Are SKUs and Keywords Case Sensitive on Amazon SC?

Amazon Expert

Hi I’m Steven, Founder of My Amazon Guy, a 500+ person Amazon Seller Central agency out of Atlanta, GA. We Growth Hack eCommerce and Marketplaces through PPC, SEO, Design, and Catalog Management.

Did you know that on Amazon Seller Central SKUs are case sensitive? By forgetting or unknowingly using lowercase as part or all of your SKU, it could result in many data problems. Steven Pope, the founder of My Amazon Guy, has helped hundreds of clients list and sell thousands of products on Amazon over many years.

In that time, there’s never been an issue with a SKU in all caps, whereas several bugs have occurred with non-proper case variants. It goes without saying, then, that using all capital letters whenever you’re creating a SKU is highly advisable.

MAG TIP – SKU Naming Convention System
The other highly recommended process is coming up with a SKU naming convention. In other words, if you have a product – hot tamales candy, for example – you can tell immediately what the product is and logistically assist your warehouse with shipping and packing orders.

You may want to put the ounce quantity into the SKU and four digits for the UPC. In that case, you could begin with “HT,” which stands for “hot tamale,” followed by four numbers for the UPC, “1234” (as an example), and lastly, the size or weight, “140Z”. It would then read, “HT1234140OZ.”

That way, if you ever create multiple SKUs of different sizes – 28 or 55 ounces, for instance – you can quickly tell the difference between products because of the standard naming convention. This method allows you to scale all of your product data and simplify your life.

Are Those Pesky Keywords Case Sensitive?
On Amazon, the quick answer is no.

Suppose you’re curious why. Amazon doesn’t read the capitalization as part of the search term algorithm. So the case of those phrases that you see in the Key Product Features, the Product Description, or even the Search Terms in the Keywords Field doesn’t matter.

Even if you enter capital letters into the search box, you’ll notice that all suggestions will remain in lowercase. “Christmas Gifts,” for example, will show up as “christmas gifts.”

Increased Indexing
However, when it comes to increased indexing, you need to have an exact match of the phrase. That is especially noteworthy.