Operator glossary
Keyword indexing
Whether Amazon has filed your listing as relevant for a term at all — the binary beneath ranking: unindexed means invisible at any rank, and index checks are the five-minute audit that explains 'we rank nowhere.'
Indexing is admission to the candidate set: for a given query, Amazon either considers your ASIN relevant (indexed — you exist somewhere in results) or not (invisible regardless of everything else). The classic check: search your-ASIN + term; appearing confirms indexing for that term.
Non-indexing has mundane causes — the term appears nowhere in your content, backend field over the byte limit (silently dropping the whole field), restricted-term filtering, or category mismatch making relevance implausible. Audit hero terms quarterly and after every content change: optimization work on an unindexed keyword is rank-polishing a listing that is not in the room.
The numbers
- Check: search 'ASIN + term' — appearing = indexed for the term; absent = invisible at any rank.
- Common causes of non-indexing: term absent from content, backend field over byte limit, restricted terms, category mismatch.
Related terms