Recently, an Amazon seller's Best Seller link suddenly changed, and he lost as much as $5,000 a day. Not only him, but more than 70% of the homepage links in the gift category where he belongs have fallen, and the single-day loss of these links is about 400,000 yuan. This category is suspected to have suffered an unprecedented "big purge".

It is understood that this is the first large-scale malicious attack in the gift category. Previously, some links have been taken off the shelf many times due to VC adding prohibited words, etc., but unlike this type of operation with limited lethality, this time sellers of this category have been collectively complained of copyright infringement, which has a wide range of complaints and strong complaints, and links Not available for sale for a longer duration.

After the link was removed, the seller contacted Amazon quickly, but was only told that the removed link would take 14 days to unblock. Losses such as sales suspensions and ranking drops continue to mount, leaving sellers with nothing to do.

This time point at the end of October before the peak season seems to be a high-incidence period for Amazon sellers to link to dogs.

Homepage "fallen", hot-selling category links become dogs in a large area

Amazon seller Li Zhifeng broke the news to Yien.com that the gift category suffered malicious complaints, and the links became dogs in a large area. The homepage alone fell by more than 70%, and the sellers lost as much as 400,000 in a single day.

Last Tuesday morning, Li Zhifeng found that his Best Seller link for gifts had suddenly changed to a dog. Before that, he had not received an email notification from Amazon. He only learned that the link was down through background performance. There is another link that turns into a dog with the BS link.

Immediately, he asked a few peers who made similar products and found that everyone's links had basically suffered from different degrees of removal.

"A few of us who have done well in this category have added friends. The next day at work, I sent a message to ask, and found that everyone's links were removed at that time. We were considered to be few of them, and some colleagues were removed from the shelves. Later, we pulled a group and found that there were more and more victims. ”

Li Zhifeng said that the links that have been removed from the shelves this time are basically the top rankings in the category, and some sellers have been removed from the shelves for 6 links, and only the first page of the category accounted for more than 70%.

The BS link that Li Zhifeng was taken down has about 200 orders per day, with an average sales of about 4,000 US dollars. With another link that changes to dogs, his daily sales loss reaches 5,000 US dollars. The second-ranked link in the gift category was also removed. This link sold for a higher price, and the loss may be larger than the Best Seller.

"The products in this category are different, and it is not that Best Seller's sales are the highest. We estimate together with several sellers that the daily loss of only the links removed from the homepage is about 60,000 US dollars, equivalent to about 400,000 yuan. This The number is not small. Besides the first page, many links on the second page and the following are also down. ” Li Zhifeng said.

The broken link caused a lot of losses to the seller, and in November, it was the period when gift products were about to sell well. When the sellers were eagerly expecting sales to rise, they were directly pressed the pause button.

Almost all of these removed links have encountered copyright complaints, and the complainants have targeted the seller's images. Li Zhifeng introduced that the complainant created a cloud disk, put the pictures of the sellers in the cloud disk, and then complained that the seller used his pictures and filed a complaint for copyright infringement of the pictures, and the complaints in batches were successful. He also did not know more details about the operation.

Why is the picture subject to complaints? It is understood that most of the pictures of the victimized sellers are made by themselves, and almost none of them have related patents. Li Zhifeng said bluntly that none of us sellers would do a picture patent, nor would it be possible to apply for a patent for the following three reasons:

First, because the pictures often need to be replaced, and there are many pictures, it is not suitable for each picture to apply for a patent separately;

The second is that it takes a certain amount of cost and time to apply for a patent for a picture. The cost is not high, but the time is long. Some applications may take about a year. During this period, sellers are likely to change pictures, or some products may take a year. can't do it either;

The third is that each product has a certain life cycle. Maybe the image patent application has been filed, and the product is out of date and cannot be sold.

For the above reasons, most sellers do not copyright protection for pictures. As a result, the concentrated image copyright infringement complaints broke out, which made the links on the homepage of the gift category become dogs in a large area. What's even more frightening is that the seller's links are not finished after being complained about being removed from the shelves, and these links continue to encounter other complaints.

"The links have all changed to dogs, and the attackers behind them continue to add prohibited words, add illegal information, etc. to the links that have changed dogs. There is also a link that suggests a violation of Article 51 of the California Act, which we have never heard of . The operator's purpose is obviously not only to turn our links into dogs, but to completely kill our links. " Li Zhifeng seemed very helpless.

The link has been taken down many times, but this time it will be closed for 14 days

It is not the first time that gift links have been removed from the shelves. There have been similar experiences with sellers in this category before. However, this time the scale is larger and the scope is wider, which is different from the previous cases where the links were removed.

The gift category has been uneventful this year. Before this encounter, several sellers had complaints about their links being removed from the shelves, and Li Zhifeng was no exception. There were even more than a dozen complaints about sellers' links for the same purpose being removed from the shelves.

According to Li Zhifeng, the category links he was in had been removed from the shelves because of attacks from VC giants. VCs would modify the keywords and detail pages in the seller's link, or maliciously add pesticides, N95 and other prohibited words in the description. .

