Amazon Listing Optimization: Titles, Images, Bullet Points and Keywords

Garlic press, garlic mincer, garlic peeler: the title in our example is packed. The brand is missing, and the buyer has to piece together what they are actually getting. A good Amazon listing makes this easier: the buyer finds the product in search and sees why it fits. Both jobs follow new rules in 2026.

Amazon now limits product titles to 75 characters in all categories except media. In Europe, Amazon announced the rule for July 27, 2026. On top of the title come up to 125 characters of item highlights, shown below the title. For titles that break the rule, Amazon writes its own suggestions. And Rufus, Amazon’s shopping assistant, answers customer questions with the information from your product detail page.

Using a garlic press from the invented brand KNOVELDA, we walk through the fields of a listing: what goes where, which rules apply and where to start? Each field also has its own article with the details.

What is an Amazon listing?

Every item in the Amazon catalog has its own product detail page, the listing. It holds the information you provide as a seller or manufacturer: title, images, bullet points, description, price and attributes. This is where the customer decides whether to buy.

The listing is your shop window on Amazon’s digital shelf. For the garlic press, the buyer may want to know whether it is dishwasher safe and how to clean the sieve insert. At the same time, Amazon needs the right words to match the product to a search query. That is why every Amazon SEO strategy starts with a well-maintained listing.

Above the fold and below the fold

A product detail page can be split into two areas: “above the fold” and “below the fold”. The upper area, visible right away, decides whether the customer keeps reading.

Above the fold, the customer sees:

• Title
• Item highlights directly below the title (in Europe since August 10, 2026)
• Main image and other images
• Bullet points (on desktop)
• Number of reviews and the average rating
• Variations
• Price

With these elements, the customer answers three questions almost without noticing:

• Is this really what I am looking for?
• Can I afford it, and do I want to pay this much?
• Were other buyers happy with the product?

Only when the answers are “yes” or at least “maybe” does the customer scroll down. Below the fold come:

• Product description (if there is no A+ content)
• A+ content
• Customer questions
• Reviews

Bullet points and item highlights are two different fields. Bullet points used to be called “highlights” quite often. Since 2026, that name belongs to a separate field with up to 125 characters.

What an Amazon listing consists of

3

KNOVELDA Garlic Press Stainless Steel, Dishwasher Safe, Silver, 18 cm

1

Presses unpeeled cloves, silicone peeler roll, long handles for little effort, fold-out sieve insert

2

Brand: KNOVELDA

4.5 312 ratings

$19.99 6

Color: Silver

4

Silver Black

About this item

5

• Press unpeeled cloves: the silicone peeler roll saves a step
• Dishwasher safe: put the press and the sieve insert straight into the basket
• Long handles: press even hard cloves with little force

Fold: above the fold on top, below the fold underneath

A+ content or product description

7

Customer questions

Customer reviews

8

1

Title

At most 75 characters including spaces, brand first. In force since 27 July 2026.

2

Item highlights

Up to 125 characters, phrases separated by commas. Shown under the title since 10 August 2026, searchable.

3

Images

Up to nine images. The main image shows the real product on a pure white background.

4

Variations

For example colors or sizes. You can upload a swatch image for each child SKU.

5

Bullet points

At least three, sellers up to five. Next to the image on desktop, far down the page on mobile.

6

Price

You control price and availability.

7

A+ / description

Below the fold. The product description shows when there is no A+ content.

8

Reviews

Not under your control: Amazon manages reviews and customer questions.

You control these elements yourself: title, item highlights, images, variations, bullet points, description or A+ content, search terms, attributes and the category (browse node), plus price and availability. Amazon manages reviews and customer questions. Amazon also shows ads and product recommendations on your page that lead customers to other products.

Between ads and product recommendations, your listing has to make the buying decision easier. Use every field you can shape yourself.

Checklist: all fields of an Amazon listing at a glance

The table shows how much room each field offers and whether Amazon uses it for search. After that, we go through the fields one by one.

Field	Limit	Used for search	Details
Title	max. 75 characters incl. spaces (except media)	yes	Title section
Item highlights	max. 125 characters	yes	Title section
Images	max. 9, Amazon recommends 6 images and 1 video	indirectly: without a compliant main image, the listing can be removed from search	Images section
Bullet points	min. 3, sellers up to 5, length depends on product type	yes	Bullet points section
Description	length depends on product type, no HTML	yes, but not necessarily all of it	Description section
Search terms	less than 250 bytes	yes	Search terms section
A+ content	Basic up to 5 modules, Premium up to 7 modules	no official statement from Amazon	A+ section
Attributes and browse node	complete, correct category	yes	Amazon search section

Optimizing titles and item highlights

The customer sees the main image and the title first. For the KNOVELDA press, they need to recognize at once: a stainless steel garlic press, dishwasher safe. This helps them place the product and gives Amazon words for search.

