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Every ASIN used anywhere on your site is checked against the Amazon API. A product that no longer exists or has gone unavailable is a silent commission leak — a visitor clicks, lands on a dead page, and nothing ever tells you it happened. This is what watches for that.
In one lineA weekly automatic check flags dead or unavailable products, with the posts using them listed so you can swap in a live alternative in one click.
Four states, and only two get reported
Every checked ASIN sits in one of four states, but only two are ever surfaced to you:
| State | Meaning | Shown to you? |
|---|---|---|
ok |
Product exists and is available. | No — nothing to report. |
suspect |
Failed one check. Not yet confirmed. | No — still unconfirmed. |
dead |
Failed two consecutive checks. Product no longer exists. | Yes. |
unavailable |
Amazon reports it out of stock or currently unavailable. | Yes. |
The two-check rule exists specifically to avoid false alarms. A single failed lookup — a timeout, a momentary API hiccup — lands an ASIN in suspect, not dead. Only a second failure on a later check confirms it. A product is never reported to you on the strength of one bad request.
Good results are cached for 30 days
Once a product checks out ok, that result is trusted for 30 days before it is checked again. This is why a scan of a large catalogue speeds up over time — the monitor is not re-verifying products it already knows are fine, only the ones it has never confirmed or has reason to doubt.
A weekly cron, and a manual scan
An automatic weekly check re-collects every ASIN in use and re-verifies anything not already cached as ok. You can also run a scan by hand at any time from the Growth Tools tab — useful right after a bulk-writing session, when a batch of new ASINs has just gone live and you would rather not wait for the weekly cycle.
Fixing what it finds
Every flagged product lists the exact posts using it, so the fix is direct: open the post, swap in a live alternative ASIN, done. There is no bulk auto-replace — a dead product’s replacement is an editorial decision (is there a genuinely similar item, or does the section need rewriting), not something safe to automate.
Why this cannot be caught by a human skimming the site
An unavailable product still renders — the box, the image, the button are all still there. Nothing on the page looks broken to a visitor scrolling past, and nothing looks broken to you glancing at the post in the editor. The only way to know is to check the ASIN against Amazon directly, which is exactly what this tool automates.
Common questions
Why does a product I know is discontinued still show as suspect, not dead?
It has only failed one check so far. The second confirming check runs on the next pass — give it a cycle, or trigger a manual scan to confirm it sooner.
Does this replace checking my links manually?
For Amazon products, yes — this is the dedicated tool for exactly that. For non-Amazon outbound links, Link Doctor covers the rest of the site.
Will it fix the dead links for me?
No, it finds and lists them with the posts affected; choosing and inserting a replacement is a manual, editorial step by design.
How often does a healthy catalogue actually get re-checked?
An ok result is trusted for 30 days, so a stable catalogue is mostly re-verifying nothing until that window passes — the weekly cron just keeps the clock moving.
Next
- Link Doctor — for every non-Amazon link on the site.
- Duplicate finder.
- Finding dead Amazon links your link checker cannot see.