Ebay's "See Full Item Description" - Check Your Listings.

Well, like many sellers ebay has made another change to their system. If you have any form of http html links in your description then your full description will be replaced with a clickable "See Full Item Description" button. This just started two days ago and it's sure to affect anyone's sales if they are not compliant.
I've been affected as well since I host my own photos with http links. Also my version of TurboLister also places a http link within the description. Other larger sellers like NobleSpirit and NYStamps have also been affected as well. If you sell on ebay check your listings. Check your html code for any http links. Switch them over to https if you can. I can't - probably going with ebay pictures services in the future *cringe* and use a third party software that I'll have to pay for on a monthly basis.
As for why ebay has changed the system, they are blaming Google. I'm sure someone else will step in the explain that more. They are also trying to make things more "mobile" friendly I guess and/or cut down on bandwidth. It's causing havok for sellers. ebay tried this earlier to much uproar and they're hearing it again. It's a real pain to go and correct everything. I'm going to close my ebay store next month just to have the time to correct everything and move over to a new software system.

Yeah, I started noticing it a few days ago, not on my own listings but as I was shopping.

I made a few changes starting about 2 months ago in preparation for all of this hooey:

1. I converted all of my websites from http to https. It took some time, but luckily no out-of-pocket costs, since there are now the equivalent of "open source" SSL certificates. My server hosting support took care of all of the SSL cert installation and helping me set up redirects so that all existing http links would forward automatically; no links would die.

(This affects my ebay listings because I host all my images on my own server on different domains, so I can control where/how images are accessed. It's all inhouse, no reliance of Imgur or Photobucket... we all saw how that fiasco worked for people... NOT!)

2. The one nice thing that the new Seller Hub selling page has is a bulk description edior. I can edit my ebay listings 200 at a time and do a global search and replace across all descriptions, converting http to https and also stripping out unwanted code.

Surprisingly it only took me about an hour to get 500+ listings compliant.

3. I edited all my listing templates to use acceptable code moving forward.

My recommendation:

Rather than relying on ebay's picture hosting, register a domain name for $8/year. Then get yourself a $10-20/month hosting account with a host that supports the open source SSL certs, use the domain only for your image hosting, and then you don't have to use ebay's image hosting in order to have 10, 20, 50, 100 images in a listing.

It's not expensive to host all of your own images. Then you can post high resolution images anywhere you want by using remote links to your own images rather than being limited to what an image uploader supports, whether that's here, on ebay, or any other platform.

Hey revenuecollector, Thanks for the feedback. I do have a hosting account like you've mentioned to host my own pics. I've also figured out how to transfer the pics on there to an SSL subdirectory. I'll have to use the bulk description editor on ebay to change all http addresses. I just need to add an /ssl/ to each one. The links now redirect to a secure image so that works fine.
I've done this to one listing, but unfortunately it still doesn't work. The "See Full Item Description" link is still there without my full description. I've also deleted the TurboLister tag too. Here's the same listing I've altered: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Aland-1999...263239983823 As one can see, there's nothing fancy about the listing - text and picture.
I don't know if you or anyone else can tell on your end what the offending piece of code maybe. Once I figure this one item out then I'll bulk edit the rest. I only have 11 days left on the current listings. It will be easier to edit upcoming listings, but I still might want to try a different software. I definitely want this corrected before listing new material via auctions.

When viewing the description after it opens in a new window, press CTRL+U to view the source code of the description. As you can see, the link to the image is still using http not https. I believe that is the problem.

EDIT: SERIOUSLY??? This board has a filter that replaces the letter "u" by itself with "you"? Come on now! We don't need to parse/replace people's textspeak. That takes grumpy curmudgeon to a whole new level. Even I'm not that bad.

Yea, the image link is now

http://www.battlestamps.com/2015/ssl/53566a.jpg

but it redirects it to : https://p11.secure.hostingprod.com/...l/53566a.jpg

I can try inserting that last address into it.

Ahh, ok. There's your problem. Any redirect you put in place is at your server's end, whereas ebay is parsing the code in the listing. They have no way of knowing what redirect you might or might not have in place. The link in the description code must be https not http. That is what flags the listing muck-up.

I've revised it again and added the https photo link and still it doesn't work. On the revision page there's a new "Mobile Friendly Checker". I've tried that. I have no problems with active content links nor any problems with non-compliant links. However, two things pop up "Mobile View" - "Image exceeds screen width" and "Viewport meta tag incorrect or missing". These two things shouldn't be an issue or are they?

I did use CTRL-U. Like I said before, the image link is now https, but no go. There's a http in the last line - <script src="http://ir.ebaystatic.com/rs/v/1yzqmzxk3a3utciscis2t10n1uu.js" type="text/javascript"></script> I don't think this has anything to do with the listing description. There's also an http with the contact ebay too, but again not part of description.

I wrote too soon. It's working now!! Thanks! ebay is a pain in the butt. I'm not going to bother for the current listings, but I'll revise all the items for next month and so on. I'll just have to transfer all the pics on the ftp site to the ssl directory and change the addresses to that longer link. Oh what fun - not. But at least I can stop pulling out my hair so to speak.

Well, whatever you did worked. I no longer have to open the description in a new window. It's all within the page.

The text is being cut off though, since the image is wider than the description frame. I would add width="100%" to your image tag to constrain it and the text to the frame.

Suddenly today ebay stopped using the "Full Item Description" link. at least on my auctions. I didn't change anything and all of a sudden it reverted to the old way.

It hasn't changed for me. I've been busy updating all my upcoming listings for auctions and BIN. Somethings are simple "find and replace" and I just had to use ftp to switch all my hosted pics to a ssl directory. I have discovered that if you're using TurboLister while hosting your own pics that you'll still need to have pics at a http address in order for a gallery image to work. TL didn't accept my https url as a valid link although it was fine in the html of the item description. Basically, I have to upload at least the first pic of ever listing via ftp twice into two different directories. Just another reason to ditch TL.

I checked out your items and I still see "See Full... " but on my items it's gone. Very strange.

I listed 1,000 BIN items today with the updated https photo links within the html of the description. Everything seems to be back in working order and I no longer see the "See Full Item Description" button anymore. ebay must have resolved the TurboLister tag on it's own as I didn't have to edit it as predicted. Nice to have everything in proper working condition again.

Looks good!

Has not changed for me, either, and I have so many listings like that -- well, I'm just not going to try to fix them all. I do wonder if that will put off potential buyers.