ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
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Yes, it is correct that third party URLs in the upload spreadsheet will be transloaded from that external server to eBay servers. However, sometimes, there are timing problems that interfere with the transloading. When the external server is unable to keep up with eBay's machine-gun requests for photos, eBay may drop the request and simply use the external URL in the listing (and the thumbnail may be missing from search).
It is undesirable to fall back to external URLs in a listing because those images won't zoom. Additionally, the original full-sized external image may be slow to load within the listing.
It is possible to re-upload the failed images within your spreadsheet, but the replacement URLs should differ from the original upload, otherwise eBay will assume they have already fetched that image and won't try again. So, to get around that problem (without changing the image on your server), add a suffix to your external URLs on your second attempt.
A suffix will start with "?", which is ignored by most personal image servers, but is treated by eBay as something new if not the same as the original upload. After that symbol, you can add any other numbers or letters, or nothing at all. It is only important that each revision URL given to eBay be different than the prior one.
For instance, if your first pass was
https://example.com/image.jpg
your second attempt could be
https://example.com/image.jpg?
and your third attempt could be
https://example.com/image.jpg
But, it may be simpler to just increment the suffix in each revision batch:
https://example.com/image.jpg?1
https://example.com/image.jpg?2
https://example.com/image.jpg?3
If you revise a listing to re-upload failed images, the entire image set must be uploaded (all images for a single listing). There is no need to revise listings that were successful (and that could introduce new failures), so prune your spreadsheet for each repair to include only those listing with failed images (sometimes it will take several revisions to get the entire list repaired).
This online tool will detect listings that are sporting externally hosted images.
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/BulkPhotoScanner.htm
If you are only concerned about failed transloading, then the "FastScan" feature can show which listings contain photos that are still externally hosted.
Yes, it is correct that third party URLs in the upload spreadsheet will be transloaded from that external server to eBay servers. However, sometimes, there are timing problems that interfere with the transloading. When the external server is unable to keep up with eBay's machine-gun requests for photos, eBay may drop the request and simply use the external URL in the listing (and the thumbnail may be missing from search).
It is undesirable to fall back to external URLs in a listing because those images won't zoom. Additionally, the original full-sized external image may be slow to load within the listing.
It is possible to re-upload the failed images within your spreadsheet, but the replacement URLs should differ from the original upload, otherwise eBay will assume they have already fetched that image and won't try again. So, to get around that problem (without changing the image on your server), add a suffix to your external URLs on your second attempt.
A suffix will start with "?", which is ignored by most personal image servers, but is treated by eBay as something new if not the same as the original upload. After that symbol, you can add any other numbers or letters, or nothing at all. It is only important that each revision URL given to eBay be different than the prior one.
For instance, if your first pass was
https://example.com/image.jpg
your second attempt could be
https://example.com/image.jpg?
and your third attempt could be
https://example.com/image.jpg
But, it may be simpler to just increment the suffix in each revision batch:
https://example.com/image.jpg?1
https://example.com/image.jpg?2
https://example.com/image.jpg?3
If you revise a listing to re-upload failed images, the entire image set must be uploaded (all images for a single listing). There is no need to revise listings that were successful (and that could introduce new failures), so prune your spreadsheet for each repair to include only those listing with failed images (sometimes it will take several revisions to get the entire list repaired).
This online tool will detect listings that are sporting externally hosted images.
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/BulkPhotoScanner.htm
If you are only concerned about failed transloading, then the "FastScan" feature can show which listings contain photos that are still externally hosted.
@cordeliaflyte wrote:
This is super-helpful, thank you!
Now I know how to identify and fix the problem, but quick question on theory... problems such as you mentioned aside, when you point to externally hosted photos in your CSV ebay is supposed to fetch and transfer them as it parses the CSV?
So theoretically, if you upload a CSV and, according to the Bulk Scan Ebay Hosted Photos tool they're all happily on ebay, you can delete them from your external server?
Thank you!
Yes, that is the theory - you can delete them from your server. However, eBay still stores a link to the server image, and should supposedly never use it again. In my tools, I have found that I have to scrape the actual listings to see whether eBay is displaying EPS (eBay Picture Services) images or externally hosted images. When I use eBay's API to fetch images, it gives me the source URLs, even if eBay is hosting the images. I have not fully investigated to determine whether that is universal or problem-specific, or just an artifact of the API module I am accessing.
