INSIDE THIS ISSUE
News from the Seller Community
The latest must-know info on Policy & Tactics, AI, plus Review news from the world of eCommerce.
From the eCom Growth Show Podcast
In this episode we discuss what Amazon sellers need to know before expanding into Walmart and other sales channels.
Upcoming eCom Events
What not to miss, plus what’s coming next.
Black Hat Watch
Wrong actions lead to bad results. In this week’s Watch we point out a tactic you may be tempted to fudge, but that can get you banned.
From Our Sponsor: eCom Triage
Negative reviews kill your listings and your Amazon rating. One more bad review can cost you tens of thousands in lost sales.
- Conversion drops
- Ads get pricier
- Ranking slides
- Competitors steal market share
We get rid of the reviews that shouldn’t be there.
Our 4-step process:
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eCom Triage removes negative reviews from your ASINs.
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News from the Seller Community
Policy & Tactics
Something to keep an eye on:
Riverbend Consulting reports Amazon has rolled out a new AI system that scans listings for defects and flags violations, with dormant/inactive listings taking the brunt of new flags in their clients’ accounts.
So far this is single-source only (only Riverbend has reported it so far), but if accurate it means catalog hygiene on old, unused listings matters more than it did last month.
Worth a proactive audit of anything sitting dormant in your catalog to make sure they’re up to snuff.
Hint: Our Catalog Defender is meant to do exactly this.
AI
Spend some time thinking like a robot.
Industry analysis has highlighted that traffic from AI referral sources to retail sites jumped nearly 400% year-over-year.
That’s right. Four times more traffic is coming from AI referral than it was this time last year.
I myself have been experiencing this.
The thing I want to draw to your attention, however, is this: Reports warn that a large percentage of retail product pages remain poorly optimized for machine readability by AI shopping agents.
Good news: You can fix this, and start taking advantage of this new traffic. Optimize your listings for the answer engines that will continue to send people to the places that answer their questions and provide what they’re searching for.
Reviews
I keep seeing the same mistake: sellers throwing review-removal budget at a product that’s actually just broken.
One brand I worked with this week had a faulty pump driving returns through the roof, and Amazon’s own advice was to delist, not fight the reviews.
A bit of common sense:
Attempting to clean up reviews on a product that keeps failing customers is like repainting a car with a cracked engine block. It looks better for about a week, but the bad reviews will just keep coming.
Fix the product first.
The good reviews will follow.
From the eCom Growth Show Podcast
Episode #85
Beyond Amazon: How to Win on Walmart & Scale Multichannel
In this episode of The eCom Growth Show, Danan Coleman talks with longtime Walmart marketplace expert Michal Chapnick about what Amazon sellers need to know before expanding into Walmart and other sales channels.
Michal explains why simply copying your Amazon strategy rarely works, how Walmart evaluates listings, where sellers can find Walmart-specific keyword data, and why the marketplace still offers significant opportunities in categories with relatively little competition. She also shares practical ways brands can reduce the operational burden of going multichannel using automation and software like Crazy Vendor.
Click the Play button above to watch.
For our full selection of episodes click here 👇
Upcoming eCom Events
Let’s Grow! 2026 Walmart Marketplace Seller Summit (Sep 1-3)
Learn practical ways to reach more customers, explore tools built with sellers in mind, and connect with Marketplace associates and fellow sellers across the Marketplace community.
Top Dog Summit (Sep 8-10)
An exclusive, hands-on event for seven-figure Amazon sellers and ecommerce operators.
Saudi International Digital Marketing & E-Commerce Expo (Sep 13-15)
Discover business operations to keep pace with the future of e-commerce, and Saudi Arabia’s own Vision 2030 digital transformation initiatives.
Amazon Accelerate (Sep 22-24)
The largest Amazon Seller event in the US bringing sellers from all over the world. And I (Danan) will have the list of parties on the event listing soon!
For a full list of industry events visit Ecom.Events:
[ Ecom.Events ]
Black Hat Watch
The Ranking “Hack” That Can Get You Suspended
As with all things, there are varying degrees of “sinister” when it comes to black hats. You might consider that means there are shades of gray in those hats, but wrong is wrong, and the more you can do the right thing and stay away from the bad, the better off you’ll be.
The temptation to undermine the system can be strong.
What I’m Talking About
Somewhere in your inbox right now is a pitch promising to rocket your rankings with a search-find-buy campaign.
You should read it the way you’d read a used car ad with the odometer taped over.
Note: A search-find-buy (SFB) ranking campaign is an e-commerce marketing tactic where buyers are instructed to search for a specific keyword on a marketplace like Amazon, locate a designated product, and purchase it. The goal is to manipulate search algorithms into believing the purchase was entirely organic, pushing the product higher in search results for that keyword.
One seller this week described a run-in with a manipulation vendor that left a bruised account and a bad taste.
The Safer Bet
The better version making the rounds sends real shoppers from a Google or ChatGPT search to a keyword-embedded Amazon results page, so the click registers as a genuine external referral instead of an on-platform trick Amazon already knows how to catch.
It’s the difference between sneaking into a concert through a fence and buying a ticket at the box office: both get you inside, only one survives a security check.
What To Do
If you’re being pitched a ranking campaign this quarter, ask exactly how the traffic is generated before you ask what it costs.
If you can’t get a straight answer, move on.
And if you’re being hit with negative reviews, eCom Triage finds the invalid ones and removes them.
See how we can help.
