eBay Changes: All Outside Links Banned, Choice Policy Scrapped, and more...

[mandy]

***eBay Policy Updates*** 

May 19, 2008 | 01:32PM PST/PT

John McDonald
Hello...This is John McDonald, Sr. Director of US Trust & Safety. We're making a number of changes to our listing policies to benefit both our buyers and sellers. First, these changes will create more choice and selection for buyers and make it easier for them to find what they're looking for. Second, these policy changes add flexibility, convenience and cost-savings for our sellers.

Also, we wanted to give you an update on how to monitor your standing as a seller and improve the visibility of your listings.

New – more flexibility for selling similar items
Two important changes are being made to simplify our policies and add convenience for our sellers.

  1. Removal of the Choice Policy
      First, starting immediately, the Choice Policy, which has required sellers to list similar items in different sizes and colors in separate listings, has been removed. Sellers may now create listings that offer choices such as size, color, and configuration. For example, a shoe seller may now offer a particular shoe in multiple sizes in one listing.

      This change adds significant cost savings and convenience for sellers, while helping them delight their buyers with more choice.

      Keep in mind that it will continue to be the seller's responsibility to accurately represent the available inventory in a listing. Being unable to fulfill a buyer's choice of a stated offering is considered a violation of the Seller Non-Performance Policy. Offering a choice of completely different items in the same listing is also prohibited under the Fee Circumvention Policy.

  2. Removal of the Multiple Listings Limit Policy
      Starting early June, the Multiple Listings Limit Policy, which limits sellers to 15 identical listings at any one time, will be removed. Soon sellers will be allowed an unlimited number of identical listings.

      To prevent buyers from being overwhelmed by identical listings, advancements in Finding will limit the display of duplicates from the same seller. The listing displayed will be determined by the sort option that the buyer chooses, such as Time Ending Soonest, Newly Listed, Total Cost, and Best Match.

      Also, the number of listings from any one seller will be limited to ten per page, unless the only available listings that remain are from the same seller. This change ensures that buyers will have a variety of sellers to choose from. (For more information, please read our Frequently Asked Questions).

New simplified Search & Browse Manipulation Policy
Starting in early June a new Search & Browse Manipulation Policy will take the place of the Keyword Spamming, Misleading Title, Miscategorization, and Brand Name Misuse policies. The new Search Manipulation Policy simplifies the guidelines for sellers, prohibiting any unfair methods of diverting members to their listings. This includes any addition to a listing not related to the item being sold or other activity that harms the shopping experience by making it difficult for buyers to find the items they're looking for. More information can be found in our FAQs.

Mystery Auctions prohibited
Due to the high rate of claims and bad buying experiences related to these listings, starting early June, the Chance Policy will now also include Mystery Auctions as a prohibited item.

Updated Links Policy
Starting in July, an updated Links Policy will take the place of links guidelines that were previously covered in several policy areas. Under the updated policy, only specific types of links are allowed in a seller's listings or other content on eBay, including eBay Store pages, About Me pages, eBay Blogs, Reviews and Guides, and forums. Allowed under the new policy are links to:

    * Any page on eBay or an eBay property including PayPal, Half.com and StubHub.
    * Photos of the item for sale, as long as the page displaying the photos does not offer, or link to, a site that offers a product or service for sale off eBay.
    * Embedded videos within a listing, as long as the content and format comply with all eBay policies for videos.
    * Third-party solutions and services directly related to the particular listing.

Monitor your seller standing and increase visibility in Search
An expanded version of the Seller Dashboard will be available this week, with more information about where you stand and how to maximize your business on eBay. We encourage you to check it often. Watch for a follow-up post on this Announcement Board as soon as the expanded Dashboard is available.

It's important to note that as part of eBay's ongoing efforts to raise the bar on selling standards, violations of eBay policies are subject to serious consequences, including restrictions, forfeiture of insertion fees, seller demotion in search results, and suspension. This is intended to drive any selling practices that hurt buyers and good sellers alike off eBay.

As we continue to raise the bar, we also wanted to give you an update on changes we've made to Best Match since the rollout of this new sort order in March. As you know, Best Match considers a number of factors including Time Ending Soonest, item relevance, other item attributes, and seller performance.

Since launch, we've been monitoring and making adjustments. Some of our adjustments will result in a larger number of sellers with below average performance scores being lowered in Best Match search results. If either of the following conditions apply to you, the visibility of your listings may be reduced:

    * Your 30-day shipping cost DSR is 4.5 and below
    * Your buyer satisfaction rate (shown on the dashboard) appears as "needs improvement," "poor" or "unacceptable."

If you're in this situation, we want to help you get back to the top in Best Match. Many sellers are discovering that making small changes in their approach can make a positive difference in their DSRs and business results. Here are some tips on how you can improve your buyer satisfaction and DSRs.

Check our previous announcement for more complete details on what impacts the visibility of your items in Best Match search results.

Good news for our top performing sellers
Starting this week, sellers with 4.7 and above on all 4 DSRs over the last 30 days may start to see an additional boost in their search standing in Best Match. It's important for good sellers to be rewarded for providing excellent buying experiences. We're going to test this in a few categories to start, and will expand to the others shortly afterwards.

To make sure you stay in top standing, get familiar with eBay's User Agreement, monitor your Seller Dashboard (once it becomes available) on a regular basis to be aware of potential issues and changes in your status, and resolve any issues in a timely fashion. Sellers who delight their buyers will win on eBay, and we thank the vast majority of sellers who abide by our policies and strive to deliver the best buying experience possible.

