Amazon Standard Identification Number
Encyclopedia
The Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) is a unique identification number
Unique identifier
With reference to a given set of objects, a unique identifier is any identifier which is guaranteed to be unique among all identifiers used for those objects and for a specific purpose...

 assigned by Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

 and its partners for product identification within the Amazon.com organization. Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.cn, and Amazon.es also use ASINs.

ASINs are unique worldwide: one ASIN can only ever refer to one product. The same product may be referred to by several ASINs though, and different national sites may use a different ASIN for the same product. In general, ASINs are likely to be different between the country sites unless they are for a class of product where the ASIN is based on an externally-defined and internationally consistent identifier, such as ISBN for books.

Each product sold on Amazon.com is given a unique ASIN. For books with 10-digit International Standard Book Number
International Standard Book Number
The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering code created by Gordon Foster, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H...

 (ISBN), the ASIN and the ISBN are the same. Books without a 10-digit ISBN (including those with only a 13-digit ISBN) and other products are also assigned ASINs. ASINs are also used for other items used by Amazon.com (and subsidiaries), such as businesses in the yellow pages (on A9.com
A9.com
A9.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com based in Palo Alto, California that develops search engine technology. A9 currently has over 100 employees in its Palo Alto, Bangalore, and Dublin offices.A9 has worked in 3 areas over the years....

) and OpenSearch
OpenSearch
OpenSearch is a collection of technologies that allow publishing of search results in a format suitable for syndication and aggregation. It is a way for websites and search engines to publish search results in a standard and accessible format....

 feeds.

Proponents of the free culture movement
Free Culture movement
The free culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works in the form of free content by using the Internet and other forms of media....

, such as Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

 co-founder Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....

, have criticized the ASIN as an example of a proprietary
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...

 product identifier, arguing that it draws producers—especially smaller ones—into a lock-in
Vendor lock-in
In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs...

 with Amazon, and have proposed the creation of an open alternative where producers could register product IDs for a marginal fee without proprietary control, and the resulting databases would be available under a free license
Free license
A free license is a license which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software or the content, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law.* Free software licence* Free content license...

.Jimmy Wales: Ten Things That Will Be Free. Wikimania
Wikimania
Wikimania is an annual international conference for users of the wiki projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation...

 2005 keynote, August 2005. Section "8. Free the Product Identifiers!" Video (1:07:51)

ASIN in Amazon URLs

On Amazon's USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

-targeted web site, a product's web address (URL
Uniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....

) may contain its ASIN in any of the following formats:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/ASIN-VALUE-HERE
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ASIN-VALUE-HERE
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/ASIN-VALUE-HERE
http://www.amazon.com/dp/ASIN-VALUE-HERE
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/ASIN-VALUE-HERE
http://www.amazon.com//dp/ASIN-VALUE-HERE

where ASIN-VALUE-HERE is replaced by the actual ASIN.

For example, using the "dp" ("detail page") URL format, the 4th paperback edition of Strunk
William Strunk Jr.
William Strunk Jr. was a professor of English at Cornell University and author of the The Elements of Style , which, after being revised and enlarged by his former student E. B...

 and White
E. B. White
Elwyn Brooks White , usually known as E. B. White, was an American writer. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker magazine, he also wrote many famous books for both adults and children, such as the popular Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, and co-authored a widely used writing guide, The...

's The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style
The Elements of Style , also known as Strunk & White, by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, is a prescriptive American English writing style guide comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of forty-nine "words and...

, whose ISBN is 0-205-30902-X, would be found at:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/020530902X


Similar URLs can be constructed for Amazon web sites in other countries:
Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/020530902X
China: http://www.amazon.cn/dp/020530902X
France: http://www.amazon.fr/dp/020530902X
Germany: http://www.amazon.de/dp/020530902X
Italy: http://www.amazon.it/dp/020530902X
Japan: http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/020530902X
Spain: http://www.amazon.es/dp/020530902X
United Kingdom: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/020530902X


However, not all sites carry all titles; for example, the ASIN B000J8VLEC only appears on Amazon.jp.

Also note that the Kindle
Amazon Kindle
The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 which uses wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media...

 edition of a book will not use its ISBN as the ASIN.

Shortening the URL

In cases where a shorter URL is desired than the one provided by default by the Amazon web site—for example, for use in a text message—the prefix "www." may be removed, and, if present, any text after the ASIN itself may be dropped from the URL, as well as any text between the domain name (e.g., amazon.com and the first part of the resource path in the cases listed above (e.g., /gp or /dp).

For example, if one uses Amazon's search feature to find the Strunk and White book mentioned above, the resulting URL might look like:
http://amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William-Strunk/dp/020530902X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1307695052&sr=8-7

This can be shortened to:
http://amazon.com/dp/020530902X


In addition, the domain name itself may be shortened to amzn.com (USA site only), in which case everything except the domain and ASIN may be dropped. This results in the shortest possible form:
http://amzn.com/ASIN-VALUE-HERE

As of June 2011, this form is expanded to the "dp" URL form listed above.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK