Close Listing vs. Delete Listing on Amazon: What's the Difference?

Every Amazon seller will eventually have to stop selling a product that was previously part of their catalog. Maybe there's a quality issue, maybe your supplier no longer carries the product, or competition and rising fees make it unprofitable. Regardless, you might be wondering whether to close the listing in Amazon Seller Central or delete it. What's the difference, and what are the pros and cons of both?

Closing an Amazon Listing

To close an Amazon listing, just go to the Manage Inventory page, click the drop-down to the right of the product, and choose "Close Listing."

Closing the listing removes your offer from the product's detail page and stops buyers from purchasing it from you.

However, the listing will stay on your Manage Inventory page, and you can easily start selling the product again anytime by clicking the "Relist" button next to it.

Meanwhile, you can filter out closed listings by using the radio buttons at the top of your Manage Inventory grid to choose only active listings.

Deleting an Amazon Listing

To delete an Amazon listing, go to Manage Inventory and click the drop-down to the right of the product, then choose "Delete product and listing." Or, you can delete many listings at once by using the Inventory Loader and putting "x" in the add-delete column.

Deleting the listing not only removes your offer from the product's detail page and stops buyers from purchasing it from you, it also permanently removes the product from your Manage Inventory page.

When you choose "Delete product and listing," Amazon provides a warning message, telling you that this SKU will be permanently removed from your catalog along with any variations of it.

In other words, if you ever wanted to sell this product again, you would have to start over with creating the listing or matching with an existing ASIN and adding all your offer details.

When Should I Close a Listing?

While there's no hard-and-fast requirement to close listings, there are some rules of thumb, based on what experienced sellers and Amazon representatives share on the Seller Forums.

You should probably close listings that:

• Have no inventory and will not be replenished within a few weeks. This can help avoid "ghost orders" (orders that somehow get placed even though you have no inventory with which to fulfill them). Some sellers experience occasional glitches or human errors that cause inventory numbers to be changed from zero, which would allow buyers to purchase the product from you again if the listing is active.
• Are out of season and will not sell well for a while. Closing these may help protect their best seller rank for the next season.

When Should I Delete a Listing?

Again, there's no Amazon policy on this and no perfect right or wrong answer. But the basic rule of thumb is to delete listings that you do not plan to sell again in the future. You can always change your mind and create the listing again if you really want to, but if you have no plans to sell the product again anytime soon, it may be safer to delete it.

Some possible benefits to deleting listings are:

• Avoiding copyright infringement appeals. According to a moderator on the Seller Forums, if the listing is still in your catalog, even if you have no inventory, and the brand owner submits a copyright or trademark complaint, you (and all other sellers who have the item in their catalog) will be notified of the complaint and need to address it. You can appeal the complaint by showing proof that you haven't actually sold the item recently, but it's better to avoid receiving the complaint to begin with by removing the item from your catalog entirely.
• Cleaner Manage Inventory page. It might be easier not to have to filter out so many inactive/closed listings on your Manage Inventory page.
• Lower chances of errors. Suppose you are making changes to your inventory, especially via the Inventory Loader or by selecting multiple SKUs on the Manage Inventory page. In that case, it's easy to make mistakes, such as reactivating an out-of-stock product by adding units to it. Deleting the SKU completely from your catalog makes it less likely you or your staff will make these mistakes.

Why Was My Listing Made Inactive or Deleted?

Sometimes, sellers find out that one of their listings is inactive and can't be purchased, or is even deleted, without their knowledge. This can happen for a few different reasons.

An inactive listing is often the result of the product going out of stock. Amazon will mark it as inactive, and the solution is simple: replenish your inventory to keep selling.

Also, Amazon may make a listing inactive if they find that something in the images or listing details violates their guidelines. You can go to the Fix Your Products page to see all inactive listings, why they are inactive, and the recommended next step to get them active again.

If your listing was unexpectedly deleted, it could be that you or one of your employees deleted it by mistake, possibly when uploading an inventory file. If this happens, unfortunately, the only solution is to re-create the listing.

Or, a listing might be deleted if Amazon believes it's a duplicate of another listing and merges them. If this happens in error, open a support case explaining clearly that the products are not duplicates and providing as much proof of the differences as possible, such as photos, UPCs/GTINs, or other details provided by the manufacturer.

Most importantly, monitor your catalog for unexpected deactivations and deletions so that you can resolve these issues quickly and get back to making sales. Try a tool like SellerPulse by eComEngine that monitors your Amazon listings' statuses and other issues like Buy Box suppression, unexpected dimension and weight changes, low-inventory-level fees, and more to protect your sales rank and profits.