The 75-character rule

According to Amazon’s help page on product titles, a title may be no longer than 75 characters, including spaces. The rule applies to all product types except media and to all stores except Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. In Europe, Amazon announced it for July 27, 2026. Amazon’s reason: long titles get cut off on smartphones.

On top of that come the item highlights: up to 125 more characters, written as phrases separated by commas. Amazon shows them below the title, in search and on the product detail page (in Europe since August 10, 2026). Item highlights are searchable too. What used to fill a 200-character title is now split into 75 characters of title and 125 characters of item highlights.

Amazon’s title rules

• The brand comes first. If a product has no brand, write “generic”.
• Recommended order: brand, style, product type, feature, color, size or quantity, model number.
• These characters are not allowed: ! $ ? _ ^ ¬ ¦
• No word may appear more than twice, including the brand name. Articles and prepositions are exempt.
• The title of a parent product names no size and no color.
• No words in ALL CAPS.

According to Amazon’s help page on search optimization, titles that break the rules can be hidden from search until the quality issues are fixed.

What happens to old titles that are too long

Starting July 27, 2026, Amazon creates recommendations over the course of the year for listings whose titles do not comply (announced for Europe). The listings stay active and can still be edited. Brand owners get 14 days before Amazon changes a title.

According to Amazon’s help, you can see titles that break the guidelines under Manage All Inventory. When you add new products, Seller Central shows a notice about the new limit.

Brand owners review Amazon’s changes under Products › Manage Products, on the review tab. Amazon’s help still uses an older name for this page. We checked these menus in the German Seller Central only, so the English labels may differ.

According to Amazon, a title change takes 24 to 48 hours to show up.

Example: a title for the KNOVELDA garlic press

This is what a title looks like that just strings keywords together:

“Garlic Press, Garlic Mincer, 2 in 1 Professional Garlic Crusher and Peeler, Garlic Peeler, Stainless Steel Garlic Press for the Kitchen”

135 characters, no brand, the same terms over and over. The customer is looking for a garlic press and has to work through a word list.

This title reads better. It is still too long:

“KNOVELDA Stainless Steel Garlic Press with Peeler Roll, Dishwasher Safe, Silver” (79 characters)

Shorter, compliant and in Amazon’s order:

“KNOVELDA Garlic Press Stainless Steel, Dishwasher Safe, Silver, 18 cm” (69 characters)

The peeler roll is not lost when you shorten the title. It moves to the item highlights, together with the other benefits:

“Presses unpeeled cloves, silicone peeler roll, long handles for little effort, fold-out sieve insert” (100 characters)

Amazon also provides style guides for each category. The help page on style guides points to the inventory file templates, where you download the style guide for your category. All rules, examples and a prompt for titles are in our article on the Amazon product title.

Optimizing product images for Amazon

If two products look alike, the one with the better images often wins. Amazon allows up to nine images per product and recommends six images and one video.

The main image follows strict rules. It shows the real product on a pure white background, and the product fills 85% of the image. Text, logos, watermarks and badges are not allowed. Clothing may not be shown on a mannequin of any kind. Without a compliant main image, Amazon can remove the listing from search.

The other images give you more freedom. Show the fold-out sieve insert of the KNOVELDA press up close, add an image with dimensions and one of the press in use in the kitchen. The buyer then sees details, size and use. For each child SKU, you can upload a swatch image that shows the pattern or material.

Check the images on a smartphone too. In the app they appear much smaller, both in search results and on the product detail page. The garlic press should fill the frame instead of getting lost on a large white area.

Small or delicate products are often hard to photograph. Renderings can help here: the product is built as a 3D model on a computer. The quality varies a lot, so work with professionals.

All image rules, the image types in Seller and Vendor Central and ideas for more images are in our article on Amazon product images.

Writing bullet points

On desktop, the bullet points sit right next to the image. For many customers, reading stops here; they never read the description. Amazon reads along too and uses the words for search.

Amazon requires at least three bullet points, and sellers can add up to five. The character limit depends on the product type. Vendors check the number and the limit for their product type in Vendor Central.

Since 2024, fixed format rules apply:

• Each bullet point starts with a capital letter and is a sentence fragment with no punctuation at the end.
• Numbers from one to nine are written out, except in names, model numbers and measurements.
• The recommended form is “Heading: description”.
• Emojis, special characters such as ™ ® € …, claims such as “eco-friendly” or “antibacterial” and guarantees are not allowed.

Item highlights are limited to 125 characters and sit directly below the title. Bullet points are a separate field where you describe the product in more detail.

Start with the most important benefit and answer the most common customer questions. For the KNOVELDA press, the first bullet point could read: “Press unpeeled cloves: the silicone peeler roll saves a step”. In the mobile view, the bullet points appear far down the page. There, the title, item highlights and images carry the first impression.

