Ebay Enforcing New Item Specifics In The Stamps Category

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I do not think it is about making it easier for developers, it is about making it easier for searchers.

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I've been to a number of meetings where ebay staff has discussed the increasing importance of item specifics. Here are some take-aways:

ebay is tending to become more inventory-centric — that means it wants to identify items by standard quantifiable inventory terms that are easier to catalog, rather than relying on a single title or wordy item descriptions.

1) New items should use UPC codes in order to correctly autofill the item specifics. That is why UPCs are now mandatory.

2) ebay is developing its own "catalog" of items and encourages sellers to list against the catalog whenever possible. A catalog item is defined by either UPC or item specifics.

3) When a seller has an older product, ebay encourages sellers to use as many item specifics as necessary to describe the product. When another similar product is listed with similar item specifics, a virtual catalog item will be created based on those item specifics.

4) As more unknown items add more item specifics, similar items become "known" by those item specifics, and a virtual catalog item can be created or can be cut away from less similar items.

5) When a google keyword search queries ebay, ebay will match those keywords against its own catalog of real or virtual items (matching against item specifics) and will return those search results that match item specifics. This is particularly important exposure for items that have no persistence, like auctions or short term BINs.

6) Item Specifics that become well defined in a particular product group will tend to appear in the left column of search for fine-tuning the search.

In short, Item Specifics are extremely important if you do not have a UPC or if the UPC covers multiple attributes of a single item (like different versions).