Entire categories disappear on Amazon? Something big happened right after Primeday

Membership Day on the US site officially ended this afternoon. At around 3 or 4 p.m., a big news suddenly broke out in the seller circle: all products in a category disappeared!

The problem was with the “Baby Head Shaping Pillows” subcategory under the Baby category. Almost all of the top 50 BSRs in the entire category were wiped out, and all products disappeared! The few remaining listings that could display pictures and products were all unavailable when clicked.

The volume of this category is not particularly small. The top products have hundreds of reviews. The peak period for orders is near the end of Prime Day, especially from 9:00 p.m. to 12:00 p.m. on the last day, which is the peak period for orders during the entire Prime Day. If something goes wrong during this period, the loss is really too heavy, which is equivalent to wasting Prime Day.

Based on past experience, this incident is most likely a bug on Amazon's front-end. Generally, products that disappear due to malicious attacks will not disappear so quickly and completely, and will not disappear at all. In addition, I also checked the search page and found that many new products that have no reviews were pushed to the front page.

Moreover, these products that can be displayed on the search page are basically not in the "Baby Head Shaping Pillows" category, but are classified in baby bedding. This rules out a simple display bug. If so, what else could be the reason?

There are many different opinions in our big selling circle as to why all the members of this category disappeared instantly. Some sellers believe that it was because they violated the latest U.S. Xinjiang cotton policy and were required by the government to remove all products from the shelves; others believe that Amazon migrated the entire category, but improper operation led to a system bug.