In our experience, where a keyword sits inside the bullet points makes no difference for search. What matters is that it appears.

Rules, examples and a prompt are in our article on Amazon bullet points.

Product description and A+ content

Whoever scrolls down to the product description is already seriously interested in the product. Expand on the bullet points here: how do the long handles help with pressing, how does the sieve insert fold out? Combine facts with how the press is used in the kitchen.

Amazon does not allow HTML in the description. Line breaks are allowed only “in special cases”. The allowed length depends on the product type. Amazon uses the description for search, but possibly not all of it.

Spelling mistakes cost trust. So do negative words such as “tasteless” or vague promises such as “can meet almost any requirement”. The reader already knows the product name. Give them a reason to keep reading.

A+ content replaces the text description with modules of images, text and comparison tables. Basic A+ allows up to five modules from 14 layouts. Premium A+ allows up to seven modules from 19 layouts, plus videos and hotspots. Sellers with Amazon Brand Registry pay nothing for either. Vendors create A+ in the A+ Content Manager in Vendor Central, and for them Premium A+ is a paid subscription.

According to Amazon, Basic A+ increases sales by up to 8%, and well-made Premium A+ content by up to 20%. The figures come from Amazon’s internal data from 2022.

Using search terms (backend keywords) correctly

Search terms are invisible to customers but help Amazon find your product. Hence the name backend keywords. This is the place for synonyms, spelling variants and abbreviations that do not fit into the title and bullet points.

The most important rule: search terms must be less than 250 bytes. If you go over the limit, Amazon indexes none of the terms, not just the excess.

More rules from Amazon’s help:

• Spaces and punctuation do not count toward the limit.
• Separate terms with spaces. You do not need hyphens or other punctuation.
• Misspellings are not necessary.
• Singular or plural is enough.
• No repetitions, no brand names, no ASINs.
• No time-related words such as “new” and no subjective words such as “best”.

For the KNOVELDA press, the search terms could include “garlic crusher ginger press onion press”: terms customers search for that do not fit into the title.

Optimizing Amazon search: category, attributes and discoverability

For Amazon to find the garlic press, the words in the listing must match the search query. Amazon uses the search terms for lexical matching, that is, for comparing words. The right category, the browse node, matters just as much. Fill in the attributes completely too. For the KNOVELDA press, that means stainless steel as the material, silver as the color and the dimensions.

According to Amazon’s help page on search optimization, a product cannot be found in search if:

• it has no buyable offer,
• it has no browse node,
• it is suppressed because of listing quality issues,
• its launch date is in the future.

If you cannot find a product in search, Seller Central has a tool that determines why an ASIN is not discoverable. Changes take up to 72 hours to take effect in search. Amazon does not guarantee a specific position: it depends on location, customer account and device, among other things.

How Amazon finds and sorts products is explained in our article on the Amazon A9 algorithm.

Listings for Rufus and AI search

Is the press dishwasher safe, what is it made of? According to Amazon, Rufus answers product questions with the information on your product detail page. For Rufus’s product recommendations, Amazon uses the same matching and ranking logic as for search. Work on your listing therefore helps with Rufus too. In the US, the assistant has been called Alexa for Shopping since May 13, 2026.

Three things help:

• Name concrete use cases in the bullet points (“for ginger and garlic”).
• Fill in the attributes completely, so Rufus can answer questions about dimensions or material.
• Answer concrete customer questions in the text, for example about cleaning or pressing unpeeled cloves.

How Rufus works and how you can use it is covered in our Rufus guide.

Finding keywords: Amazon Suggest, Brand Analytics and Keyword Planner

Do customers search for a garlic press or a garlic crusher? Check the terms before you write the title, item highlights, bullet points and search terms. These sources help.

Amazon Suggest

Type a term into the Amazon search box. While you type, Amazon completes it with typical search queries. The suggestions show you which words customers use.

Brand Analytics and Search Query Performance

Brand owners with Brand Registry have access to Brand Analytics. There you see the most searched terms and which products get clicked for them. The Search Query Performance report shows how often customers see, click and buy your products for a search query.

Google Keyword Planner

The Google Keyword Planner suggests related terms and shows how often people search for them on Google. You need a Google Ads account to use it. The search volume applies to Google, not to Amazon.

Free tools

Our short-tail keyword research tool shows the most common Amazon search terms for a seed term. With the reverse ASIN check, you see which keywords a product is found for.

Testing listings with Manage Experiments

A new title, a different main image: whether the change works better, you check with Amazon’s Manage Experiments tool. More on A/B tests is in our article on Amazon A/B testing.

You find the tool under Products › Manage Experiments (in the old menu under Brands). When you create a new experiment, you can choose from six test types: A+ content, bullet points, product images, product title, A+ brand story and multiple attributes. According to Amazon’s help, experiments usually run 8 to 10 weeks.

