Updated AEG Team
Protecting Your Amazon Brand: Unauthorized Sellers, the Featured Offer, and Weekly Checks
A brand gets into trouble on Amazon in two different ways. Someone else sells the product without permission, or the brand’s own offer stops being the one Amazon features. The fixes are related. They are not the same project.
AEG’s job, when we run a marketplace for a partner, is to keep the offer and the name pointing at the same company. The rules below are Amazon’s, as published through October 2026.
The Featured Offer is not a prize you win with a hack
Amazon used to call the primary offer the Buy Box. The public explanation now calls it the Featured Offer: the Offer Display, with Add to Cart and Buy Now. Amazon’s own article, How the Buy Box (Featured Offer) works, says the selection uses price, including shipping, delivery speed and certainty, whether the item is in stock, and the seller’s order experience. Fulfilled by Merchant offers can be featured. Fulfillment by Amazon is not a requirement.
The Offer Display can hold more than one featured offer. If no offer is eligible, Amazon can show “See options” instead. The article lists out-of-stock, a price that is too high, and a price that is too low among the reasons. A price that is too low is a real failure mode for a brand that is trying to look premium and instead looks broken. The weekly inputs are in the Featured Offer essay.
In a Seller Central discussion in July 2026, Amazon said it was removing a separate seller-eligibility gate worldwide, with the rollout running through the end of 2026. The ranking criteria themselves were unchanged. Being considered is not the same as being featured. The primary post is the Seller Central announcement. Treat secondary blogs that restate it as commentary, not as the rule.
We will not quote a percentage of sales that “go through the Buy Box.” Amazon has described, in some markets, that customers who compare offers often choose the featured one. That is not a global win-rate, and it is not a forecast for your ASIN.
What to operate, every week
The featured offer is an output. The inputs you can actually manage:
- Price, including shipping. If you fulfill the order yourself, a high shipping price is part of the price Amazon is comparing. If you use FBA, the fulfillment promise is Amazon’s, and your item price has to carry the fee.
- In-stock rate. A hero ASIN that stocks out hands the page to whoever still has a unit, or to nobody.
- Delivery promise. Seller-fulfilled offers need a ship time you can meet. A promise you miss shows up in the order experience that the featured-offer logic already uses.
- Account health. Late shipments, cancellations, and a high order-defect rate are not a separate “brand” problem. They are how you become ineligible to be the offer, under whatever gate is still in force while the 2026 change rolls out.
Check the featured offer on your own ASINs the way a customer sees them, in a browser that is not logged into your seller account. Your view is not the country’s view.
Other sellers
Unauthorized sellers are a catalog problem and sometimes a legal problem. Work in this order.
Be the owner in Brand Registry. Without it, you are asking Amazon to take your word. The requirements are in the Brand Registry essay.
Report the right violation. A seller offering genuine goods you already sold into the market is not the same as a seller using your trademark on a counterfeit, or copying your images. Amazon’s report flows ask which is which. Filing the wrong one wastes the case and can create a counter-notice you then have to answer.
Transparency and serialization are Amazon programs for units that need a code traced to the brand. They are worth it when counterfeit goods are a real problem. They are overhead when they are not, and they do not remove a seller of genuine coded units. What enrollment actually requires is the Transparency essay. We do not quote an adoption statistic.
Price control is a distribution choice. If you sell to anyone who will buy a case, some of those cases will appear on Amazon under another seller’s name. A tighter wholesale agreement, a selective retailer list, and a price architecture you stick to will do more than a monthly report. The wholesale essay is that decision.
Images, copy, and the listing you mean to defend
You cannot defend a listing you do not control. If a previous distributor created the ASIN, you may be contributing an offer to their content. Registry’s catalog tools are how the owner proposes the title, bullets, and images. Contribute content that matches the product in the customer’s hands. A lifestyle image in the main slot, or a claim the product cannot support, gives Amazon a reason to suppress the page. Suppression is a protection failure even when no one else is selling.
Reviews sit next to this. You may ask customers for a review in a neutral way. You may not pay for one, discount for one, or ask for a change to a review that already exists. The rules are in the reviews essay and in Amazon’s community guidelines.
A simple weekly check
| Check | What “bad” looks like |
|---|---|
| Featured offer | Another seller, or “See options,” on a hero ASIN |
| Price | Your offer is featured only because it dropped below the floor you set |
| Stock | Less than the cover you planned, or inbound not yet received |
| Content | Title, main image, or a bullet changed without your edit |
| Cases | An open infringement or authenticity complaint with no owner assigned |
| Account health | Any metric near the threshold published in your Account Health dashboard |
That table is an operating list, not a ranking formula. Amazon does not publish the weights inside the featured-offer selection. Anyone who claims to know the exact weights is guessing.
Book a strategy call
If the US page already exists and it is no longer yours in practice, send a brief or Book a strategy call.