Hi, all. In case you missed it, the most recent Seller News article talks about how the product-based shopping experience categories will be expanding in the future, with details to be provided in the May 2018 Seller Update.
Please use this thread for any questions or comments you might have on this topic. We may have a special guest in store who can answer some of your questions 
@amcdc79 wrote:
In the video game category, I have found the ebay catalog to be actually very good. I hope it stays that way. Another site allows the sellers to update and/or change the stock photos and the description that were provided by the manufacturer, making it a huge mess. Please do not follow suite.
I am glad that ebay will not require sports cards to have a UPC, same with coins, stamps and other items that were never sold with one.
I am selling a few items that do not have a UPC, such as the Dreamcast banner, A&W View-finder, CBL baseballs etc. Will I have to purchase UPC's in order to keep selling them down the road?
Thanks Raphael and ebay folks for all the help over the years, here's hoping the path ebay is taking, means more success for all the sellers.
Hi amcdc79,
Thank you for the kind words. We are very keen on not repeating the mistakes that can be observed on another site. 🙂
No, you won't have to purchase UPC codes for things that don't have them. There are other ways we can identify products and save them in our catalogue. Right now we are starting with products and categories that do have UPC codes because those are far easier to put in a productized experience, but we will eventually get to categories where items aren't typically associated with product identifiers. It's likely that we will rely on rich aspects data to compensate. That is what we already ask of sellers today when creating listings: put in as many item specifics and aspects as possible to make for a richer buyer experience. Tomorrow, those item specifics and aspects will live in the eBay catalogue instead of on individual listings.
-R
@momcqueen wrote:
Can you please offer comment on the following:
https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2018/5/1525710985.html
eBay Catalog Product Attributes Go Haywire
Hi Maureen,
I haven't heard of this issue but it sounds like a bug to me. I've flagged this internally for good measure.
-R
@fashionoutletdeal wrote:
Hi
I sell a lot of brand name products and the UPC for Canada does not match the UPC for USA but the product its the same .What will happened in this case ?
Hi fashionoutletdeal,
One of the things we will gain from a better structure to our catalogue data is to be able to correlate products to one another, for example, regional-specific items like what you describe (same item with different UPC codes in different countries) can be recognized as such. So, to answer your question, from a seller point of view nothing will change for you, you will continue to list against the real UPC code that you see on the garment you're selling. Buyers who search for this product will be shown both the US and CA versions of the product but on separate product cards. Apologies as I may be using a bit of internal language here, please let me know if I need to clarify anything.
-R
@fashionoutletdeal wrote:
How we will find this listing in the catalog if there is another UPC that we dont know ?
Thank you for the answer .
You should only sell using the UPC code that's really on your item so I am unsure why you would do that. If you just want to find alternate products that are a close match to the one you sell, you can do that on the site as if you were a buyer.
@momcqueen wrote:
Also, I sell bundles of my own creation with some success. How does the Product Catalogue identify and match products in a bundle and then display them appropriately to buyers? Can you show me an example, please? Because if the Product Catalogue excludes bundles in a meaningful way, there is even more pressure being placed on those sellers who don't have access to Promotions Manager which essentially allows buyers to create their own bundles with promos.
Hi Maureen,
In the new listing flow, there will be a box you can check to identify your offer as a seller-created bundle. When you check that, there will be a space provided where you can specify what is in the bundle so that we can appropriately present it to buyers. In terms of product selection, you will have to match your listing to the product that best represents your bundle in the eBay catalog. Usually, that would be the most expensive item in the bundle.
@momcqueen wrote:
And what may I ask is the go-forward plan to make all site Product Catalogues compatible with one another so that items listed on ebay.ca still show up where they belong in search results on ebay.com? What assurances do sellers have that ebay isn't going to roll out a shopping experience that excludes all Canadian-based listings from American-based searches?
There are no plans to discontinue showing Canadian products in US search results.
@momcqueen wrote:
Thank you. You've nicely answered my questions about concerns about seller-created bundles.
