Overview

Amazon provides sellers with a variety of keyword attributes that play a critical role in how products are discovered by shoppers. These attributes feed directly into Amazon's search engine and browse navigation system, making them essential tools for product visibility. Understanding which keyword fields to use — and which ones to skip — can save sellers time and improve listing performance.

Key Points / What Sellers Need to Know

• Several keyword attributes are being phased out — The fields specific_uses_keywords, thesaurus_attribute_keywords, and target_audience_keywords are primarily used in the U.S. market and are actively being deprecated. Sellers do not need to invest time populating these fields.
• Platinum keywords are completely redundant — Once used for platinum seller storefronts, the platinum_keywords attribute no longer serves any purpose and can be ignored entirely.
• Generic keywords have a strict byte limit — The generic_keywords field must be under 250 bytes. If this limit is exceeded, Amazon ignores the entire attribute, meaning none of your keywords will be indexed.
• Other keyword fields handle limits differently — For most keyword attributes other than generic_keywords, Amazon indexes content up to the character limit and simply ignores anything beyond it, rather than discarding the field entirely.
• Free text must match valid values in some fields — While generic_keywords and subject_keywords accept free text, many other keyword fields require values that correspond to entries in Amazon's Browse Tree Guides (BTGs).

How Amazon Uses Keyword Data

Amazon relies on keyword attributes to serve two primary functions: generating search results and assigning products to browse navigation categories. When a customer types a search query, Amazon references your keyword data to determine whether your product is relevant. Additionally, keyword values are used in browse assignment queries that automatically place products into the correct category nodes. For instance, a product with a style_keywords value of "sport-sandals" would be automatically assigned to the corresponding footwear browse node. This means accurate keyword data does not just help with search — it also determines where your product appears when customers browse by category.