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Amazon Cut Product Titles to 75 Characters: A Small Checker That Finds Every Problem

#javascript #ecommerce #webdev #tutorial

On 27 July 2026 Amazon started limiting product titles to 75 characters including spaces in every category except media (books, music, video and software keep 200). Titles over the limit get shortened by Amazon itself, which means sellers lose control of the words shoppers see. A new 125-character "item highlights" field takes the details that no longer fit.

Rewriting thousands of titles by hand is error-prone, so we built a checker. Here are the rules it encodes and the bits of code that do the work.

The rules worth automating

  1. Length: at most 75 characters (200 for media). Count code points, not bytes.
  2. Banned characters: ! $ ? _ { } ^ ¬ ¦ unless they are part of the brand name.
  3. No word more than twice, ignoring small words such as "and", "for", "with".
  4. No promotional wording: "free shipping", "best seller", "hot sale", "100% guaranteed"…
  5. Backend search terms must stay under 250 bytes. If they reach 250, Amazon ignores the whole field.

Counting characters and bytes correctly 

const chars = s => [...s].length;                       // code points, so emoji count as 1
const bytes = s => new TextEncoder().encode(s).length;  // UTF-8 bytes for search terms
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"é".length is 1 but it takes 2 bytes; Arabic letters take 2 and many Asian scripts 3. That difference is exactly why search terms are measured in bytes.

Finding repeated words 

const SMALL = new Set('a an and or for the with in on of to by at from'.split(' '));
function repeated(title, brand = '') {
  const skip = new Set(brand.toLowerCase().split(/\s+/));
  const count = {};
  for (const w of title.toLowerCase().match(/[\p{L}\p{N}]+/gu) || []) {
    if (!SMALL.has(w) && !skip.has(w)) count[w] = (count[w] || 0) + 1;
  }
  return Object.keys(count).filter(w => count[w] > 2);
}

repeated('Zentro Power Bank 20000mAh Power Bank USB C Power Bank', 'Zentro');
// → ['power', 'bank']
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Promotional wording and banned characters 

const PROMO = /\b(free shipping|best ?seller|hot sale|on sale|cheap(est)?|limited time|top rated|guaranteed)\b|#1\b/gi;
const BANNED = /[!$?_{}^¬¦]/g;
const promo = [...new Set(title.match(PROMO) || [])];
const banned = [...new Set(title.match(BANNED) || [])];
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A real before and after

Zentro Stainless Steel Water Bottle 750ml Insulated BPA Free Leak Proof Lid for Gym Travel Office Kids Adults Keeps Cold 24 Hours Black (135 characters)

Zentro Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle, 750 ml, Leak-Proof, Black (72 characters)

The words that were cut are not lost: "BPA free", "gym", "travel" and "keeps cold 24 hours" go into item highlights and bullets, and the rest into backend search terms (under 249 bytes, no repeats of title words).

Try it

The full checker, with bullets, description and search-term byte counts, is free here: Amazon character counter. There is also a longer guide on rewriting titles for the 75-character limit and a set of free Amazon seller tools (FBA profit, BSR estimate, keyword gaps).

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