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How do I check a product listing for prohibited or restricted terms before publishing?
Paste your listing (title, description and bullet points), pick a platform, and AnyTool scans it for words and patterns that commonly violate marketplace policies — promotional hype, health / medical claims, antimicrobial claims, unqualified green claims, absolute guarantees, urgency wording, contact info and trademark-sensitive terms. It highlights each one with its category, severity, the reason it’s risky and a suggested fix, all in your browser. It is rule-based, not official and not exhaustive — always confirm the marketplace’s current policy.
Regex detectors catch emails, phone numbers and URLs / websites — the off-platform contact info most marketplaces ban in listings
Each match shows severity (prohibited / restricted / caution), the reason it’s risky and a suggested fix, with a highlighted view and a 0–100 read-out
Optional platform selector (General, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart) tunes a few platform-specific rules
Rule-based, NOT official, NOT affiliated with any marketplace and NOT exhaustive — 100% in your browser, nothing uploaded
What is
Prohibited / restricted listing terms
Words, phrases and claims that marketplaces commonly reject in a product listing’s title or description — for example promotional superlatives (“best seller”, “#1”, “free shipping”), regulated health / medical claims (“cure”, “treat”, “FDA approved”), antimicrobial / pesticidal claims, unqualified environmental claims (“eco-friendly”, “biodegradable”, “non-toxic”), absolute guarantees, artificial urgency, off-platform contact information and trademark-sensitive wording. AnyTool’s Prohibited Terms Checker scans for these with deterministic rules in the browser; it is not official, not affiliated with any marketplace and not exhaustive.
Generators
Related terms
Restricted keywordsMisleading claimsHealth claimsFTC Green GuidesListing suppressionContact infoComplianceClaims policy
Frequently Asked Questions
Commonly flagged terms include promotional superlatives (“best seller”, “#1”, “top rated”, “free shipping”, “sale”), health / medical claims (“cure”, “treat”, “FDA approved”), antimicrobial claims (“antibacterial”, “kills 99.9%”), green claims (“eco-friendly”, “biodegradable”, “non-toxic”), absolute guarantees (“100%”, “risk-free”), urgency (“limited time”) and any email, phone number or website. These vary by platform and category and change often.
Marketplaces routinely flag or suppress listings that use promotional / subjective wording (“best seller”, “#1”, “top rated”, “cheapest”, “free shipping”, “sale”, “hot item”), regulated health / medical claims (“cure”, “treat”, “heal”, “prevent disease”, “clinically proven”, “FDA approved”, “detox”, or naming a disease), antimicrobial / pesticidal claims (“antibacterial”, “antimicrobial”, “disinfectant”, “kills 99.9% of germs”, “repellent”), unqualified environmental claims that need substantiation under the FTC Green Guides (“eco-friendly”, “biodegradable”, “compostable”, “non-toxic”), absolute / guarantee claims (“100%”, “guaranteed”, “risk-free”, “chemical-free”, “harmless”), artificial-urgency wording (“limited time”, “act now”, “today only”), off-platform contact info (emails, phone numbers, URLs / “visit our website”) and trademark-sensitive or platform-impersonating wording (“replica”, “Amazon’s Choice”, “Prime eligible”). AnyTool’s checker scans for all of these, but the exact list differs by platform, category and country and changes often.
They are regulated claims. “Cure / treat / prevent” imply a medical effect that needs FDA drug approval; “antibacterial / disinfectant” are pesticidal claims regulated by the EPA; and “eco-friendly / biodegradable / non-toxic” are environmental claims that must be substantiated under the FTC Green Guides. Marketplaces enforce these to avoid misleading or unsafe listings.
Each sits under a different regulator that the marketplaces mirror. Disease-treatment language (“cure”, “treat”, “heal”, “prevent disease”, naming a condition) turns a product into an unapproved drug in the FDA’s eyes unless it is an approved drug, so it is prohibited; even “FDA approved” triggers automated checks because most products are not. Antimicrobial / germ-kill / repellent wording is treated as a pesticidal claim regulated by the EPA, which is why even non-pesticide products get suppressed when copy says “antibacterial” or “kills 99.9%”. Unqualified environmental claims must be substantiated and specific under the FTC’s Green Guides, so bare “eco-friendly”, “biodegradable”, “compostable” or “non-toxic” are restricted. AnyTool labels each with its category and the reason, but it is explaining the general pattern — not your specific legal position.
