EcommerceBytes-NewsFlash, Number 2625 - September 07, 2011     2 of 4

eBay Gives Sellers Longer Titles to Describe Listings

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eBay sellers now have an extra 25 characters they can include in listing titles. On September 6, eBay rolled out a change that increased the number of characters available for item titles from 55 to 80. Sellers will be able to add more keywords and buyer-attracting descriptors to maximize exposure of their listings in search results.

Some sellers have wondered how the change might affect their visibility in Google Product Search. eBay published a warning yesterday for sellers to place important keywords at the beginning of their titles. "While all 80 characters are used to determine search relevancy, there may be some instances where all 80 characters are not displayed due to the size limitations of some pages."

eBay published other best practices for creating listing titles. Among the advice was not to use capital letters, punctuation or special characters in titles, and it reminded sellers of its keyword spamming and misleading titles policy. It also published advice on editing listings in bulk.

An EcommerceBytes reader tried to edit his listing titles using eBay's Turbo Lister listing tool, but said it was not allowing longer titles. "The funny thing is that the longer titles I edited on eBay appear in active listings even though I can not update templates or listings on inventory."

With each major seller update, eBay makes available a checklist for sellers. The Seller Checklist for the fall 2011 updates is available here.

About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.
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