Busy Work

[ten_o_nine]

That's what item specifics are all about. Many companies do that when they have no meaningful work for their employees (like shipping and listing in the case of ebay). I have been selling on ebay for 20 years and never received a question about these specifics to see the urgency to disrupt sales just before the holidays, I was planning on listing not editing 808 items.

Just a rant, don't need no advice please.

[fashunu4eeuh]

I agree that eBay shouldn't alter the site's format and functionality just before the peak selling season. But it seems they always do. 

As for Item Specifics, they should ultimately benefit sellers by improving listing inclusion on outside Search engines. Getting one's listing picked up by Google or Bing can be a potent remedy for slow sales or low traffic numbers. IS also affects listing placement in Search on eBay's Cassini. Or so they say. 

Good luck to you and hope your holiday sales are stellar.

[soh.maryl]

But the people who are obliged to do the "Busy Work" are not eBay employees, but eBay sellers, who have a difficult enough time as it is without more roadblocks.  

Not advice, just a statement.  

[chapeau-noir]

Sometimes eBay reminds me of a 3 Stooges marathon.

[flyingmvp]

Just be proud for the opportunity given to you by Ebay to volunteer your free (to Ebay) time updating your listings again and again with irrelevant unnecessary specifics, while building the Ebay catalog of everything! 

All that instead of getting busy preparing for the coming holidays selling season.

Your'e welcome! 

[yuzuha]

I don't know about your categories, but in mine the new item specifics are actually incredibly useful. I sell a lot of collectible TV show memorabilia and the item specifics now allow you to put in the series, the specific show, the character, the studio, the merchandise brand, etc. All of those things will make it much easier for buyers of collectibles to find what they're looking for.

[vintage-camerastuff]

They (ebay) want to keep you busy so you won't have time to notice how sales are in the toilet. 

[eburtonlab]

I have been selling on ebay for 20 years and never received a question about these specifics

You probably have not received many pertinent questions about your item title keyword choice either, for pretty much the same reason.

If a relevant keyword or item-specific is present in your listing, it allows buyers searching using those keywords or filter options to find your item. There is no need for a potential buyer to ask a question about your keywords or item-specifics unless there is something otherwise confusing or contradictory about your listing.

If a relevant keyword or item-specific is not present in your listing, potential buyers searching using those keywords or filter options will not find your listing in the search results and will have no opportunity to question you about its absence.

That is not to say that every recommended item-specific is relevant or useful -- clearly many are not relevant at all for a particular listing; just that if you leave out one that a potential buyer does consider relevant, no one will be in a position to ask you about it. So the absence of questions about item-specifics does not really signify anything.

[ten_o_nine]

Have you seen an increase in sales due to that?

[ten_o_nine]

The problem also is you can't build a catalog, items change, UPC codes change, what's sold or listed 3 years ago won't be around, in with the new and out with the old, so they want to build a multi century catalog?

[ten_o_nine]

When you look for a "Brown Cow with No Tail", you expect to see results, if no results you can type "Brown Cow Tail".  You don't have to go thru all the cows to find out which one doesn't have a tail.

[yuzuha]

Too early to tell, but I've definitely seen an increase of views and watchers on things, which I'd consider a positive.

[eburtonlab]

When you look for a "Brown Cow with No Tail", you expect to see results, if no results you can type "Brown Cow Tail". You don't have to go thru all the cows to find out which one doesn't have a tail.

If you list your item using the title Brown Cow with No Tail and don't actually include the "No Tail" item-specific, and I search using keywords brown cow and use the "No Tail" filter option, then your listing will not appear in my search results, and I will not ask you any questions about it. Or buy it. Likewise if I search tailless brown cow.

One of the problems with character-matching text keyword-based searches is that unless eBay explicitly defines tailless as a synonym for no tail, a search for one will not find the other. Very slight differences that are obviously equivalent are not necessarily recognized as such by a character matching algorithm.

Item-specific filters get around this by requiring sellers to check a box or select an existing option rather than entering a potentially problematic text keyword -- at the expense of requiring additional work by the seller to select those item-specifics.

If no other brown cow listings use that item-specific and I get no results, I may try searching another way. But if some sellers use the "No Tail" item-specific and some do not, I may not bother trying further searches to find additional results if I am satisfied with the results I get.

Not all buyers search the same way. Sellers that count on buyers searching using a particular method may wind up missing a lot of potential buyers that use other methods, without ever realizing it.

[yuzuha]

This is exactly what was wrong with the category system. If you listed an item in a category that wasn't what the search automatically defaulted to for that particular item, your item wouldn't come up in search when a buyer was looking for it and you would never even know.

I strongly suspect that is a large reason why you had so many sellers coming here saying "other sellers have sold five of these in the past week for higher prices than mine, why is no one buying my widget?" If they put their widget in the wrong category, there was a good chance that buyers weren't even seeing it at all.

[evelyb30]

The problem with the new categories if you sell vintage  costume jewelry is that 90% of the new specifics are irrelevant to your item.  You need "Brown tailless cow" and "brown cow with no tail".  eBay is currently offering vintage dealers Purple spots and Dog with Green Elbows.   If the new information was relevant it would be one thing, but most isn't.  I have Does Not Apply in a text file so I can copy and paste.