I’ve heard the term junk more times than I’d like recently, but today was the first time I’d heard it in the context of shopping on Amazon. Meet Imitation purchasesthe Chrome extension that improves Amazon search results.
What does this mean? Well, if you’ve used the site recently to search for basic items, be it clothing, phone cases or the like, you’ll notice that many big-name brands are now buried in a sea of all-caps items. Items that appear to come from Temu or AliExpress.
Often, you might be looking for something like a hair dryer and find an identical model listed under 3 different brands, all trying their best to look like Dyson. Should I buy DRYSON, BLOWY or the SKIBIDI RIZZ dryer? It’s hard to decide.
Well, someone has had the courage to create a Chrome extension to solve this problem; promises to filter “pseudo trademarks (SZHLUX and HORUSDY) out of your search results, so what you’re left with are brands with a reputation to lose.”
You can simply go to imitation.shopping to get the extension and try it yourself, but here are a few more tips to make it work for you.
Using imitation
I myself have had problems with these “knock-off” brands recently while shopping for an ultrasonic cleaner for my son’s retainer. We have now ordered two seemingly identical models with different brands and both have given up the ghost after a week.
Third time’s a charm, right? Well, this time I’m going to use the tool to help me narrow down my search. As you can see in the screenshot above, when I search for the item, my results are flooded with similar looking items from different pseudo-brands who feel the need to shout their names at me. COSLUS! HICHIKA! SEANCHEER! BUY THEM!
After installing the tool, I can play with the options before continuing my search to add brands that I don’t want to be filtered out, so ANKER and UGREEN, for example, are reputable e-brands that I trust; I don’t want them to leak.
Now, when you run the search again, you can have the tool “gray out” unreliable results so you can see them and make changes, or have it hide them completely. For now, I set mine to dim the results so I can start teaching it what I want to see and what I don’t want to see.
Here I have selected to block this flag permanently. On the other hand, if I see brands I trust, I can tell the tool to add them to the allowlist for me.
Creator Josh Pigford already mentioned on his X account some brands that can be leaked without realizing it. I don’t recognize many of these, but BIODANCE and LANIEGE are at least reputable Korean skincare brands and I would add them to my filter.
The imitation is now available! Filter out knock-off brands on Amazon. I feel sorry for brands like WNPETHOME, EHEYCIGA, YXYL, LU&MN, JOYIN, TOMY, GODONLIF, YOOJEE, LINGTENG, LANEIGE, VISCOO, BIODANCE, COOFANDY, BALENNZ, TOSY and LUENX.https://t.co/9mLk0EAsfG https://t.co/K07lMkepOWJuly 7, 2026
The tool has now helped me select a third, and hopefully more reliable, cleaner for my son’s retainer. It also helped me see more clearly that many of the “toned down” brands were around the same price, so I paid a little more for something potentially more durable.
Holy shit it’s beautiful, it crashed on Amazon https://t.co/ThiM8tywlj pic.twitter.com/AfGEinUiyDJuly 7, 2026
I just started using the tool, after all it’s only been a day! But others are already reporting great success with it and I hope to get even better results as I tweak what I do and don’t want to see. The extension is currently only available on google chromebut it will come to Safari and Firefox soon. There is no news about Microsoft Edge (still).
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