-of-stock or uncompetitive offer still won't be featured.

Check this before blaming the copy. Business Reports shows your Featured Offer percentage, the share of page views where your offer was featured.

Reviews affect whether shoppers buy, and Amazon polices how you ask for them. Its answers on reviews set out what is allowed:

• Amazon already sends automated review requests for most products.
• You may use the Request a Review button in Seller Central, or enroll in Amazon Vine, a Brand Registry benefit, where it is available.
• You may ask through Buyer-Seller Messaging only if you haven't used Request a Review for that order, and a package insert may ask in a neutral way.
• You may not offer anything in return: money, gift cards, discounts, refunds, replacements or future benefits.
• You may not ask only for positive reviews, ask unhappy buyers to contact you instead of reviewing, or ask anyone to change or remove a review, even while sorting out a return.
• Customer service, including replies to a bad review, stays inside Buyer-Seller Messaging.

Amazon can suspend or close an account for breaking these rules, and it holds you responsible for anyone acting for you, agencies included.

Go to Reports, then Business Reports, then the Detail Page Sales and Traffic report under the by-ASIN reports, as Amazon's business reports article describes. Three numbers matter. Amazon's report schema defines them:

• Sessions: visits to your pages; everything one person does within 24 hours counts as one session. This tells you whether search is sending people.
• Unit session percentage: units ordered divided by sessions. This is your conversion rate, and it tells you whether the page persuades.
• Featured Offer percentage (Buy Box percentage in older reports): if this dropped, a fall in sales may be your offer, not your listing.

Change one part of the listing at a time, wait for it to show (24 to 48 hours for a title, up to seven business days for A+ review), then compare equal periods, such as 30 days before and 30 days after. Note anything else that moved: price, stock, ads, a holiday. If sessions rose but unit session percentage fell, the title and search terms are pulling in people the page doesn't convince. If sessions are flat and conversion rose, the page improved and search hasn't caught up yet.

A handful of products is a weekend's work with this guide. A large catalog, a suppressed listing you can't clear, or A+ Content across many brands is where outside help earns its fee. Our Amazon account management plans, run by GigaCommerce, cover listing fixes and a monthly audit of your ten best sellers on Marketplace Care ($599 a month), with A+ Content edits on Marketplace Care + Ads ($1,499 a month). For the weekly checks beyond the listing itself, read how to look after an Amazon seller account. Or start with our free audit, which looks at your top listings and anything suppressed.