Following the news that eBay have delayed the Product Identifier roll out on multi variation listings until next year they’ve revealed some interesting background information.
The technical issue
eBay say: “The technical issue refers to an edge use case, discovered during testing, that applies to a very small percentage of multi-SKU listings with previous sales“.
The Timing
eBay say: “The solution will be ready in October – but we are deferring implementation until January 2016 to avoid adding a mandate during the critical holiday season“.
We know just how much retailers hate any changes to operations in the busiest quarter of the year. Whilst it would make sense to have product identifiers rolled out as soon as possible I’m pretty sure that all eBay merchants will be relieved to know that they don’t have to attempt to update all their listings in Q4.
The Google/SEO implications
eBay say: “We believe the percentage of multi-SKU listings impacted is too small to have any measurable impact on SEO“.
eBay CEO Devin Wenig is all ready on record as saying that fixing not only Google link equity but also discoverablity on eBay itself is a multiyear transformation. eBay are in the best position with some of the best brains in the world working for them so we’ll give them a pass on the SEO impact of multi variation listings and trust that they know what they’re doing.
2 Responses
Guess would have two questions for ebay;
Why has the software been launched onto the site when it is either still being tested, or a problem that was seen in testing has been ignored?
Why do ebay not test edge use cases before launching software, as strong possibility that if the edge use cases work properly, normal use will; which cuts down on testing requirements and potential problems.
Bit like testing a car at 80mph, launching it in the UK, then a poor driver thrashing his new car at 140 along the German autobahn (edge use case) finds the wing mirrors and wipers are ripped off.
“We know just how much retailers hate any changes to operations in the busiest quarter of the year because we’ve forced them on retailers so many times. We’re actually doing this for technical reasons but our marketing team thought that this was a good opportunity to make it look like we listen. Actually, we don’t. So don’t expect an end to constant changes unless we get bought out by a company with more commonsense.”