Use search terms effectively
For customers to find your products on Amazon, it’s important to provide search terms that they might use when searching for what they want to buy. Search terms are keywords that are used by the search engine for lexical matching between an ASIN and a query.
On this page, search terms mean terms that you enter into the Generic keyword field when you list or update an ASIN, which are indexed in the search engine for matching.
Tips for drafting and optimizing your search terms include the following:
- Maintain the text length limit of search terms.
- Make use of synonyms.
- Use spelling variations, but don’t include common misspellings.
- Include abbreviations.
- Use all lowercase letters.
- Avoid punctuation marks such as semicolons, colons, and dashes.
- Separate words with spaces.
- Avoid repetitions.
- Avoid articles, prepositions, or other short words such as “a,” “an,” “and,” “by,” “for,” “of,” “the,” or “with.”
- Use either singular or plural words.
Example of effective search terms
 |
cutting chopping board butcher block bamboo wood wooden large hybrid polypropylene food grade plastic non slip kitchen dual sided surface natural bpa stain scar resistant eco friendly drip groove |
Prohibited search terms
Violating the rules below may result in your ASIN being suppressed and may put the health of your selling account at risk.
Prohibited words include the following:
- Your brand or other brand names
- ASINs
- Profanity
- Temporary statements such as “new,” or “on sale now”
- Subjective claims, such as “best,” “cheapest,” or “amazing”
- Offensive terms, including any terms that promote illegal activities or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance
Examples of prohibited words
| Brand names | Apple, Nike, Amazon |
| Temporary words | available now, brand new, current, discounted, just launched, last chance, last minute, latest, limited time, new, on sale, this week (month, year), today |
| Subjective words | amazing, best, cheap, cheapest, effective, fastest, good deal, least, most, popular, trending |
Add search terms
To add search terms, follow these steps:
- In the Inventory drop-down menu, select Manage All Inventory.
- Click Edit next to the listed product.
- Click the Product details tab and enter your keywords in the Generic keyword field.
For more information, go to Optimize your product discoverability.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the difference between bytes and characters?
With respect to alphanumeric characters used in the English language (for example a - z, A - Z, 0 - 9), one byte corresponds to one character. However, more complex characters, such as umlauts in German (for example, ä), can correspond to two or more bytes per character.
As a result, estimating the character count can be more complex than estimating the bytes count. For this reason, the Generic keyword field in Seller Central stops accepting inputs when the byte limit is reached.
Are spaces and punctuation counted?
No. For the purpose of calculating the length of search terms, Amazon search does not count spaces or punctuation. For readability, search terms should be separated by spaces. Punctuation is used, but not recommended.
Why is there only one field for search terms?
The field for search terms was reduced from five fields to one field to improve the quality of Amazon search results and reduce the amount of superfluous search terms. The reduced quota of search terms helps you focus on only using relevant words to describe your products.
What happened to the search terms in the removed fields when the fields were reduced to one?
To facilitate the reduction of the search term fields from five to one, the content of all search term fields was combined into one field. We requested that sellers modify the content of this field to meet the bytes limit and save their changes.
How do I update the search terms for my ASINs in bulk?
If the Category Listing report option is enabled under the Inventory drop-down menu in your Seller Central account, you can download a spreadsheet of the existing listings. If it is not enabled, you can ask Selling Partner Support to enable that option in your account. Once you've downloaded your current listings, you can use an inventory file template to perform bulk upload changes by using the partial update function.
Are search term attributes required for certain product types?
Effective December 6, 2023, the Generic keyword field is required for the following 23 product types:
- Bath toy
- Body paint
- Bath pillow
- Bath safety seating
- Bar tool set
- Bathroom container set
- Bathtub shower mat
- Broom
- Bookend
- Bed skirt
- Artificial tree
- Body positioner
- Bedding set
- Body deodorant
- Balloon
- Bed linen
- Board game
- Bed linen set
- Blanket
- Body care product
- Beauty
- Art and craft supply
- Party favor
Why are some of my search terms not searchable?
Amazon determines the relevancy of search terms automatically in order to optimize search results and improve the customer experience. As a result, the terms deemed relevant may change over time as Amazon gathers data. This process is automated and Amazon may not use all search terms supplied by sellers.
Your search terms can also be eliminated, if you have used prohibited search terms such as brand names, ASINs, or offensive language. For more information on how to optimize and improve your product discoverability, go to Optimize your product discoverability.