Navigating Amazon's Word Restrictions

There are three separate problems that get filed under "restricted words", and confusing them is how sellers end up either terrified of their own copy or suspended by it.

1. Words that are prohibited and can get a listing suppressed or removed.
2. Words that trigger a compliance requirement you may not have met.
3. Words that are simply wasted — allowed, but doing no work in a field that is now brutally short.

The third one changed enormously in 2026.

First: the field got much smaller

Since 27 July 2026, product titles are capped at 75 characters including spaces, in every category except Media. Item highlights — a separate, searchable field — carries up to 125 more.

Before that, a title could run to 150 or 200 characters and absorb a lot of sloppiness. It cannot now. Every wasted word is a meaningful fraction of the space you have.

Two mechanical rules matter here, and both are Amazon's own:

• No word more than twice, excluding articles, prepositions and conjunctions. Repetition was never a ranking tactic that worked; now it is also a policy problem and a waste of a field you cannot afford to waste.
• No special characters such as !, $ or ?, except where they form part of a brand name.

Amazon has said it will move non-compliant titles to its own generated versions, with a review window for brand owners before the change applies. If you would rather choose your own 75 characters than have them chosen for you, this is the deadline that matters.

Second: claims that carry a legal tail

These are the ones that get people into real trouble, because the word is not banned — it commits you to something.

Environmental claims. "Eco-friendly", "biodegradable", "compostable", "non-toxic", "sustainable". In several jurisdictions these are regulated claims requiring substantiation, and Amazon may require certification. Vague green language is both a compliance risk and, increasingly, a trust problem with buyers who have learned to discount it.

Pesticide and antimicrobial language. "Antibacterial", "antimicrobial", "kills germs", "insect repellent", "mould-resistant". These can pull a product into pesticide regulation, which carries registration requirements. This catches out sellers of ordinary homeware constantly — a chopping board described as antibacterial is a different regulatory object from a chopping board.

Health and medical claims. "Cures", "treats", "prevents", "FDA approved", "clinically proven". Unless you have the documentation, these are not marketing language, they are a liability.

Safety claims. "Childproof", "non-slip", "flame retardant", "unbreakable". Each implies a standard. If a buyer is injured, "unbreakable" is the word that gets quoted.

Third: words that waste space

Now that you have 75 characters, this category is worth more than it used to be. The usual offenders:

• "Premium", "high quality", "best", "amazing". Nobody searches for them and nobody believes them. Promotional language is also restricted in titles.
• Your own brand, twice. It appears once. That is enough.
• The category, spelled three ways. "Water Bottle Flask Tumbler" reads as keyword stuffing to a human and gives you very little that "Water Bottle" did not.
• Price and condition claims. "Sale", "free shipping", "cheapest" — restricted in titles, and they change without the title changing.

A practical way to check

Read your title out loud as if you were describing the product to someone in a shop. Anything you would not say aloud — the repeated nouns, the adjectives, the exclamation marks — is not helping.

Then count the characters. If you are over 75, the question is not what to trim, it is which 75 characters decide the sale. Usually that is: brand, what it is, the one number that matters, and the one thing that differentiates it. Everything else belongs in item highlights or the bullets.

We built a checker for exactly this on the listing SEO page — paste a title in and it shows you where the cut lands and which words you have used more than twice. It runs in your browser and sends nothing anywhere.

The rule underneath all of it

Say what the product is and what it does, in words you could defend. Restricted-word problems are almost always overstatement problems wearing a compliance costume — and overstatement causes returns even when nobody enforces anything.