After the VC attack, the sellers' links were taken off the shelf. However, after deleting the prohibited words or modifying the relevant information, the link can be restored quickly, and the fastest time can be saved in one to two hours.

In fact, this kind of VC tampering with link information has caused the operation of sellers to change their links to dogs many years ago, especially in some highly competitive categories, such as 3C, home furnishing, etc. However, in the category of gifts, this year's malicious attack phenomenon is the first to appear, and it is more serious as soon as it appears, and many peer sellers have been attacked many times.

Previously, the links in the gift category were removed in small batches, and they were attacked every once in a while, affecting a small range and affecting fewer sellers, and the impact time was short. This time is different. If it was a drizzle before, then this time it was a heavy rain.

First of all, this time it is a large-scale and continuous complaint. Since last Tuesday, the sellers’ links have been removed from the shelves, and in the past two days, there are still links hanging up;

Secondly, the links that have been removed from the shelves continue to be attacked, which makes sellers particularly headaches;

Finally, it takes 14 days for the copyright complaint to be unblocked this time. This is the platform's rule. Such a long waiting period makes the seller anxious.

Links such as adding prohibited words are taken off the shelf, and sellers can judge that it was done by VCs, but they are not sure who did it in the copyright complaint they encountered this time.

In Li Zhifeng's view, this man behind the scenes is deeply hidden. The company name, phone number and other information he provided are fake but can pass the trial, which is unbelievable.

Li Zhifeng said bluntly: The person who complained about us is despicable, but he definitely does not have a picture patent, because this is our own picture, but after being complained, we have to wait 14 days. Even if we can get the link back within 14 days, the loss must be very serious. .

"My current link is Best Seller. After 14 days of no sales, even if the link is restored, this position will definitely not be retained, and the rankings that have finally rushed up will definitely drop, and the two links will lose 5,000 US dollars a day, 14 days. The loss is $70,000.

Not only myself, the links on the homepage that change to dogs have to wait for 14 days, and if there is no sale for more than ten days, the position of these links is likely to be unretainable, and the sales in the subsequent peak season will definitely be affected, perhaps affecting the entire peak season. . "

As an old seller, Li Zhifeng and others are not unfamiliar with some malicious attacks in the industry. The added illegal keywords can be corrected quickly, but this continuous attack is a bit troublesome. Even if the problem is solved, they are worried about the next Encountered with copyright complaints again and again. " If you get the link back after 14 days and encounter the same complaint again, it will take another 14 days to recover. How many 14 days will you experience in the future!"

The threshold for infringement complaints is too low

After the link became a dog, the company personnel quickly contacted Amazon. But Amazon's customer service authority is not high, in addition to telling them to unblock it after 14 days, it is a very official reply, and a special team is dealing with this matter.

Li Zhifeng is very depressed, he believes that there are certain problems with the mechanism of Amazon. If someone complains of infringement, they should submit the copyright number directly to prove that they do have a registered patent. Such removal is normal. Now the other party only provides a cloud disk information, and there is no substantive evidence at all, but they can remove the competitor's link from the shelf.

"A friend of mine in the UK has an appearance patent for the product, but after the patent is registered, we submit a complaint to the backstage to complain that others are selling the same thing as us, but it is not approved, and the other party has nothing. Now others directly take our The product images are placed in a cloud disk, and our link is taken off the shelf. It’s just a cloud disk, and it doesn’t even need an independent website that was required before.”

In his opinion, this kind of treatment is too rude. Taking this alleged infringement as an example, in addition to requiring the complainant to provide relevant patent information, Amazon can also avoid accidental injury through a simple comparison. For example, the product link of Li Zhifeng's company was created more than two years ago, and the complainant's picture is in Uploaded in recent days, it is easy to judge first come first served.

"The platform removed our products first. I think this is illogical. At least you have to simply investigate whether it is right. " After receiving the complaint, Amazon directly hung up the link according to its own process and asked the seller to wait. ten days. Previously, in such cases, sellers needed to submit copyright and other evidence to Amazon for review. Now the review process has also been cancelled. If the complainant cannot provide copyright and other relevant evidence during the waiting period, the seller can directly take back the link.

The seller does not need to self-certify, and the platform will not help with the inquiry. As long as both parties survive the waiting period of ten days, the link will be owned by itself. But in the same way, sellers cannot actively shorten this time even if they are justified, and the sales losses of linked links during this period are at their own risk.

"We just want to reflect that this malicious attack is too simple, the cost is too low, the competition is easy to be spoofed, and the cooling time is too long. Can this mechanism be modified? Or if it is not modified, the platform will speed up the review speed. Yes, two days and three days are fine, but ten days is too long. ” Li Zhifeng said, “There are many such infringement complaints, and Amazon receives such complaints every day. Maybe for them, we don’t have many dozens of links. , but it has a great impact on us, and the platform should pay attention to it.”