For more information on the changes above, please see our Policy Change FAQ's.

announcement: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200805191328272.html
policy change FAQs: http://pages.ebay.com/sell/May2008Update/FAQ

Auctionbytes:

One change members should pay particular attention to is a change in eBay's links policy beginning in July. Previously eBay gave members leeway in linking to off-eBay sites in their About Me pages, and limited linking in other places. Now, eBay is tightening up the links policy, further restricting the types of links allowed in a seller's listings or in other content on eBay, including eBay Store pages, About Me pages, eBay Blogs, Reviews and Guides, and forums (http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-links.html).

full article: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m05/i20/s02
comments: http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blo...34697.html

[amy]

Under the updated policy, only specific types of links are allowed in a seller's listings or other content on eBay, including eBay Store pages, About Me pages, eBay Blogs, Reviews and Guides, and forums. Allowed under the new policy are links to:

    * Any page on eBay or an eBay property including PayPal, Half.com and StubHub.
    * Photos of the item for sale, as long as the page displaying the photos does not offer, or link to, a site that offers a product or service for sale off eBay.
    * Embedded videos within a listing, as long as the content and format comply with all eBay policies for videos.
    * Third-party solutions and services directly related to the particular listing.

Boinktards. 

[FiberGuy]

There's absolutely no reason to be on that shoddy site anymore - OH, unless we want to give our stuff away at below-wholesale prices.

Gads

[Kristijntje]

Update: links are safe until mid-August

***A Message from Dinesh Lathi: Update on Specified Shipping and Links Policy*** 
   
Hi everyone. In addition to the news that Lorrie shared in her announcement yesterday, I have a couple of updates that I’d like to share with our sellers.
We've recently introduced several new policies that may require some sellers to update their listings – I provided a quick checklist in my announcement at eBay Live!. While we believe that these policies are needed for the marketplace, we also want to make it as easy as possible for sellers to comply. Based on feedback we've received, we're going to adjust the timelines for several of the policies.


More Comprehensive Links Policy on Its Way
We originally announced that we would start enforcing our new Links policy this month. However, we're continuing to review the policy and plan to provide you with a comprehensive update around mid-August. This means we will not change our enforcement of the existing policy at this time. Once the new policy is introduced, you'll have a four week "grace period" to give you time to adjust your listings.

Specified Shipping Not Required Until August – Improved Tools Coming
Similarly, we've previously told you that starting this month, sellers will need to specify their shipping costs to make sure buyers have a clear idea of what an item's total cost will be. However, we've been working on improving our bulk editing tools to make it easy to update the shipping information within your listings all at once. These will be available in August, so we're going to delay the enforcement of this policy as well until these are available. Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to launch.
The other requirements I mentioned in my previous announcement will still be coming in the fall. This includes the removal of email addresses from listing descriptions, and the requirement of a return policy and your handling time.

[amy]

More Comprehensive Links Policy on Its Way
We originally announced that we would start enforcing our new Links policy this month. However, we're continuing to review the policy and plan to provide you with a comprehensive update around mid-August. This means we will not change our enforcement of the existing policy at this time. Once the new policy is introduced, you'll have a four week "grace period" to give you time to adjust your listings.

Rumor has it links to ProStores on your AboutMe page will be OK and links to information only (i.e. no products for sale anywhere on the site) websites might be OK.  Links to your web store will not.

[mandy]

today's news: rBay is run by boinktards. 

Hello everyone…Back in May, I announced a number of important policy changes for sellers. One of the policies I mentioned was an update to our Links Policy which governs the types of links that can be included in a listing. Our Links Policy is intended to increase safety and preserve the buying experience.
After my announcement, we received questions and concerns from sellers about this change. At eBay Live!, our staff made it clear we would be going back to reconsider some aspects of the policy around how third-party links would be treated.

As promised, we’ve been reviewing all the different types of situations that our sellers have brought to our attention, and we’ve been meeting with additional stakeholders to understand how our policy update would impact them. After this additional research and discussion, we’ve decided to leave our Links Policy as it was before my May announcement. There will be no Links Policy updates at this time

In other eBay news...

2. Removal of the Multiple Listings Limit Policy

Hello…This is Jeff King, Senior Director of Finding. Trust & Safety's John McDonald introduced a number of updates to our listing policies that our sellers have appreciated. (Read his announcement from May 19th). Two changes that he announced have the potential to save considerable time and cost for our sellers:
The removal of the Choice policy gets rid of the restriction that has required sellers to list individual listings for each size, color or configuration of the same item.
The removal of the Multiple Listings Limit policy ends the 15-item rule that has governed how many identical listings a seller can have listed at the same time.
As John also mentioned, these policy changes go hand in hand with changes to our Finding experience. In a nutshell, now our Finding technology can do the work of removing duplicates from search results, ensuring buyers have a good finding experience with plenty of variety and that sellers can list in whatever quantities and configuration that make the most sense to their business.

Starting this week, the display of multiple identical items from the same seller will be limited to one in Search results. An item is considered identical if it has the same title and the same listing format, and the listing chosen for display will be determined by the sort option that the buyer chooses. We will be rolling this out to all sort options by next week. When multiple auction-style listings with the same title have a different number of bids and different prices, these are no long considered identical and will all be displayed.

Also, the number of unique listings (listings for different items) per seller will be up to ten per page. In a case where a seller has a number of items—for instance 20—that could potentially show up in the same search results, 10 will be shown on the first page, and the other 10 will be on the second page. (These improvements go hand in hand with the removal of the Multiple Listings Limit policy.)

As a reminder, our new Search & Browse Manipulation policy prohibits sellers from "gaming" the system to trick the system into displaying their identical items.

[mandy]

A related Aucionbytes blog article and user comments:

Users Protest eBay Ban on Identical Items
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blo...92661.html