United Kingdom

Widgets Retirement Fact Sheet

The Amazon Associates Programme will be retiring the Recommended Product Links and Self-Optimizing Links widgets product on 31st January 2018. After this date, you will no longer have the ability to add these widgets from Associate Central or earn fees from these widgets. Please find additional detail, as well as key dates and alternative solutions which is available to you.

Widgets Feature Retirement Timeline:

By 31st January 2018, you no longer will be able to create new Recommended Product Links & Self-Optimizing Links and existing ads will display the default amazon banner and clicks will lead to the amazon retail website.  

Widgets Retirement Questions and Answers:

Why is Amazon retiring Widgets?

As customer preferences for online browsing and shopping evolve, we have found that widgets in their current form are not optimal to encouraging conversion and as a result accrue lower referral fees for you. We have decided to deprecate this capability so as to not distract you from the other well performing link and ad code building tools.

What would the Widgets retirement mean?

Once the widgets are retired, the two widget pages on Associate Central will no longer be accessible and you will no longer be able to add the widgets. If recommended product links or Self-Optimizing Links were embedded in page, these will be served a default Amazon banner will be shown which will lead clicks to the Amazon.co.uk retail website. You will however not be able to edit these widgets.

Do I lose all the traffic that is presently directed to the Widget pages?

No. The widget links, after retirement, will redirect to Amazon.co.uk. If you decide to migrate your widget traffic to another product centric page, you will need to replace the existing links with links to the respective new pages.

Are there any alternatives that I could use instead of Widgets?

A. Search Widget - This is the best performing amongst all current widgets and allows you to create a widget that dynamically retrieves items from amazon retail website based on your customer’s search queries.

B. WordPress Plugin – If you have a WordPress based website, you can also use our Amazon Associate Link Builder Plugin here, which will help you quickly add Amazon product links to your WordPress posts and pages. The product links can be simple text links, thumbnail images, full-size images, complex templates or full-blown Amazon flash widgets

If you have any further questions, please contact Amazon Associates Customer Service.