After the attack, Li Zhifeng and a group of sellers in the same category did screening and troubleshooting. They sorted out all the links that could be searched for better sales, contacted the corresponding sellers, pulled them all into a group, and then filtered them out one by one after communication. Seeing what happened to their peers, these sellers are worried that they will also be involved, so they will naturally stand in a trench. So far, one or two sellers have not responded to their internal letters or joined the group, which has become the focus of people's suspicion. However, after further investigation, it was found that the company names and phone numbers registered by these sellers were fake, and Li Zhifeng and others could do nothing.

He bluntly said that after encountering these problems, there is no suitable feedback channel for help. The sellers in the communication group are entangled whether to report the case, but they are not sure whether the case can be accepted; in fact, this is not a domestic e-commerce, and the incident happened on a multinational e-commerce platform It is not known whether the police will have any effect after accepting the case. Furthermore, the amount involved is not very large, but there are several million if not ten million a month, which is not a small number for the sellers involved.

After thinking about it, I can't do anything, but I can only "wait", and when the time comes, the platform will open the gate and release the link. But at present, the attacker has not stopped, and the increasing number of illegal tags has shaken Li Zhifeng, who is sure that the expired link will be restored.

Who are the beneficiaries?

Apart from being annoyed, Li Zhifeng and his colleagues were still a little puzzled by this unwarranted disaster.

Judging from the scope of the category link being attacked and the importance of the attack, the other party should also be a seller of the gift category, so that they can reap the profits after 70 to 80% of the competitive links on the homepage are down. But after paying close attention, they didn't find any well-selling links rushing out.

They guessed that most of the incidents were peers. After all, there is no reason for sellers who do not do this category to come here to play a trick. "There is a high probability of being a peer, but I haven't found a very powerful link to rush up, so it is very strange." The only clue is one or two suspicious sellers that everyone has checked out before, but the information is false and there is no way to contact them. The beneficiaries and links behind the attack are unknown.

Another puzzling point is the attack time.

Li Zhifeng remembers that when the trend of "turning a link into a dog" first became popular, the bathing category he operated also had links to become dogs, which was also the case in many other categories at that time, and he contacted more than 100 sellers involved. Solve the problem together, and finally waited for more than ten days to recover. The incident happened on the 20th of October.

At present, the launch time of these attacks is October 19, which is a line away from the previous high-incidence period of link change. The reason why the initiator chose this time may be to get rid of the competition before the peak season, but this time is not very clever.

Li Zhifeng said that there is currently no peak season for gifts. If the other party wants to maximize benefits and make a move when the peak season really arrives, the benefits will be greater for them. If you want to make this money, the end of November and December is the best time.

Is it because the other party wants to end the competition before the peak season and take over the entire category, so they act in advance? He doesn't think so. "The traffic in this category can't be eaten up. You get rid of all the links now. After everyone picks up the links again, they will still divide the traffic. Unless you can rush out dozens of links during this period of time and kill them all. Dropped links are replaced, but that's impossible."

The traffic of the gift category is relatively scattered. If the other party only has one or two links to push, it is meaningless to attack the category peers on such a large scale. If the other party can't do it within two weeks, and the spoofed links come back one after another, this attack will be in vain.

Li Zhifeng and his colleagues are still observing whether there is a link that will benefit later. If a link proves to be faulty, the seller will inevitably face retaliation from similar sellers, causing serious backlash to himself. It is not a wise move to make enemies on all sides, which is also the doubt of the sellers concerned about this wave of indiscriminate attacks.

In the sales process, regular sellers win by virtue of advertisement placement, product quality, brand effect, etc., but it is undeniable that malicious competition among seller groups always exists. Maliciously changing product categories, shorting inventory, clicking on ads, malicious negative reviews or positive reviews, etc. are not uncommon. The sales nodes of seasonal products or the eve of the peak season are especially frequent.

As we all know, the competition in the light strip category is very fierce. Before Christmas in 2020, many top-ranked product links for decorative light strips were suddenly shut down. This happened on several major Amazon sites, of which the US site was the most serious. According to feedback from sellers, more than 20 links of the current 100 top sellers in the light strip category have been closed within two days, and the links of all sites of a top seller have been affected, and the inventory has reached tens of millions. Some sellers called on everyone to unite against the enemy, pointing out that a large number of links were closed intentionally.

The situation is even worse in the scented candle category. Some merchants have been exposed to negative reviews, adding prohibited words, etc. to sellers of the same category, which have turned many similar product links into dogs, and their own companies are almost monopolized in this category. Due to the large number of listings, it is difficult for the attackers to effectively counterattack, and in the end some sellers can only retreat.

The Christmas lights category has also been affected. One supplier said that after its customer link became a dog, it could not be saved and could only admit it. Other customers refurbished the link many times. After the link goes down, the seller's large stockpile becomes redundant inventory, and they have to deal with it at a low price or pay a high storage fee, and fight again next year.

The new peak season is coming quietly, will there be more "hurt" among sellers?

( Li Zhifeng is a pseudonym in the text )