Amazon SiteStripe to no longer support Image Embedding on December 1st, 2023

[Ryuzaki]

Word on the street is Amazon's SiteStripe will no longer allow for images to be embedded after December 1st, 2023:

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I'm not entirely sure if using the Product Advertising API will be a quick fix (as in you plugin your API key and your images will start appearing). That doesn't sound like it'll be the case.

This is going to be a massive headache for a lot of sites at the worst possible time of the year to do it. I would either go through my content and grab the images and load them onto my own server (which I've done for nearly 10 years and Amazon's support has said it's fine as long as you only resize or crop out white space).

Another option would be to change to a plugin that'll grab the images and display them for you while creating a fancy call-out box with buttons and all that. But there's no escaping the fact that there's about to be a lot of maintenance work to be done for many a site.

 

[harrytwatter]

I'm trying to understand the why here... seems Amazon is just tossing AAWP/Lasso type companies a Fort Knox pile of gold..?

 

[tomo8900]

Amazon inadvertently doing some site owners a favour with this one I would say.

When I analysed sites impacted by broad and reviews updates in the past, heavy utilization of sitestripe images was one of the clearest footprints I found - and probably one of the simplest signals to Google that websites likely hadn’t tested products they were recommending.

 

[JanisG]

I see that hotlinked Amazon images still work on my sites, and hotlinking images were fine according to Amazon support reps I asked about it some time ago.

I believe AAWP/Lasso/Affiliatable use hotlinked images from Amazon site anyway, don't they?

 

[Upsilon]

I mean... was anybody using that? It was such a hassle for me to do having my site built with Thrive Architect (I know the actual issue was TA).

I'd just get the image from Amazon and put a text link on it. I'm pretty sure Ryuzaki told me that'd be ok years and years ago.

 

[bartman]

So, did Amazon change its mind? I just checked some of my own Amazon boxes that use their images created from sitestripe and they are still working. Does anyone else see the same?