No. It is a rule-based check against common patterns — not official, not affiliated with any marketplace and not exhaustive. Some flagged words are fine in context (false positives) and some real violations are missed (false negatives). Always verify the marketplace’s current official policy for your category before publishing.
The checker scans for words, phrases and structural patterns (emails, phone numbers, URLs) that COMMONLY violate marketplace policies, and gives each a heuristic severity — but it is not the marketplace’s ruling and cannot guarantee acceptance, removal-proofing or compliance. Policies differ by platform, category and country and change frequently; a term that is fine for one product can be banned for another, so the tool deliberately marks context-dependent terms as “caution” (likely false positives you can keep if truthful) rather than “prohibited”. It also cannot catch every real violation. Treat it as a fast drafting aid that surfaces the obvious risks, then confirm your category’s current, official prohibited-content and claims policy on the platform before you publish. It is not legal or compliance advice.
No on both counts. It is rule-based pattern-matching, not an AI, and it runs entirely in your browser — your listing text is never uploaded, logged or stored, and it works offline once cached.
The tool uses deterministic string and regex matching against a curated rule set drawn from published marketplace, FDA and FTC guidance — there is no AI or LLM and no model call. Everything runs locally: the listing you paste is scanned on your device and never sent to a server, logged or stored, and the page works offline once cached. That is unlike many “listing checker” sites that require an account or send your product copy to a server just to return a result. Because it is rule-based and not official, the tool is explicit that you should confirm the current policy on the platform — it cannot guarantee acceptance or compliance.
Detailed Explanation
⚙️Methodology
How the Prohibited Terms Checker Scans a Listing (Rule-Based Patterns + Regex, Not an LLM)
The Prohibited Terms Checker is a rule-based scanner that runs entirely in the browser with no AI, LLM, server or network call, and it is not official or affiliated with any marketplace. It takes a pasted product listing (title, description and bullet points) and an optional platform, then matches the text against a curated rule set of words and phrases that COMMONLY violate marketplace listing policies, plus structural regular expressions that detect email addresses, phone numbers and URLs / websites — the off-platform contact info most marketplaces ban inside a listing. Each rule carries a category, a severity (prohibited, restricted or caution), the reason it is risky and a suggested fix. Matching uses case-insensitive whole-word boundaries so “best seller” is caught without falsely matching inside other words, longer phrases win over their shorter sub-terms (so “best seller” is flagged once rather than also as “best”), and overlapping spans are de-duplicated. Every match is returned with its exact character position, which lets the page highlight the listing in place, colour each term by severity, and report a line number in the issues list. The rule set is informed by live research into Amazon’s “Misleading and prohibited claims” and restricted-keyword guidance, Etsy seller policy, FDA structure/function-claim guidance and the FTC Green Guides — it reflects the categories and the reasons, not an exact official per-platform word list (which marketplaces do not publish in full).
