Amazon Updates: Peak Season Guideline for Vendors, New Tools & AI Search

Top Sellers News This Week

This week’s Amazon updates cover critical holiday prep deadlines for 1P sellers, new tools to reduce returns, and early strategies for staying visible in the era of generative AI search.

• Amazon vendor holiday prep, new concessions hub, & image manager: Amazon is rolling out POs for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in late September with mid-October shipping deadlines, so vendors should confirm quickly, prep warehouses, and coordinate with carriers to avoid delays. New tools like the Concessions Hub and Image Manager also give better insights into returns and more control over product images, helping vendors streamline operations and protect brand presentation this peak season.
• Brands preparing for the AI search era: Latest Omnisend survey shows that Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is changing how products surface on AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. Brands are experimenting with structured data, conversational content, and authentic community engagement to rank in AI answers.

Dive into the full roundup to see how these updates can help you stay prepared for Q4.

Amazon Vendor News: Holiday Deadlines, Smarter Returns, and Image Control

Amazon released a trio of updates affecting Q4 vendor strategy: holiday shipping deadlines, enhanced return analytics, and new image transparency tools for brand protection on product pages. 

1. Get Ready for Amazon Peak Season

The 2025 holiday season is around the corner, and Amazon has laid out key guidelines to ensure a smooth supply chain.

• Late September: POs begin for Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.
• Mid-October: All holiday deal inventory must be ready to ship.
• Prepaid vendors: Review Carrier Central and use the callback or Relay app click-to-call for appointment delays or reschedules.
• Non-full truckload vendors: Extended shipping windows of up to eight days on early deal orders, but on-time shipping is still strongly encouraged.
• Full truckload vendors: Any extra units ordered for deal inventory will show up in your regular purchase orders and can be fulfilled through your standard process.

Amazon vendors must confirm purchase orders within 24 hours, update warehouse availability and contact details, and follow ASN and labeling guidelines to the letter. Success here means proactive communication with carriers, planning safety stock for long-lead items, and routing shipments well before deadlines to avoid missed opportunities.

2. Smarter Returns with the Upgraded Concessions Hub

Returns remain a costly pain point, but Amazon is now giving vendors sharper tools to tackle the issue. The enhanced Concessions Hub dashboard brings AI-powered defect analysis, improved high-return-rate flags, and streamlined dashboards for concessions, reviews, and refunds.

For example, if a particular SKU sees a spike in 1-3 star reviews citing quality issues, vendors can now see defect trends summarized instantly and receive actionable recommendations. This kind of visibility not only reduces return-driven losses but also helps preserve customer trust during the busiest sales season.

3. Control Your Brand with Image Manager

On the customer-facing side, Amazon has introduced Image Manager to show vendors and sellers where their product detail page images come from, whether their own accounts or competing sellers. Each image is now tagged as Live or Not Live, with hover-over details revealing its source.

This level of transparency is a win for those who’ve long struggled with unauthorized or low-quality images hurting their brand presentation. By knowing exactly which images customers see, sellers can take back control of their product pages and ensure that images meet brand standards and Amazon product image requirements.

From SEO to GEO: Sellers Prepare for AI-Driven Discovery

Search is changing fast, and so is the way customers find products online. After decades of optimizing for Google rankings, brands and retailers are now facing Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), a new discipline focused on visibility inside AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Amazon Rufus. With nearly 60% of US consumers already using generative AI tools for shopping, GEO is quickly becoming as important as SEO once was.

What is Generative Engine Optimization?

Unlike traditional SEO, which boosts rankings on search engines through keywords and backlinks, GEO is about ensuring your content is cited, recommended, and surfaced by AI engines that answer queries directly.

Whether it’s ChatGPT recommending the best hiking boots or Amazon Rufus guiding a shopper to the right blender, the battleground has shifted from clicks to AI-powered answers.