Brand owners with Brand Registry can use it. The ASIN must belong to your brand and have had enough traffic recently. Amazon calculates the results every one to two weeks. For title and image tests, there is a “to significance” duration (beta): the test runs until the result is meaningful and can then end after as little as four weeks. If you change a title in your inventory, Amazon can automatically start a title experiment from it.

Here is how to proceed:

Prompt: creating a listing with ChatGPT, Claude and co.

With ChatGPT, Claude and other AI tools, you can create a first draft of your listing in minutes. The prompt below contains the 2026 rules. Check the result yourself. Stainless steel and the peeler roll are in the product data; an invented certificate does not belong in the listing. An AI can add features, certificates or promises your product does not have. The articles on titles, bullet points, descriptions and images each have their own, more detailed prompts.

You are an expert in Amazon listings on amazon.com. Create a listing from
the product data below, following these rules.

General
- Do not invent features, certificates, test results or promises.
  Use only what is in the product data. If something is missing, ask.
- No prices, promotions, guarantees, customer reviews, links or
  comparisons with competitors. No words like "best" or "bestseller".
- No words in ALL CAPS, no emojis.

Title
- At most 75 characters including spaces. Count them.
- Order: brand, style, product type, feature, color, size/quantity,
  model number.
- Characters not allowed: ! $ ? _ { } ^ ¬ ¦ (allowed: & / , . -)
- No word more than twice (articles and prepositions exempt).

Item highlights
- At most 125 characters, phrases separated by commas.
- Add to the title, do not repeat it.

Bullet points
- Five bullet points, each starting with a capital letter.
- Form "Heading: description", sentence fragment without a period at the end.
- Write out numbers from one to nine (except measurements and model numbers).
- No special characters such as ™ ® €, no claims such as "antibacterial"
  or "eco-friendly".

Description
- No HTML. Explain benefits and use, expand on the bullet points.

Search terms
- Less than 250 bytes (non-ASCII characters count double).
- Only terms that are not in the title or bullet points.
- Separated by spaces, no repetitions, no brands, no ASINs.

At the end, state the character count of the title and item highlights
and the byte count of the search terms.

Product data:
(Insert brand, product type, features, dimensions, material, target group
and important keywords here)

Checking and monitoring listings with the Listing Quality Index (LQI)

One garlic press, half an hour for the checklist. With 500 ASINs across several marketplaces, that turns into a project. When Amazon changes the rules, you go through the fields again.

The Listing Quality Index (LQI) in AMALYTIX Content Monitoring takes over this step. You set your own criteria, thresholds and points, adding up to exactly 100. You weight title, images, bullet points and A+ content, for example, according to your rules. Each product gets a score from 0 to 100, and you see which criterion is missing. This lets you compare the gaps across your whole catalog. Content Monitoring also shows changes to your listings, such as a title your team did not write.

You decide the rules and how much each one counts. The order of improvements is up to you too, for example by sales. You find suitable terms for titles and search terms with keyword research.

Conclusion

Start with the title and item highlights: the buyer should see what they are getting. Then come images, bullet points and search terms. Check each field against Amazon’s current rules, because several of them changed in 2026. Test bigger changes with Manage Experiments. After that, keep checking: Amazon and other sellers can change your content too.

Frequently asked questions about Amazon listing optimization

How long can an Amazon title be?

At most 75 characters including spaces, in all categories except media. In Europe, the rule applies since July 27, 2026. On top of that come up to 125 characters of item highlights, shown below the title.

What are item highlights?

A separate field with up to 125 characters, written as phrases separated by commas. Amazon shows item highlights below the title, in search and on the product detail page (in Europe since August 10, 2026). They are searchable. They have nothing to do with the bullet points.

How many bytes can search terms have?

Less than 250 bytes. If you go over the limit, Amazon indexes none of the terms. Spaces and punctuation do not count; characters such as umlauts count double.

Does A+ content count for Amazon search?

There is no official statement from Amazon on this. What is certain: A+ content can increase sales, according to Amazon by up to 8% (Basic) and up to 20% (well-made Premium A+).

How long does an A/B test with Manage Experiments take?

According to Amazon’s help, experiments usually run 8 to 10 weeks, and eight weeks are recommended. Amazon calculates the results every one to two weeks. For title and image tests, you can choose the “to significance” duration (beta). The test then runs until the result is meaningful, for at least four weeks.

Which factors influence Amazon rankings?

Amazon names price, availability, selection and sales history. Products with more sales generally appear higher. Then there are past customer actions, such as how often a product was bought, and product information such as title, price and description.

Is there a tool for Amazon listing optimization?

Amazon itself offers a tool in Seller Central that determines why an ASIN is not discoverable, and Manage Experiments for A/B tests. If you want to check many listings against your own rules, you can use the Listing Quality Index (LQI) in AMALYTIX.