Keyword Spamming on Ebay
Today, one of my Ebay items I was selling was due to end after having been on sale for seven days, and literally a couple of hours before it was due to end I received an email from Ebay stating that the item had been removed from sale as a result of ‘keyword spamming’.
Apparently the use of the word ‘As New’ at any point in the title is considered to be “using brand names or other inappropriate keywords in an item title or description for the purpose of gaining attention or diverting buyers to a listing”.
A couple of points:
- Why wasn’t this breach made more while going through the listing proceedure? Surely Ebay could invest in software which detects if these words are used, which could then automatically inform the user?
- Why wasn’t I informed earlier? This item has been on sale seven days and it had bids placed on it. They could have contacted me a long time ago which would have given me time to adjust the listing without effecting the bidders.
I know that Ebay have got to have rules and regulations and I’m sure it’s mentioned in their user agreements and policies, but when something so simple and unharmful can cost a user a sale, instant removal of a listing with no prior warning is a poor method of managing the issue, on top of the bad usability to start with.
If you’re clearly taking the piss with a page title then fine, but I think lesser punishments and warnings would be more suitable for people who make a mistake for the first time. Read Ebay’s largely unknown keyword spamming tutorial here. I’ll not complain because believe it or not the 10p listing fee isn’t a big deal, but I thought people should know what Ebay considers ‘keyword spamming’.
