If you’ve listed a product on Amazon, but it’s not showing up in search results, there are a few common causes.
The key questions to ask—in order—are:
- Do I have inventory available?
- Is my listing status set to active?
- Are there any account health issues?
- Is my product indexed for the right keywords?
If the answer is ‘no’ to any of these questions, you’ve found the cause.
If the answer is ‘yes’ to all of these questions, it may be a more complex issue.
However, there are important details related to each of these possible causes.
In this guide, we’ll unpack each of these potential issues so you can understand why your listing isn’t visible on Amazon.
1. Inventory status
The first and most common reason a listing is not visible on Amazon is that there is no inventory in stock.
When creating new Amazon listings, you’ll get given the option of choosing whether the product will be fulfilled by Amazon, or by you:
The option you choose can impact the status of your listing.
Amazon FBM
If you choose Fulfilled By Merchant (FBM) you will then be able to set an inventory level based on what you have available in your warehouse or 3PL.
If it’s set to zero, your listing won’t show, and you’ve found the cause.
However, if you’ve set an inventory level of 1 or more and your listing still isn’t active, inventory isn’t the issue.
Amazon FBA
If you choose Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) your listing will remain inactive until you create a shipping plan, send inventory in, and Amazon has received and processed your shipment.
Until then, the listing status will be ‘Inactive (Out Of Stock)’ and will look like this:
Have a quick check, and if that’s the case, you’ve found your issue.
There’s nothing more you can do other than wait for your inventory to arrive, at which point your listing will become active (unless you proactively close it).
If you have stock that has been received and processed by Amazon, it may be that it is in reserved status.
2. Listing status
The next issue you could be facing is at a listing level. Amazon listings can have one of several statuses:
- Active
- Inactive
- Incomplete
- Detail Page Removed
- Search Suppressed
Each status will give clues to what next steps you should take.
a. Active
If your listing has an active status, your issue is not a listing one, so you can move to the next step.
b. Inactive
The main inactive statuses you will come across are:
- Inactive (Out Of Stock). As mentioned, the fix for this is sending inventory to an FBA center or updating inventory levels if you are selling via FBM.
- Inactive (Closed). This is a listing that has been proactively closed. To reopen it, inside Seller Central, head to Inventory > Manage Inventory and click the ‘Relist’ button next to the product in question. Make any necessary updates, then click ‘Save and finish’. This should make the listing active.
- Inactive (Blocked). This is a listing that has been blocked by Amazon due to issues such as prohibited, restricted, or recalled products. Click on the inactive status link to see what actions you need to take to relist.
- Inactive (Potential High Pricing Error). This error is as it sounds—when Amazon’s automated systems detect your pricing may have been set too high by error (adding an extra zero, for example). To fix this, set the correct price, and it should be resolved.
c. Incomplete
Here’s what Amazon has to say:
Incomplete listings are listings that have been submitted but were not accepted into the Amazon catalog and require additional actions to complete. Incomplete listings will not appear inside ‘Manage Inventory’ on Seller Central or on the Amazon retail website for Customers until they meet Amazon standards for new listings.
If your listing shows an Incomplete status, open up the listing again and check for any key details missing such as title, images, sizes, safety warnings, and so on.
Once these have been added your listing should move to active status.
d. Detail Page Removed
This usually occurs when you use words in your product listing that get flagged by Amazon’s systems.
These can include words that suggest a product should have certain approvals before listing.
I once listed a shampoo product and included keywords related to its anti-itching features only to get the detail page removed under Amazon’s pesticides policy.
Study your listing for any content that may be against Amazon’s terms of service. Once removed, your issue should be fixed.
Another reason your listing may get deactivated is due to a high level of negative customer feedback—referred to as a negative customer experience (NCX) on Amazon.
If customers are leaving negative reviews or comments with returns to a product, it can push your NCX rate too high, leaving you with a ‘Poor’ or ‘Very Poor’ Customer Experience (CX) rating.
If it remains poor or very poor for too long, Amazon may delist your product and ask you to take action to improve things. In the first instance, you’ll be able to simply acknowledge the issue and relist immediately.
However, if the issues persist you may need to create an action plan. So it’s always best to fix the issues customers are complaining about.
e. Search Suppressed
Finally, Amazon may have suppressed your listing for quality reasons.
The most common reason for this is that your product doesn’t have any images uploaded, or the images that have been uploaded don’t meet quality guidelines.
This would include things like your main image not being on a white background or including text and graphics on top of the image.
Backgrounds, graphics, and text are fine on other images, but Amazon’s policies state your main image should be on a white background and show only the image itself.
You will come across other sellers getting away with non-compliant main images. Unfortunately, the rules aren’t always enforced consistently.
3. Account health
If listing status isn’t your issue, it might be a wider account health issue.
A persistent negative customer experience can result in a low seller rating and even suspension of your account.
It’s unlikely that your account has been suspended without you realizing it.
So if you’ve checked all the other steps and you don’t appear to have any account-level notifications, it’s best to contact Seller Support and ask if there are any issues on your account you’ve not been made aware of.
Your Amazon seller account is crucial to your success, so work hard to create the best products you can, the most accurate product listings, and provide excellent customer service to ensure your account health stays in tip-top condition.
4. Keyword ranking
The most common reason sellers can’t find their product listing in search results is because it is not yet ranking for relevant keywords.
So, once you’ve checked the first three potential causes and confirmed there aren’t issues, the next step is to search for your product on Amazon using its ASIN:
If your product shows up in search results when searching with its ASIN but not when you use relevant keywords, you’ve found the root of the issue.
It means your listing is in the Amazon ‘index’ and purchasable, but its not yet ranking organically for keywords.