Rule-based word / phrase patterns plus regex detectors for email, phone and URL — no AI, LLM, server or upload
Whole-word matching, longest-phrase-wins, and de-duplicated overlapping spans to reduce false positives
Each match carries a category, severity, reason and suggested fix, with an exact position for highlighting
Informed by Amazon / Etsy policy, FDA structure-function-claim guidance and the FTC Green Guides — not an official word list
📋Use Cases
Nine Categories, a Highlighted View, an Issues List and a Compliance Read-Out
Flagged terms are organised into nine categories so a seller knows what kind of risk each one is: promotional / subjective claims (superlatives, rankings, prices and shipping promos such as “best seller”, “#1”, “free shipping”, “sale”); health / medical claims (“cure”, “treat”, “heal”, “prevent disease”, “clinically proven”, “FDA approved”, “detox”, or a named disease) which are regulated by the FDA; antimicrobial / pesticidal claims (“antibacterial”, “antimicrobial”, “disinfectant”, “kills 99.9%”, “repellent”) regulated as pesticidal claims; environmental / sustainability claims (“eco-friendly”, “biodegradable”, “compostable”, “non-toxic”) that need FTC Green Guides substantiation; absolute / guarantee claims (“100%”, “guaranteed”, “risk-free”, “chemical-free”, “harmless”); time-pressure / urgency (“limited time”, “act now”, “today only”); contact / external info (emails, phone numbers, URLs, “visit our website”); authenticity / trademark-sensitive wording (“replica”, “knockoff”, “authentic guaranteed”); and inappropriate / platform-specific terms (“Amazon’s Choice”, “Prime eligible”, “as seen on TV”, mild profanity). The result is shown three ways: a highlighted copy of the listing with each term coloured by severity and a hover tooltip giving the reason and fix; an issues list sorted by severity with the term, category, line, reason and suggested fix; and a 0–100 compliance read-out with prohibited / restricted / caution counts and a plain-language verdict. An optional platform selector (General, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart) tunes a few platform-specific rules — for example Etsy permits honest organic / recycled disclosure, so green terms soften to “caution” there, while the Amazon-badge impersonation rules apply on Amazon. A browsable category reference and a one-click clean report round it out.
Three outputs: a highlighted listing, a severity-sorted issues list with reasons & fixes, and a 0–100 read-out
Regex detectors catch emails, phone numbers and URLs / websites inside the copy
Platform selector tunes a few platform-specific rules (e.g. Etsy softens green claims; Amazon adds badge-impersonation)
Copy a clean report and browse the full category reference
⚠️Limitations
Honest Limits: Not Official, Not Exhaustive, and Privacy
The Prohibited Terms Checker is deliberately honest about what it is. It is a rule-based check against COMMON marketplace prohibited / restricted-term patterns — it is NOT official, NOT affiliated with Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart or any marketplace, and NOT exhaustive, and it is not legal or compliance advice. Marketplace policies differ by platform, category and country and change often, so a term that is fine for one product can be banned for another; the tool therefore marks context-dependent terms as “caution” (likely false positives you can keep if truthful) rather than “prohibited”, and it openly states it will also miss some real violations (false negatives). The severity and 0–100 read-out are heuristics, not the marketplace’s verdict, and a clean result is not a guarantee of approval. The correct use is as a fast drafting aid: fix the clear prohibited items first, substantiate or remove the restricted ones, sanity-check the cautions, then always confirm your category’s current, official prohibited-content and claims policy on the platform before publishing. It is complementary to AnyTool’s Marketplace Title Optimizer, which BUILDS and SCORES titles; this tool SCANS any listing text for policy-violating terms. On privacy, everything is processed locally: the pasted listing is scanned right in the browser, nothing is uploaded, logged or stored, no account or email is required, and the page works offline once cached.
Rule-based, NOT official, NOT affiliated with any marketplace, NOT exhaustive, not legal advice
Policies vary by platform, category and country and change often — context-dependent terms are marked “caution”
Flags false positives and misses some real violations (false negatives); a clean result is not a guarantee
Complementary to the Marketplace Title Optimizer (which builds & scores titles); this tool scans any listing text
The listing is processed locally — nothing uploaded, logged or stored; works offline once cached
Rule-based patterns + regex, categorized with reasons
Often a server model or opaque scan
Honesty about method
Clearly not official and not exhaustive
Often implies official or guaranteed compliance
Output
Highlighted text + issues (category, severity, reason, fix) + score
Often a flat pass/fail or a teaser
Contact-info detection
Email, phone and URL regex detectors built in
Varies / often missing
Privacy
Listing text never uploaded; no email/account
Often requires email or signup
Cost / signup
Free, no signup
Often gated, paywalled or email-walled
AnyTool scans your listing locally with transparent rules and is honest that it is not official, not affiliated with any marketplace and not exhaustive — fix the flagged risks, then always confirm the marketplace’s current official policy for your category before publishing.
