Scanning for duplicate listings

[shipscript]

People have asked me for a Duplicate Listing Scanner, similar to my scanner for eBay Photo Size compliance, and I had declined in the past because it is too complex a problem.  But I was again encouraged to create one, so here is the beginning of one.

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

It first looks for duplicate titles, but a duplicate title is not enough to violate eBay policy.

So it further looks at the duplicate fixed price guidelines and the duplicate auction guidelines, and tries to take a measure of price and auction type to report the probability of being a duplicate listing, and then displays the results using color coding. Because there are more parameters to consider, like photo, item specifics, condition, and subtitle,  this scanner is not conclusive. 

The scanner simply finds items with duplicate titles so that you can decide for yourself.

If someone is circumventing duplicate policy by adding a character to the title, this tool will not detect it.

If you think you may have duplicate items, I would love to hear from you to help improve the tool.

[fromhereandthere]

Thanks for your efforts in doing this - I assume it will work on multiple sites for the same seller i.e. I list on ebay.com as well as ebay.co.uk, so this will help prevent me from duplicating and getting penalised.

Incidentally, is there a way to know something is listed already, before doing a 'sell similar' with an unsold item ?  I don't always manage to delete all my relisted  (using sell similar) unsold ones, and so when the next promo arrives I often duplicate an existing listing - not a major crime previously, but now the kiss of death !

[shipscript]

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@fromhereandthere wrote:

Thanks for your efforts in doing this - I assume it will work on multiple sites for the same seller i.e. I list on ebay.com as well as ebay.co.uk, so this will help prevent me from duplicating and getting penalised.

Incidentally, is there a way to know something is listed already, before doing a 'sell similar' with an unsold item ?  I don't always manage to delete all my relisted  (using sell similar) unsold ones, and so when the next promo arrives I often duplicate an existing listing - not a major crime previously, but now the kiss of death !

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You have raised two interesting points. 

1) Multiple ebay sites:

The tool can scan each of the different eBay sites, but won't scan across two at the same time, unless the items are internationally available. I believe, if they are internationally available, the tool would pick up both.  I'm not sure it would be a violation if the item is not internationally available because it would then not appear twice on one site. Of course, if you have only one item, and sell it on two sites, that would be the problem to address.

2) Prescan:

I could add a feature to the tool to do a prescan for a specific item title or titles, but they would have to be an exact match.  I'm not sure of the logistics on your end. How many would you need to test? It would be most efficient for the tool to capture them all on one scan, rather than making multiple scans, but to do that, I'll need to change the way the tool communicates with the server, so it might be a different tool. This is an interesting idea. Any more feedback on prescanning a title?

I'll look into these later today.  If you want to private-message me the sellerID for testing, that could be helpful.

I can't tell if the tool is working unless I have content that triggers a match. So if anyone else has duplicates that are not currently found by the tool, please let me know (through community messages if you prefer) and then refrain from removing them immediately until I've had a chance to test against them.

[crucialmusic]

This scanner seems to no longer work? Have eBay blocked it?

[shipscript]

@crucialmusic

No, it's not blocked. eBay has a bug on their server that they are working to fix. I don't have an estimate at this time.

https://go.developer.ebay.com/finding-api-calls-fail-error-28-invalid-seller-name-when-seller-itemfi...

If you have thousands of listings and are truly unsure about duplicates, you may want to refrain from adding more listings until eBay fixes their server code.

[shipscript]

On the one-year anniversary of the still-free Duplicate Listing Scanner, I am amazed to report the tool has scanned nearly 370 BILLION (with a B) listings with nearly 100K visitors!

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

My next project may be an Active Content Scanner.  I've started a simple proof of concept:

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContent_support/ScanActiveContent.htm

[labs118]

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@shipscript wrote:

On the one-year anniversary of the still-free Duplicate Listing Scanner, I am amazed to report the tool has scanned nearly 370 BILLION (with a B) listings with nearly 100K visitors!

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

My next project may be an Active Content Scanner.  I've started a simple proof of concept:

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContent_support/ScanActiveContent.htm

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You Rock & I use it all the time & post it's link to any posts about sellers getting slapped for dupes.
and am going to need your next project because I use Auctiva scrolling gallery & once 2017 hits not sure it will work

[rcdsdon]

How does a company as large as eBay not have the tools available to it's sellers to follow their policies?

Why does it take a private person  to do this?

Their customer service to sellers is very poor.  This is not a very nice company anymore.

[blackbird*singing]

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@labs118 wrote:

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@shipscript wrote:

On the one-year anniversary of the still-free Duplicate Listing Scanner, I am amazed to report the tool has scanned nearly 370 BILLION (with a B) listings with nearly 100K visitors!

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

My next project may be an Active Content Scanner.  I've started a simple proof of concept:

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContent_support/ScanActiveContent.htm

---

You Rock & I use it all the time & post it's link to any posts about sellers getting slapped for dupes.
and am going to need your next project because I use Auctiva scrolling gallery & once 2017 hits not sure it will work

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@labs118 You might be interested in the following:

http://pages.ebay.com/sell/itemdescription/bestpractices.html

This is a link that shipscript recently found - it has a lot of info that applies to the next updates.

[shipscript]

One Billion!

I just wanted to ask everyone to help me celebrate. We'll pop the champagne and pour a round for everyone when all the zeros roll over! 

Since the tool was announced at the start of this thread, the free Duplicate Listing Scanner has scanned millions of listings daily.

It will soon be rolling over to

1,000,000,000

Thanks for the fun!

Cheers to all!

[hidy-hoo]

...that's a lot of zeros

Congrats to you, shipscript ~ you deserve 1,000,000,000 "thankfuls" from all of the users of your great app!

 

[labs118]

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@shipscript wrote:

On the one-year anniversary of the still-free Duplicate Listing Scanner, I am amazed to report the tool has scanned nearly 370 BILLION (with a B) listings with nearly 100K visitors!

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

My next project may be an Active Content Scanner.  I've started a simple proof of concept:

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ActiveContent_support/ScanActiveContent.htm

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Coming up on the 2 year & I still post for people to use it
And you are well into that next project aren't you? 


Thanks for all you do
So much time & effort you put in here , your the best
Why can't you run ebay programming

[magicguynet]

I wish eBay had a way to scan relisted items against sold items, not everyone sells multiples of the same item, I resell anything I can find of value, the duplicate check is great as somethimes I accidentally relist an item twice, but wish there was a way to compare sold vs live to see as far back as ebay history will allows to make sure I haven't relisted something that months ago and is hidden in the 1000 items I constantly have listed.

Maybe someone has a way, I also use Inkfrog and it allows me to set an inventory quantity, but I relist through ebay as the bulk relist which is like a spreadsheet is so much easier to relist.

[ricks.2008]

Thank you so much for the duplicate scanner, I use it often! Recently I found that the scan results are more than the number of listings I have. For instance the result is 375 items scanned but I only have 350 listings. I’m not sure if I am the only one experiencing this but I thought I would let you know. Thanks again for all you do!

[lookng2015]

Perhaps you have some MQ listings?

[frodobagginskennedy]

just wanted to remind everyone of Shipscripts awesome tools.  

With all of the GTC fiasco it will be a good idea to run the duplicate listing tool