However, we all know that Canadian content does not show in Grouped Results on ebay.com when it's been listed on ebay.ca so I will ask again: what plans does ebay have to specifically address the incompatible catalogues and incongruent search results?
Actually this is incorrect. Canadian products do show in US compressed search results, provided that they are associated with a product in the catalog. This is a requirement for any item, listed on eBay.ca or on eBay.com or anywhere else, to appear in compressed search results. As a reminder, the test you ran with your own listings isn't appropriately representing what will happen once we have PBSE turned on in the Toys category because your listings aren't associated with the catalogue.
The distinction is that on US compressed search, a Canadian product would show up as a separate, Canadian product card instead of being compressed along with US products. This is actually an advantage, as Canadian products that show up that way will benefit from direct exposure instead of being diluted into numerous single item listings as they are today. This is true today: here is a screen shot from a compressed search I just ran for "roku 4630", see how the Canadian version appears:
These are items listed against the catalog on eBay.ca, appearing in compressed search on eBay.com.
-R
@momcqueen wrote:
Then I still don’t understand. When I created my eBay.ca listing on eBay.ca there was no catalogue entry to match.
There was only a Catalogue entry for it on eBay.com.
Therefore, I conclude the two catalogues are incompatible.
Is there another explanation for it?
This is what we were told elsewhere too. Myself and others.
@momcqueen wrote:
What else explains the reason my eBay.ca listings aren’t associating themselves with eBay.com product cards in the eBay.com catalogue? There is clearly a catalogue on eBay.com for the items.
In my search example, the sellers associated their listings with the appropriate catalogue product at the time of listing. This is how a listing is associated with a catalogue product. eBay does have software that attempts to match non-productized listings (listings where the seller did not actively select a product in the catalogue) with the correct products in order to serve a richer experience for buyers, but this can never work 100% of the time and only up to a level of certainty, because only the seller actually knows for sure what it is they are offering. Hence, for the sake of this discussion, let's assume that only listings where the seller actively selected the item in the eBay catalogue at the time of listing are truly productized and will undoubtedly show up in compressed search, on any site and no matter where they were listed. Items don't "associate themselves" with catalogue products unless eBay has a high certainty of what the item actually is, and I'll point out that we have to be super conservative and careful when we passively associate listings with our catalogue; needless to point out what could happen if we got it wrong and matched a listing with the incorrect product. This is why I said earlier that only the seller truly knows what they are selling and thus, the only way we know 100% what the seller offers is when they themselves select their item in the eBay catalogue. Knowing with 100% certainty what a seller is offering is a requirement to be able to compress search results.
When you created your listing on eBay.ca, you couldn't find the product you were selling in the catalogue, so it won't show up in compressed search because it isn't associated with anything from the eBay catalogue.
The notion of catalogue compatibility is not relevant for this discussion because as I have shown in my previous post, Canadian items that are properly associated with the eBay catalogue do show in US search. While it's true that you can't find the product you're selling in the catalogue on eBay.ca and that the product does exist in the US catalogue, that doesn't have anything to do with why your item isn't showing up in compressed search. Your item isn't showing up because the listing isn't associated with the eBay catalogue.
Also, as a reminder, note that we aren't deploying PBSE in the Toys category yet so whatever mess the catalogue may be in for your items, it will get better when we do launch in Toys. This is why I would stay away from drawing conclusions from testing how your specific items perform in US search for now: your results will be inconclusive. Scary, sure, but completely inaccurate and inconclusive.
@momcqueen wrote:
And I’m uncertain that I agree that having the title specify (Canada) to disassociate it from the others is an advantage as opposed to determinental. Can you cite statistics that prove this, please? I’d love to be reassured that I’m incorrect that having a big Canada stamp on the collection of listings mine might be included in is some kind of as advantage and not a factor that makes Americans worry the item will be incompatible with their other American versions of same.
I don't have stats that I can share publicly about this, but see for yourself: run the same search for "roku 4630" on eBay.com and see how far down the page the first Canadian item shows up in traditional search, compared to compressed search where it shows above the fold (meaning it appears on the page without having to scroll down).
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