Does anyone else here have the new Listings Quality Report that Harry Temkin demoed in the December Seller Check In yet? It is being rolled out this month and would be under Performance>Traffic in Seller Hub.
I originally had high hopes for this new feature but after digging into it for a few days I'm fairly disappointed.
I'll start with the instructions screen for this report for those who haven't seen it yet.
The first issue for me is that the report says we have 0% MPN filled in for our listings. In our categories, the field is called Manufacturer Part Number. It's a required field and 100% of our listings have that IS filled in.
Is this just a data mapping issue? Are other parts of our business being hurt because eBay doesn't have this field standardized across all categories? Should I create a custom IS, name it "MPN", and fill in redundant information just to make this report happy and if so, will it have any other effect positive or negative on our listings?
The description of the "opportunity" marks says they are simply measuring the difference between the top 10% and bottom 10% of listings. All that means is there is a difference, not necessarily that the difference has any particular meaning or relevance or that making eBay's suggested "improvements" will have any positive result.
The big red box may be meant to trigger sellers into thinking this is a critical issue on their account, but if you look at the sales conversion section it is pretty clear that Free Returns isn't driving sales conversion for the bottom 10% using it more than the top 10%.
eBay seems to be trying to give the impression that offering Free Returns will result in more page views, but again because all they are doing is highlighting a difference, there is simply no data here to actually identify *if* that difference is the cause of higher click through rates or just a coincidence.
In fact, this report shows that for this category, our sales rank is 2 out of 4,931 sellers, *if* that is accurate it would seem not having Seller Paid Returns isn't really hurting us too badly.
This report also seems to think we have 0% Promoted Listings enabled when in fact 100% of our listings are in active Promoted Listings campaigns.
I'm not even sure how to interpret the data about Google Shopping. It says Google Shopping Applies 0%, but then further down where it shows individual listings, every line has a check mark which one might think would indicate a "positive" or "yes" that Google Shopping applied. Maybe the check mark just means the listing is eligible for Google Shopping and the 0% section shows how many were actually sent to Google? I don't know, and there is nothing in the instructions or report that clarifies this.
Also, the instructions and Harry Temkin's video both say if you have listings that are rejected for Google Shopping, it will show a separate tab in the spread sheet so you can address any issues causing rejection. I do *not* have that tab, so I would have to assume none of our listings are rejected.
With multiple data points which are obviously not accurate, it causes me to question the validity and accuracy of the entire report and renders it pretty much useless to me.
On top of that, some of the elements of this report seem to be designed to nudge sellers to take action that eBay wants them to take by making it look like a critical issue to be addressed, when in reality there is no data here to show that making those suggested "improvements" will have a positive effect on your account.
Bottom line for me, at a minimum this report is not ready for Prime Time and should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has access to this feature is seeing similar issues.
@valueaddedresource wrote:The most concerning change is in one category it thinks I went from 58% to 60% of listings with UPCs - I did not make any edits to UPC codes for any listings either during that 37 minute window or in fact any time in the last few months.
Here is the summary page section for that category
10:59
11:36
So this category is still showing at 60% for UPC now, but on the summary page it has changed from Add UPCs to 21 of your listings to Add UPCs to 23 of your listings.
Again, nothing about the UPCs on any of our listings changed during the time in between the two reports, so for it to be suggesting 23 instead of 21 listings to edit, that makes me think there were maybe some listings in that category that weren't being considered in the previous report.
That's going to a be a critical piece of information to get. If the total number of listings being considered doesn't stay constant, that makes the numbers even more worthless as far as trying to track what any changes in the numbers actually mean from one report to the next.
@valueaddedresource wrote:@mcdougle4248 - how did your "opportunity" experiment go? Did it change anything on the new report today? Is your Google Shopping one still showing rejected?
Mine today is pretty much the same except that one category that went from 58% to 60% is now at 59%.
The "opportunity" experiment went well. I no longer have any "opportunities". Adding best offer took care of everything lol
The ornament that was showing as being rejected by Google Shopping, sold last night without the buyer using Best offer. I did have a chance to check Google Shopping one time before it sold and was very surprised to see the new markdown price displaying. So, it definitely was not being rejected.
I do not think this report analyzes variation listings. I find it kind of difficult to believe there is not at least one "opportunity" among my variation listings and there is nothing on this latest report.
@mcdougle4248 wrote:
@valueaddedresource wrote:@mcdougle4248 - how did your "opportunity" experiment go? Did it change anything on the new report today? Is your Google Shopping one still showing rejected?
Mine today is pretty much the same except that one category that went from 58% to 60% is now at 59%.
The "opportunity" experiment went well. I no longer have any "opportunities". Adding best offer took care of everything lol
The ornament that was showing as being rejected by Google Shopping, sold last night without the buyer using Best offer. I did have a chance to check Google Shopping one time before it sold and was very surprised to see the new markdown price displaying. So, it definitely was not being rejected.
I do not think this report analyzes variation listings. I find it kind of difficult to believe there is not at least one "opportunity" among my variation listings and there is nothing on this latest report.
I forgot to mention the category they were suggesting 14 day returns for was not included in today's report.
All other categories were the same and they still think I have 0% MPN, 0% Google Shopping, and 0% Promoted Listings.
