Every once in a while, we get a call from someone looking for help with their Amazon Vendor Central account. Now, we are Amazon content experts, but even we can’t penetrate the magic curtain of Amazon’s retail platform to do troubleshooting (nor do we really want to).
We figured these calls were the result of our occasional well-performing blog posts about Amazon. Like this one about choosing between Vendor Central and Seller Central. Or the updates we provide when Amazon changes something about how vendors can input product information.
But one day, we discovered there was another reason: Google had determined content26 was, in fact, the help service for Amazon Vendor Central and provides our contact info in the Knowledge Graph. Thanks, semantic search!
This is amusing for many reasons. Amazon, as anyone on the LinkedIn Vendor Central group or even just anyone selling on Amazon can attest, is famously not helpful to the companies using its retail platform. And while many vendor rep firms have sprouted and withered in Amazon’s shadow, we were never one of them.
Here is an incomplete list of things we don’t do for companies selling on Amazon, even our existing clients:
- Upload videos to product pages
- Manage VC accounts or payment
- New item setup
- Affect 3rd parties selling branded products of our clients
Our history, however, does feature Amazon heavily. When content26 started, we produced content solely for Amazon product pages. Over time, that relationship changed until we reached the breakup point in December 2013. And while we’ve continued to stay in the know and to consult on Amazon product pages, the window in which we could pass for an Amazon rep firm is firmly painted shut.
The Takeaway
Google isn’t always right. Despite its intentions, the search engine does not know all and does sometimes make mistakes. (Though perhaps this wasn’t a mistake, as Google identified us as Amazon experts. Certainly a success in relevancy in search.)
Unlike mistakes that happen during algorithm changes and result in undeserved penalties, this error is harmless to our business presence, easy to correct, and more amusing than anything else.
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