New product listings take time to appear in search results and, in a highly competitive market, won’t appear anywhere near page one—where most sales happen.
As such, you need to be proactive about ranking your products on Amazon.
First, make sure the keywords you want to rank for appear somewhere in one or more of the listing’s:
- Title
- Bullet points
- Description
- Backend search terms
Then, begin to drive targeted traffic to your listing to get those first few sales. You can do this by:
- Launching Amazon PPC campaigns targeting relevant keywords
- Driving external traffic to your Amazon listing
- Promoting your product to your existing brand audience (for example, via email or social media)
As you start to see sales come in, you should see organic ranking established and sales start to build up.
If your listing still doesn’t show up when using its ASIN, there is likely a unique or technical error. In this instance, your best option is to contact Amazon seller support for help with the issue.
Hi, I have newly listed the two varients in single parent and we scheduled it with launch date. Now lauch date was crossed but still its not showing in search result, but once I tried using with ASIN and full tittle, it shown and says faster delivery in two days. But after a day its not even showing with full tilte and ASIN, but it can be redirect and showing with seller central listed link and saying only expected delivery date in 15 days ofdate and no faster delivery option.
My question are:
1. Why it not showing in search result with keywords and even with ASIN after even shown one time for me?
2. WHy this delvery date was changed? we didn’t get any orders and no chenge in the inventory.
Hi Suresh, the most likely reason behind your two questions:
1. Often you need to register a sale to start getting some visibility. Didn’t always used to be the way but often is now. You’ll need to send external traffic or turn on some PPC campaigns to get a sale or two and then it should come up when you search the full title.
2. Probably because they are moving inventory between warehouses, it should go back to normal soon.
Hi,
My product is showing for the sponsored rank but not organic. i have checked all pages and its not showing up anywhere organically only the sponsored ad is coming up. we have 11 reviews and are selling 20 units a day just by ppc. we launched product 2 months ago and at that time we were showing up organically as well but then we went out of stock and now we are back in stock and product is only showing up with sponsored icon but not organically. can anyone help?
Hi Ali, sorry to hear that. It sounds like your organic rank position has dropped. Are you tracking your keywords? I’d use something like Helium 10 to do this, here’s a guide on using the keyword tracker tool. It will help you understand what ranking changes are taking place, then you can try to pinpoint any changes you’ve made to your listing at a similar time that might have influenced the changes.
Hello,
I am Amazon Seller. I sent my stock to a new market place,my stock is available but it is not showing up in seller central , it’s marked as ” inactive out of stock”. Amazon suggested that I delete then create again the offer but nothing works. Can you please help? Thanks
Hi Nadia, I’ve never seen a product be both available and inactive (out of stock) at the same time. It’s common for products to get listed as reserved or unfulfillable – have the units moved over to one of these statuses perhaps?
HI, I can’t get my products listed on Amazon. It won’t get visible, I tried contacting and schedule a call with them but it was impossible to date. Please help!!
Hi Chiara, when you create the listing, what status does the listing have? Inactive (Out Of Stock)?
Hello, Selling on Amazon in India since 2021 (All Good, Product shows on first page when search brand name), and went globally in 2023 but when I search my brand name only on Amazon (US) then why it not shows my a single product. I have listed 60+ (Variations, total sky: 1000+) products but not a single product shows. Listings are in good condition. Can you please help?
Hi Mohd, congrats on the global expansion. Have you made any sales in the US yet. Sometimes you need to make a sale or two in order for the listing to start showing up in search results, even for brand names.
I am a long-time seller on Amazon Marketplace, but due to a death in the family the account has been inactive for over 1 year. I have recently re-activated the account, corrected all pricing errors, corrected all suppressed items, all items show active, but they are not showing up when I do an online search. An answer you gave to a previous seller with same problem, was you need to have more sales. But how can you sell anything when your items don’t show up?
Hi Kathy. Sorry to hear that. There are millions of products being sold on Amazon, and only so many spaces on the first page of search results. Amazon promotes the listings that it believes will generate revenue, so if you want to be pushed up to page one you have to show Amazon your product can generate sales. This is where you have to first pro-actively generate sales by using strategies like Amazon PPC or sending the direct link to your listings or store out to your audience, then as sales come in you will start to see organic ranking.
Never had issues before in finding products now it appears they maybe some issue with the search results that favour Amazon own products ? Also prime products appear more than seller fulfilled orders. Download the app search any product not many thirdparty sellers will appear in the results.
Yes, it does feel like Amazon give their products prominence at times but it’s not overwhelming thankfully. Prime products will naturally appear higher because they convert better due to Prime members’ preferences. But many Prime products are sold by third-party sellers too.
Hello
We have had 2 ASINs from the same company become inactive one after the other.
We have sold these before and sold some units right up until it went inactive. The stock is still available if i click into on seller central bur obviously the listing is inactive. You cant find it atall. There is no way this product has stopped being manufactured.
Hi Thomas, if on your Inventory page the stock is listed in the available column the only reason the listing would be inactive is usually that it has been closed by the seller. It could however be down to an IP claim if you are selling another brand’s products. If the inventory is listed as ‘unfulfillable’ it may be due to inventory being damaged or recalled.
Hello!
Well I am new to this online selling. I decide to go with Amazon but my Amazon product listing is not showing on amazon search, I dont see my products. My seller account says they are active. I just pushed them from Gearbubble. Is there any step I am missing?
Jose
Hi Jose. Congrats on getting set up with your business! If you can’t find your products using keywords associated with them, it may be that they either aren’t ranking high enough in the search results. To get them ranked higher you need to make some sales. I would suggest running some Amazon PPC campaigns or promoting your products on other channels to get those initial sales which will give you a boost in organic visibility.