• In August, Modern Retail found that one in five of Walmart’s referral clicks came from ChatGPT, up 15% from July. Etsy, Target, and eBay are also seeing double-digit referral lifts, proving that shoppers are increasingly clicking product links from AI chat responses instead of traditional Google search.
• A recent OpenAI/Harvard study found that about 2% of all ChatGPT queries involve shopping, 50 million queries per day.
• A Princeton-led study found that optimizing content with citations, statistics, and quotations increased source visibility in AI responses by up to 40%.
• Retailers like Target are making product data machine-readable, updating prices, availability, and promotions so AI engines can deliver hyper-specific answers like, “Healthy dinner for four, gluten-free, under $20, available for pickup in Atlanta.”
• According to Modern Retail, beauty brands are monitoring long-tail searches such as “foundation for olive skin tones” to adjust messaging, while others like Every Man Jack are cultivating authentic discussions on Reddit, since LLMs often favor community-driven conversations.
• Today’s “free clicks” from ChatGPT won’t last, as OpenAI is reportedly developing in-app checkout and payment systems, which could turn referral traffic into a paid channel. Agencies like Azoma are already helping brands measure and grow ChatGPT-driven traffic, with some reporting 7x increases in visits.

The Amazon Rufus Factor

Unlike Walmart and others, Amazon has chosen to block most AI crawlers. That decision has pulled 600 million product listings off what analysts call the “agentic shopping shelf,” ceding visibility to rivals in ChatGPT’s results. For Amazon, the move protects its $56 billion ad business and keeps consumers inside its own ecosystem, but it also risks steering AI-powered discovery (and traffic) toward competitors.

Instead of letting outside bots drive discovery, Amazon is betting big on Rufus, its own AI shopping assistant now integrated into search and already handling over half a billion queries. 

• The good news: Rufus can answer nuanced shopper questions and cut buying friction down to two clicks.
• The bad news: many sellers feel they’re losing control over visibility as irrelevant product suggestions erode trust.

To optimize for Rufus, focus on enriched visuals, alt text, FAQs, and photo reviews while refining SEO around intent-driven keywords to better capture shopper intent.

Stay Ahead in the GEO Era

GEO is not replacing SEO but expanding it. Sellers who embrace both will gain visibility not only on search results pages but inside the conversational engines that are shaping the future of ecommerce.

• Think like an AI agent: Structure data (schema, metadata, product details) so engines can parse it quickly.
• Focus on credibility: Incorporate statistics, citations, and authoritative language into content.
• Match query intent: Create content tailored for informational (“what is”), comparative (“best vs”), navigational (“login to”), and transactional (“buy online”) queries.
• Leverage user voices: Cultivate authentic reviews, forum discussions, and media mentions that LLMs trust.
• Audit regularly: Just as with SEO, review your content monthly or quarterly to keep pace with changing AI outputs.

Other Amazon Seller Updates This Week

1. Amazon Business: New FBA Discount for Bulk Orders (UK)

Amazon’s new FBA fee discount (starting Sept 24) rewards sellers offering 3%+ business pricing or volume discounts. With 8 million B2B customers ordering in bulk and returning less, it’s prime time to diversify beyond consumer sales through business pricing.

2. Commitments Hub Simplifies DSP Ad Spend Management

Managing publisher commitments just got easier. Amazon’s new Commitments Hub centralizes agreements, automates pacing, and optimizes spend for DSP advertisers. No more manual tracking or missed obligations: focus on strategy, not reconciliations.

3. Amazon Hit with $2.5B Prime Settlement

Amazon has agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement with the FTC over allegations of “deceptive” Prime sign-up and cancellation practices. The deal includes $1 billion in civil penalties and $1.5 billion in refunds to roughly 35 million customers.

4. Logistics Outlook: Smaller Firms Drive Activity Amid Higher Costs

The August Logistics Managers Index (supply chain barometer) rose slightly to 59.3, with inventory levels and costs climbing while transport prices dropped. Interestingly, smaller firms are now driving more logistics activity as they stock up to hedge against rising costs. Researchers say this could push higher prices to consumers just as holiday demand ramps up, something sellers should plan for.

5. Digital Twins: How Walmart, Lowe’s and Others Use Store Replicas

Digital twins are entering mainstream retail. Walmart and Lowe’s use 3D store replicas for predictive maintenance, inventory tracking, and layout planning. Brands also deploy them for immersive shopping experiences and crowd management, transforming how retailers blend digital and physical operations.