Amazon's Item Highlights Field: Where Your Cut Title Keywords Go
After our last post on the 75-character title cap, a reader asked the right question: the compliant version reads cleaner, but does it still rank for the keywords that got stripped out?
Yes, if you move them. Amazon didn’t shrink your indexable space. It split it in two. Here’s the second half.
What Item Highlights is
Item Highlights is a new field that came with the July 27 title change:
- 125 characters, searchable. Amazon’s algorithm indexes it the same way it indexes title keywords.
- Visible before the click. It shows below your title in search results and on the product page.
- Comma-separated phrases, not sentences. Think spec sheet, not ad copy.
- It unlocks when your title is compliant (75 characters or under). You can also preview it through View Enhancements in Manage All Inventory.
Do the math: 75-character title plus 125-character highlights equals 200, the same working space titles had before the change.
What goes in it
The keywords you cut from your title, plus the details a shopper compares on:
- Materials (“hydrolyzed type I and III collagen”)
- Use cases (“supports hair, skin, nails and joints”)
- Compatibility and fit (“fits 20-24 inch monitor arms”)
- Certifications and diet flags (“non-GMO, keto and paleo friendly”)
- Size or quantity, if it didn’t fit in the title
What stays out
- Anything already in your title or bullets. Amazon indexes those fields on its own. Repeating them wastes your 125 characters on zero new rank.
- Promotional language. Same rules as the title. “Best,” “premium,” and “sale” get flagged here too.
- Claims you can’t back up. Moving a risky health or performance claim from the title into Item Highlights doesn’t launder it. The field carries the same content policy.
- Sentences. Amazon asks for comma-separated phrases, and the mobile snippet cuts long ones anyway.
A worked example
The title from our last post, rewritten to 73 characters:
Alpine Roots Collagen Peptides Powder, Grass Fed, Unflavored, 20 Servings
And the Item Highlights line built from what got cut:
hydrolyzed type I and III collagen, supports hair, skin, nails and joints, non-GMO, keto and paleo friendly, made in USA
That’s 120 characters, and every phrase in it is a search term that used to live in the title. Nothing lost, just relocated to a field shoppers can actually read.
Where the rest of the overflow goes
Item Highlights won’t hold everything a 190-character title held. The remainder has two homes:
- Backend search terms (249 bytes, hidden): long-tail keywords, synonyms, abbreviations, common misspellings. Skip anything already visible on the listing.
- Bullet points (~255 characters each): mid-tail keywords woven into real benefit copy, not keyword lists.
Why to fill it now
Two reasons this is a this-week job, not a someday job.
First, titles over 75 characters get rewritten by Amazon’s AI after July 27, and the AI cuts keywords without relocating them. If you rewrite your own titles and fill Item Highlights in the same session, nothing falls out of your index.
Second, the field is new, which means your competitors’ listings mostly don’t have one yet. A filled Item Highlights line is extra searchable real estate and extra copy in the search results while everyone else is still reacting.
Work your catalog in the same order as the title fix: top 20% of ASINs by revenue first, then the long tail.
When Brand Propello carries a product, this is the kind of listing work that just gets done as part of the relationship. If your brand would rather sell to a partner than manage catalog policy, that’s the model we run.