eBay Listing Quality Report Confusion Continues; Changes Planned For 2025
Sellers have been frustrated and confused about the status of the eBay Listing Quality Report, with many losing access earlier this year, but discussions with staff at eBay Open 2024 have finally revealed the future plans for this feature.
If you're not familiar, the Listing Quality Report, was introduced by previous VP Seller Experience Harry Temkin in December 2020.
The early release version was an absolute mess of missing and incorrect data and was definitely not ready for Prime Time.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
In fact, there were so many problems with it that Harry was forced to join the eBay community just to respond to our feedback (the community team has changed Harry's ID to anonymous since he left the company back in June 2021 but you can still see he signed the posts).
I actually hopped on a Zoom call with several members of the team responsible for the report to help them pinpoint some of the issues and over several months, they did finally make some much needed improvements.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
In the Fall 2021 Seller Update, we were told there would be even more enhancements to the Listing Quality Report that would be coming in September 2021, but they were never actually rolled out and eBay announced the Listing Quality Report was going to be discontinued in February 2023.
Liz Morton
At that time, eBay for Business podcast hosts Jim "Griff" Griffith and Brian Burke said it was being sunsetted because it was simply a "beta" test whose time had come but eBay was going to "evaluate what pieces of it to include down the road or in the future."
I took issue with that characterization, questioning how eBay could justify calling a (then) 2 year old feature that had been rolled out to most sellers for single item buy it now listings in multiple countries, promoted extensively by third party partners like Teikametrics, List Rank Sell, Frooition etc., had official tutorials and instructional videos/content created and had promised improvements that were supposed to be on the roadmap still a "beta."
I also surmised at the time that "Evaluate what pieces to include down the road or in the future" may have been code for "we're exploring ways to package up data we provided for free for two years and find a way to monetize it" or that after Harry Temkin and several key members of eBay R&D in Israel that had worked on the project left, no one at eBay had a clue how to address issues with the report or complete the promised improvements.
After significant seller pushback, eBay reversed course and announced the Listing Quality Report would remain available through the Seller Hub Performance tab, allowing sellers continued access to critical data - particularly the part of the report that shows when listings are being rejected from inclusion in Google Shopping and, if so, the reasons for rejection.
But then in February 2024, many sellers suddenly either lost access to the report or encountered errors when trying to download it - and while some eventually regained access, others never did and have been asking questions for 7+ months as to what happened and how they can get it back, with no answers forthcoming from eBay in that time.
Liz Morton
Several of those sellers took the opportunity of the eBay Open 2024 virtual seller conference to see if they could get more information and unsurprisingly, initial responses provided conflicting information.
wastingtime101
First, sellers were told eBay was working to restore the report to more sellers.
Update from a rep at eBay Open today:
"We are working on restoring this to more sellers."
Then Product Manager, Seller Experience David Bernstein said that rather than making the report available to more sellers, eBay would be working to show the data in the report in more places directly in Seller Hub in the future.
New update from eBay Open:
David Bernstein, Product Manager, Seller Experience said, "As to the Product Quality Report, it's been available to a small number of sellers and rather than opening it up to more sellers, we are working on ways of providing the same info more directly in the places where you manage your active listings."
Others were told by different members of eBay staff that the report was being ramped to more sellers, but there was confusion about whether sellers could request to be manually added to the list to have it available again.
here's another answer about it on the Seller Hub Performance Board: I did @Bernstein about it on the board where he posted the answer that Wastingtime quoted.
so right hand/left hand......confusion again....
Bernstein then clarified that the current version of the report is not being ramped to more sellers on a wider scale, but those who reach out can have it added manually, and that sometime next year "key insights" from the LQR will instead be added directly to Seller Hub.
David Bernstein - eBay
Hi @D , so sorry for frustrating you. Lots of moving parts at eBay! I reached out to the team responsible for the listing quality report and learned that the current version is not being ramped to more sellers -- but if any sellers reach out and ask to get it, the team will add the feature for those sellers.Starting sometime next year, key insights and recommendations (formerly in the listing quality report -- which is an Excel spreadsheet for those who don't know) will be shown directly on the Seller Hub active listings page as well as on the Performance Summary page. Again, sorry for the confusion.
It will be interesting to see which parts of the report make the migration and whether it will truly be a replacement for the current version or if it will be watered down or lack transparency, like the new Ads Dashboard.
Liz Morton
What parts of the Listing Quality Report do you find most helpful and hope that eBay keeps in future versions? Let us know in the comments below!
