Item specifics soon to be required in CD category - why??

[jfmgray]

So eBay has commenced prompts to update item specifics in CD category as some specifics are soon to be mandatory which are name of artist, album title and type (which strangely is CD for all my listings in the CD category!!)  All this information is already in the item title and is easily found when people search for an item.  So what am I missing here??  Do buyers actually search by item specifics??  ( I wouldn't know how myself).  Do item specifics help google search results??  I really hope there is a worthwhile reason to motivate me to commence the arduous task of updating 1500 listings.

[davewil1964]

They want heaps in 'books'.

I fill in the ones I feel are relevant, even including 'narrative type (fiction or non-fiction)' even though that is in the selected option when I create a listing.

What does bug me is that their 'catalog' is now including publication date, which can vary within an ISBN, but seems to have dropped language, which is far more important. I doubt the same ISBN applies to different languages, and I'm not going through 2000 listings to edit them to include it.

I can understand it - the people who wrote the code probably don't know what a book looks like. Or a CD.

[heihachi_73]

Item specifics are built into the search engine, so anything that isn't in the listing's title will still show up in the results if it's in the item specifics. Even if you type nothing but the item's barcode number (UPC/EAN/GTIN/ISBN etc.) into the search bar, the item will show up unless a seller has filled in "Does not apply" to every single one of their items out of laziness.

[digital*ghost]

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@jfmgray wrote:

Do buyers actually search by item specifics??  

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Sometimes - often I just search for an artist and / or title. Multiple products can come up in various categories, so I tend to use the refinements on the left hand side rather than adding to the keywords, and when a category is flooded, any seller who hasn't filled in the specifics will be filtered out of search (this used to bother me as a buyer because i wanted to see everything and get the best buy, but these days if I want something, I'll use the specifics to intentionally only show the items from sellers who bothered to use them, since I can't be bothered opening hundreds of listings to double-check if it actually has the attributes I'm looking for - in saying that, this applies to non-visible specifics more than obvious ones, eg sizes, and brands as well. If I want something electronic, selecting which brands I want to see narrows it down much better and gets rid of all the "unspecified" products that are "compatible with" [brand] etc).

It might have more to do with how listings can be grouped by eBay, than how buyers search for CDs, though. (eg "see similar listings" boxes and other things like that, and / or their continuing efforts to consolidate listings Amazon-style). 

[davewil1964]

They've stuffed 'books' up now.

Combined fiction and non-fiction into a single category. Which wouldn't be an issue if they had transferred the existing specifics on existing listings to the new category. Of course, they didn't.

They did add a lot of spurious specifics fields, though.

And suddenly ISBN isn't good enough for books, it's now called UPC.

[digital*ghost]

Yeah the way they've formatted and categorised books makes very little sense. As a test, I searched for a keyword and refined it to books, but "type" was at the top, showing I could refine to activity, colouring, or non-specified. Then hidden at the bottom was narrative type, which allowed me to refine by fiction, non-fiction or not specified. 

I dunno why they are calling that "narrative type" - I intuitively thought that was referring to whether the book was written in first person, third person etc. 🤣

Also, the keyword I typed in was "psychology". Being able to refine between fiction and non-fiction seems a bit more important than being able to refine to the one colouring book that's listed (which is a colouring book with "inspirational" quotes, and doesn't have "psychology" as a keyword anywhere near the listing. 🙄 ). 

[jfmgray]

-deleted as I found the answer to my question

[p9games]

Seems to be across the board.  I have about 20 item specifics, missing one.

Thankfully the software I use makes mapping these values to my catalogue easy.  If I had to do my listings manually I'd probably give up

[hobby_cds]

The additional Specifics are a joke!

CD Grading

CD Booklet Grading

CD Case Grading

If an item is brand new and sealed these should be irrelevant! We sell second hand items from time to time too and again all this info is readily available in the item description!

DVD's is no different now you need to add in 

"Studio"

"Director"

"Type" Movie - Mini Series - TV Series

"Features"

All these are already catered for in the old format!

Again all these have been already stated on the old specifics

[lynne8221]

So, do we know what the ramifications are if all of these fields are not filled out in each listing?

I have over 3000 listings & I'm getting the sinking feeling that I'm going to have to update a lot of unnecessary fields - whether I like it or not!