eBay UK showing duplicate BINs in search results
by Sue Bailey
We’ve been asked recently by a number of people whether eBay UK have abandoned their duplicate listings policy, which says that a seller may have no more than 15 identical listings live at any one time, and that only one of these can be fixed price. The policy stated that additional listings beyond these limits would be hidden in search results – essentially, that sellers would be allowed to pay for items which would not show up in search.
eBay told us this morning that yes, they have stopped hiding duplicate listings, because they believe these no longer offer sellers any advantage: in fact, they are likely to make a seller’s listings perform worse under Best Match:
Since the full roll out of the latest version of Best Match we believe that duplicate listings no longer give a seller an advantage as we now rate on recent sales divided by search impressions. If a seller makes duplicate listings it will spread their sales per impression score across many items and as a result that listing will drop down in search.
If you’ve been listing duplicates and find your items slipping in search result position, this may well be the reason. However counter-intuitive it feels to list fewer items, listing extra BINs will hurt you under Best Match. And of course, it leaves you vulnerable to reporting by competitors.
A couple of other points while we’re on this topic: last week, we were contacted by a seller who had been told by his account manager that eBay had “for legal reasons”, discontinued the automatic removal of duplicate listings. We were pretty surprised by this, as we’d never heard either from eBay or from sellers that this was being done. eBay have said that duplicate listings aren’t and never have been automatically removed: the only time they are removed is when they’re reported, and this is done manually.
It’s worth also saying that eBay point out a large number of reports on duplicates relate to auction listings, not to BINs. Sellers may run up to 15 identical auctions, so don’t waste your time reporting them unless there really are more than that number.
9 Responses on "eBay UK showing duplicate BINs in search results"
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So if a duplicate item gets reported and removed, is there a punishment ? Confused.com
Breaches of this (duplicate items) policy may result in a range of actions, including:
* Listing cancellation
* Limits on account privileges
* Account suspension
* Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
* Loss of PowerSeller status
You can see the effect of any policy breaches in your seller dashboard
I was surprised by this change because hiding the duplicate listings worked to enforce ebays duplicate listing policy.
In one of my main selling catagories, a few of my competitors have multiple BIN listings of the same product.
The only advantage i saw with duplicate BIN listings was the ‘perceived’ impression of being a big seller as your shop appeared at the top of Matching Shops.
I believe the negatives far outweigh the positives, ie more fees, less visabilty under best match and potential overselling.
JMHO
Lee
If you list an item twice, you PAY twice.
It’s that simple.
Sue/Chris, I’m a little confused. Is it still against eBay policy to list duplicates? Are eBay still removing duplicates that are reported? If so, they’ve just created a lot more work for themselves – the more duplicates visible, the more will be reported.
I also disagree that listing duplicates does not give the seller an advantage. If as a buyer I search for a product and get 10 search results that match what I want and 4 are from the same seller, surely I’m more likely to select one of their items?
Lino:
Yes it is still against policy to list duplicates.
Yes eBay are still removing duplicates that are reported.
If as a buyer I search for a product and get 10 search results that match what I want and 4 are from the same seller,
The point is that you are less likely to see the 4, or ANY of that seller’s listings, as they have diluted their recent sales across multiple listings so will do less well under Best Match than someone whose sales are all concentrated in a single listing.
Thanks Sue.
I understand what you’re saying, but I still don’t totally agree about the diluting. I just searched for R2-D2 HUB (Buy it now/Best Match). Got 20 results, of which 10 are from the same seller. 4 of the top 7 items are theirs, including the top listing. Duplicates don’t appear to be doing them any harm.
As there are 22 results for that very narrow search it’s not surprising that they’re all on the first page!
Do a search for “R2D2” and tell me how well their duplicate listings are doing for them as measured by appearances on the first page of search results compared to their competitors
I have been raising the Duplicate issue in the PS forum for a while now and eBay consistently have said they had not removed the filter, only for us now to find out officially what we already knew.
The problem with this move is eBay have basically said okay take the risk by breaking eBay’s rules, and as we all know eBay act on a very very small amount of reported duplicate listings (virtually none)
Sellers are gaming the system by listing items that end daily (all duplicates)
Plus this also looks bad for the Buyers who are hit with pages and pages of duplicates which they will eventually get bored of trawling through them and go elsewhere like Google search or Amazon.
Why not just change the duplicate filter engine to automatically end the listings (if they can not legally hide them) as they are against eBay policy.