What is MPN?
MPN, or manufacturer part number, is the code a manufacturer assigns to one of its own products, which identifies that item within that brand's range.
Worked example, not a result
A parts catalogue with no barcodes
Say a store sells 1,150 replacement parts sourced from nine manufacturers. Plenty of these items ship in plain bags with no barcode, so 470 of them have no global identifier at all. What every one of them does have is a part number printed on the component and used in the manufacturer's own catalogue.
That part number is the MPN, and it belongs in the feed alongside the brand. The pair together, brand and part number, is what lets a shopping platform recognise the item when there is no barcode to match on. It is also what your customers type, because someone replacing a specific component searches for the code rather than a description.
The discipline is copying it exactly. Hyphens, letters and trailing suffixes are part of the code, and a store that tidies them up for neatness breaks the match and loses the searches that name the part directly.
The counts above are an example.
Why it matters
Brand and part number are the fallback identity for products that have no barcode, which covers a large share of spare parts, trade supplies, made to order goods and small manufacturer ranges. Getting them into the feed is what makes those products eligible for the searches that describe them precisely.
Those searches matter out of proportion to their volume. Someone typing a part number has already decided what they need and is looking for somewhere to buy it, so they convert at a far higher rate than category browsers. That makes MPN work a rare piece of feed hygiene that improves both the visitors lever and the conversion lever.
For a store owner the job is a data collection one. Ask suppliers for their part numbers in a spreadsheet, store them as a product field rather than burying them in the description, and they will feed everything downstream, including on site search where customers paste them straight into the box.
Common mistakes
- Putting your own internal SKU in the part number field. Your warehouse code means nothing to anyone outside the business and matches no external catalogue.
- Submitting a part number without the brand. The code is only unique within a manufacturer, so on its own it identifies nothing.
- Reformatting the code. Removing hyphens, changing case or trimming a suffix produces a value that no longer matches the manufacturer's catalogue or the customer's search.
- Leaving the number out of the visible page. Buyers searching for a specific part want to confirm they have the right one, and hiding the code in a data field costs conversions on exactly the traffic you wanted.
Related terms and answers
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