Good news. eBay now enables buyers to search by GTIN, UPC, EAN, ISBN and MPN via the general search function they have on the site.
This was announced on ebay.com today but does also seem to work on ebay.co.uk too.
Here’s what the announcement says: “Starting today, buyers can search for any item on eBay.com simply by entering its GTIN, UPC, EAN, ISBN or MPN directly into the search bar. Listings that contain the required identifiers will receive better search visibility, so if any of your existing listings are missing these identifiers, be sure to update them as soon as you can.”
As an example:
So it’s well worth getting on top of those Product Identifiers, as we’ve reported before, to help your item visibility.
22 Responses
Having a standard identifier search across all sellers products will only drive prices down reducing profit for sellers as well as eBay looks like a home goal to me.
The race to the bottom has just upped another gear how long before all sellers undercut each other until all the profit in the goods has gone.
I wonder if eBay have realised this effect and will hide some of the cheapest items from some results to avoid a race to the bottom
Yes, but the nuisance of it is, you can no longer search for eBay item numbers in the search box.
after 70+ hours of needless work making sure my listings are now MPN compliant, customers can search for the same thing they searched for previously.
i originally made all off my listings with the brand and model IN THE TITLE, where it should be, so customers have always been able to search by brand and model.
I think the only people to benefit would be those who have “thing for sale l@@@k” as their title. these are not the sellers i would want being brought to the top of my search results.
As ever , one step forwards, one step back!
Good point – You can now search and find an 11 digit numeric part number without getting a message saying the eBay listing you are searching is not valid or over 90 days old.
Bad point – No current ebay listing numbers cannot be searched. Doh!
This wouldn’t be so bad if the resolution centre was set up properly. If you get a claim and try to find the original listing, the RC link take you to a bastardised version of the order which doesn’t show anything useful like payment date, estimated ship date, tracking details etc.
I appreciate that you can use advanced search and select by item number, but why make things such a PITA to fix a simple issue?
Perhaps good news for buyers – it will drive prices down. But why would it be good news for me as a seller? I don’t operate within China. I do pay VAT. I do have to pay reasonable/legal wages with the required benefits. This will drefinitely be a race to the bottom.
With mobile devices often having barcode reader apps, buyers are able to pick up and item in a B&M store scan the code and see what options are on ebay easily like they have been able to do on Amazon for a long time.
its a two edged sword but does catch up with Amazon.
The number of times I’ve thought “I wish I could search by GTIN, UPC, EAN, ISBN or MPN”
ZERO.
The number of times I will now search by GTIN, UPC, EAN, ISBN or MPN.
ZERO.
Such a shame their Product API does not allow search on EANs. It only allows search on EANs for Books or ISBNs, and UPCs only for certain categories.
Do you think they will add the EAN lookup in their API as well?
Thanks