For those of you who are currently selling or are interested in selling on the ecommerce powerhouse Amazon you've probably heard the term ASIN being thrown around. But do you know exactly what ASINs are and why they play a key role in your Amazon listings?

An ASIN, or Amazon Standard Identification Number, is a unique combination of letters and numbers that identify items in Amazon’s catalog.

For products that have never been listed in Amazon’s catalog before, a new ASIN is generated when the item is successfully uploaded to Amazon’s catalog. To create a new ASIN your product’s Global Trade Item Number, ISBN, UPC, or EAN must be supplied.

  • GTIN-14 (Global Trade Item Number): 14 digits
  • ISBN (International Standard Book Number): 10 digits or 13 digits
  • UPC (Universal Product Code): 12 digits
  • EAN (European Article Number): 13 digits

You can find the ASIN on the item's product information page at Amazon.com.

Another way to locate the ASIN is in the URL of the product page itself.

Why it matters:

It’s a tedious process to search for each ASIN by hand in Amazon’s catalog let alone to try to add your offer on that listing. There are tools specifically designed to sync with Amazon’s catalog.  A tool such as GoDataFeed’s ASIN Match, based on the product’s UPC, retrieve the ASIN for you. What could be simpler than that?