Bullet Point Linter & Claim Screener

Marketplaces display a fixed number of bullets and silently drop the rest. The dropped ones are not merely unseen — they are also not indexed, so anything you put only in bullet six is invisible to search as well as to the buyer.

Fix: Merge the surplus into the earlier bullets, strongest first.

Source: Bullet count and length limits come from Amazon’s Seller Central style guides, which sit behind a login and differ by category — search Seller Central Help for "product detail page rules" and your category style guide. The defaults here (5 bullets, 500 characters each) are the widely applied general values, and both are configurable because the real limit is category-specific.

Unused bullets are unused indexed text. This is not an error, but on a competitive listing it is space a rival is using and you are not.

Source: Bullet count and length limits come from Amazon’s Seller Central style guides, which sit behind a login and differ by category — search Seller Central Help for "product detail page rules" and your category style guide. The defaults here (5 bullets, 500 characters each) are the widely applied general values, and both are configurable because the real limit is category-specific.

Over-length bullets are truncated or rejected at upload depending on the category. Truncation happens mid-word, and the cut text is often the part carrying the specification a buyer was looking for.

Fix: Lead with the specification, cut the marketing tail.

Source: Bullet count and length limits come from Amazon’s Seller Central style guides, which sit behind a login and differ by category — search Seller Central Help for "product detail page rules" and your category style guide. The defaults here (5 bullets, 500 characters each) are the widely applied general values, and both are configurable because the real limit is category-specific.

Mobile listings collapse bullets after roughly the first line and a half. A bullet whose point arrives at the end will not be read on the majority of traffic.

Fix: Put the fact in the first eight or so words.

Source: Bullet count and length limits come from Amazon’s Seller Central style guides, which sit behind a login and differ by category — search Seller Central Help for "product detail page rules" and your category style guide. The defaults here (5 bullets, 500 characters each) are the widely applied general values, and both are configurable because the real limit is category-specific.

Whole-capital text reads as shouting, is harder to scan, and is explicitly discouraged by every marketplace style guide. Capitalising the first word or an acronym is fine; capitalising the sentence is not.

Fix: Use sentence case, capitalising only the first word and proper nouns.

Source: Bullet count and length limits come from Amazon’s Seller Central style guides, which sit behind a login and differ by category — search Seller Central Help for "product detail page rules" and your category style guide. The defaults here (5 bullets, 500 characters each) are the widely applied general values, and both are configurable because the real limit is category-specific.

Bullets are plain-text fields. Tags are either stripped — leaving the text run together — or shown literally, so the buyer reads your markup.

Fix: Remove the tags; use separate bullets instead of line breaks.

Source: Bullet count and length limits come from Amazon’s Seller Central style guides, which sit behind a login and differ by category — search Seller Central Help for "product detail page rules" and your category style guide. The defaults here (5 bullets, 500 characters each) are the widely applied general values, and both are configurable because the real limit is category-specific.

Every marketplace forbids directing buyers off-platform. An email address, phone number or web address in a bullet is one of the few listing problems that gets a selling account suspended rather than the listing corrected.

Fix: Remove it entirely — there is no compliant way to include it.

Source: Bullet count and length limits come from Amazon’s Seller Central style guides, which sit behind a login and differ by category — search Seller Central Help for "product detail page rules" and your category style guide. The defaults here (5 bullets, 500 characters each) are the widely applied general values, and both are configurable because the real limit is category-specific.

Bullets describe the product, not the offer. Prices go stale, shipping terms vary by buyer, and promotional wording ("sale", "free shipping", "best price") is generally prohibited in the description fields because it cannot stay true.

Fix: Move it to the offer, where it belongs and stays current.

Source: Bullet count and length limits come from Amazon’s Seller Central style guides, which sit behind a login and differ by category — search Seller Central Help for "product detail page rules" and your category style guide. The defaults here (5 bullets, 500 characters each) are the widely applied general values, and both are configurable because the real limit is category-specific.

Several bullets opening identically waste the scannable part of the line. Buyers read the first few words of each bullet and skip the rest.

Fix: Start each bullet with what makes it different.

Source: Own engineering guidance based on how bullets are read, not a platform rule.

These findings flag wording that regularly appears in FDA and FTC enforcement. A hit is not a violation, and no hit is not clearance — regulators read whole claims in context, not individual words, and no word list can be exhaustive. Use this to decide what a specialist should look at, never as a substitute for one. Nothing here is legal advice.

Source: FTC — Health Products Compliance Guidance

Saying a product diagnoses, treats, cures, mitigates or prevents a disease is, in the FDA’s own words, something only a drug can legally claim. On a supplement, a cosmetic or a food this is the single highest-risk category of wording, and it is the wording that most often appears in warning letters.

Fix: Describe what the product does for normal body structure or function instead — and if it is genuinely a drug claim, it needs a drug approval, not a rewrite.

Source: FDA — Structure/Function Claims

Naming a specific condition next to a product claim implies treatment of it even without the verb. Context decides — a product genuinely intended for a condition may be a regulated device or drug — so this is flagged for a human to read rather than judged here.

Source: FDA — Structure/Function Claims

The FDA does not approve dietary supplements, cosmetics, or most consumer goods, and it endorses no product at all. "FDA approved" on such a listing is not a marginal exaggeration; it is a false statement about a government agency, and it is treated as one.

Fix: If the product is in a category the FDA does clear or approve, name the actual clearance and its number. Otherwise remove the claim.

Source: FDA — Structure/Function Claims

Wording that promises an outcome to every buyer — "guaranteed results", "works for everyone", "100% effective" — requires substantiation for that literal promise, which almost nothing has. The FTC treats the express claim as the claim.

Fix: State what the evidence actually supports, including for whom.

Source: FTC — Health Products Compliance Guidance

"Best", "number one", "strongest" and similar are objective claims when read literally, and need support. Some are read as puffery and tolerated; the line depends on whether a buyer would take it as a factual comparison. Worth a second look rather than an automatic rewrite.

Source: FTC — Health Products Compliance Guidance

Comparing against competitors, or against a category ("better than prescription strength"), converts marketing language into a factual claim that must be substantiated on the terms stated.

Source: FTC — Health Products Compliance Guidance