@mcdougle4248 wrote:
Well, hopefully one of the blues will come to the thread tomorrow and get this brought to the attention of the appropriate team. I will continue to check my report as it updates. Maybe something useful will shake loose.
I find it interesting that no one else has participated in the thread, so far. I guess it could be that the report has not hit many sellers yet.
@mcdougle4248 Harry Temkin mentioned it had been rolled out to about 30,000 sellers in that video. That was recorded sometime in early December, so I don't know how many have been added since, but I think it's a safe bet that a lot of people still don't have it.
Or maybe people do have it and just don't know to look? They haven't made any big announcement about it yet as far as I know. I wouldn't have known to go look for it if I hadn't watched the December Seller Check In.
For anyone who is interested, here's where you can find it once you have it.
Hopefully as more people get access to it, we'll see more feedback posted here and the team will get to work on these issues ASAP.
I didn't see anything in the video or instructions that specifically says it isn't compatible with variation listings, but I agree with you that if it isn't that should be a high priority as well.
@valueaddedresource wrote:
@mcdougle4248 wrote:
Well, hopefully one of the blues will come to the thread tomorrow and get this brought to the attention of the appropriate team. I will continue to check my report as it updates. Maybe something useful will shake loose.
I find it interesting that no one else has participated in the thread, so far. I guess it could be that the report has not hit many sellers yet.
@mcdougle4248 Harry Temkin mentioned it had been rolled out to about 30,000 sellers in that video. That was recorded sometime in early December, so I don't know how many have been added since, but I think it's a safe bet that a lot of people still don't have it.
Or maybe people do have it and just don't know to look? They haven't made any big announcement about it yet as far as I know. I wouldn't have known to go look for it if I hadn't watched the December Seller Check In.
For anyone who is interested, here's where you can find it once you have it.
Hopefully as more people get access to it, we'll see more feedback posted here and the team will get to work on these issues ASAP.
I didn't see anything in the video or instructions that specifically says it isn't compatible with variation listings, but I agree with you that if it isn't that should be a high priority as well.
No announcement...oh I won't even go there 😩 I found out about it during the Phoenix up front back in November.
I did notice another thing with the latest report. I have sale event + markdown, as well as, best offer on all listings shown in the report. I think the percentages should display at 100%. The screenshot on the right shows the check mark, which is confusing to me.
@mcdougle4248 wrote:No announcement...oh I won't even go there 😩 I found out about it during the Phoenix up front back in November.
I did notice another thing with the latest report. I have sale event + markdown, as well as, best offer on all listings shown in the report. I think the percentages should display at 100%. The screenshot on the right shows the check mark, which is confusing to me.
@mcdougle4248 - I agree that the percentage and check marks are confusing. They definitely need to put something in the instructions tab that specifically defines what the check mark is supposed to mean.
Logically it seems to me the check mark *should* indicate that the listing on that line was enabled for whatever feature or metric is in that column. So either that's not what it is supposed to mean, or it is and the data is just different/wrong between the percentage section and the check mark section.
Thinking through this more, could it maybe be that each section is using a different total number of listings?
For example, I have one category on this report that we have 235 active listings with QTY in, but the report says I should revise 227 listings in that category to take advantage of the "opportunity" presented by offering seller paid returns.
The bottom section that shows the individual listings (where the checkmarks would be) shows 227. However, it isn't clear at all if the top section where the percentages are is based on the total number of listings in that category (235) or just the 227 being recommended for a change.
In theory, if the top and bottom sections are not using the same number of listings, it would be possible for that percentage to be different than the number of listings with check marks. 🤔
Your screenshot shows 17 lines with check marks. Let's say just for an example that represents 17 items they are suggesting you make a change to, but that category really has 20 items total in it. Then let's say that the 3 items *not* showing as suggested changes don't have a sale event+ markdown enabled.
If the top section was measuring all listings, that would be 17 out of 20 that have sale event+ markdown, for 85%. However, if the bottom section only shows the 17 they are recommending changes to, it would have check marks for 100% of those listings.
Does that make sense at all? Please check my logic on this and let me know if I am way off base here. I'll admit I'm grasping at straws and this is easy to get confused on. 🤣
It definitely shows that we absolutely need to know 100% for sure how many listings are being used to determine those percentages if we are to try to make any kind of sense out of what these numbers really mean.
@valueaddedresource wrote:
@valueaddedresource wrote:The most concerning change is in one category it thinks I went from 58% to 60% of listings with UPCs - I did not make any edits to UPC codes for any listings either during that 37 minute window or in fact any time in the last few months.
Here is the summary page section for that category
10:59
11:36
So this category is still showing at 60% for UPC now, but on the summary page it has changed from Add UPCs to 21 of your listings to Add UPCs to 23 of your listings.
Again, nothing about the UPCs on any of our listings changed during the time in between the two reports, so for it to be suggesting 23 instead of 21 listings to edit, that makes me think there were maybe some listings in that category that weren't being considered in the previous report.
That's going to a be a critical piece of information to get. If the total number of listings being considered doesn't stay constant, that makes the numbers even more worthless as far as trying to track what any changes in the numbers actually mean from one report to the next.
This category has now dropped to showing that I have 56% of listings with UPC code.
Again, I have not changed UPC info for any of our listings, so the only logical explanation I can think of is that the total number of listings being considered must be fluctuating from one report to the next.
