The Amazon catalog features products sold by many sellers. To prevent the same product from appearing multiple times and diminishing the customer experience, Amazon uses product matching to find and eliminate duplicate listings.
Product matching helps you match your product to an existing listing. It then adds your offer information to that listing. If a product does not yet exist in the catalog, you can create a new product detail page.
Good product matching directly benefits you. When you match your product to an existing listing, you ensure that customers can find your offer.
When customers find a product, they see the product detail page, which includes the Featured Offer and, if there are multiple offers, More Buying Choices (outlined in red):
When multiple sellers are selling the same product, the customer can view a list of offers.
For more information on matching errors, go to Error 8541 and Error 8542.
Here are some possible errors that might occur when matching a product or creating a new product entry:
In this case, we cannot determine which entry should be matched to your product. Contact us about this error.
The product data, such as the manufacturer name and manufacturer part number, is not distinctive enough. For example, you submitted a manufacturer name and manufacturer part number that appears to match more than one product. Enter more specific information to find a match.
A product match was found, but you already have a different SKU associated with it. This can happen if you re-used a SKU previously associated with a different product. To fix this problem, delete the SKU and resubmit the product data.
If you submit a product, but you do not include the required fields for that product type, you will get an error message and the listing will not be added to the catalog. This ensures that wrongly classified or cataloged products do not appear on the live website. To resolve this problem, re-submit the product with all the required data.
Use a standard product identifier when submitting your products. The three top standards are ISBN, UPC, and JAN/EAN. This is the most important and reliable piece of data in the matching process.
It's a best practice to use a standard product identifier when submitting your products. The three top standards are ISBN, UPC, and EAN. This is the most important and reliable piece of data in the matching process.
The manufacturer part number is different from the SKU. The manufacturer part number is the standard by which manufacturers identify their products.
This data is almost always required to create a new product.
For example, product dimensions such as height, width, and weight should be specified in the Height, Width, and Weight attributes. Do not use general purpose merchandising fields for these values.
If you must change your SKU for a product, do not re-use or recycle old SKUs. Issue a new SKU for the item, and then re-assign the product to the new SKU.