Item Specifics

Item specifics tell buyers what you’re selling, and are crucial to your search visibility and sales. The more data you give us about your listings, the better we can match you with buyers in search.

About Item Specifics

Item specifics such as brand, make, model, size, colour and style are key to helping shoppers find your items on eBay. They match with the filters that buyers use to refine their search results so we can match you with the right buyers, at the right time. The more data you give us about what you’re selling, the better we can match your item with buyers in search.

To get the best results from your listings, add as many item specifics as you can and be aware of those that are required in your categories.

Item Specifics Requirements

To help you succeed, we’re continuing to expand item specifics requirements in certain categories. You will only be able to publish your new or revised listings in these categories, once you’ve filled out the required information. We recommend using our selling tools to review and update your existing listings (read more below). Here is an overview of the current requirements:

Additional item specifics recommendations will be effective 27 May 2020 in Jewellery & Watches, Sporting Goods and Industrial categories.
Required and recommended item specifics in Electronics and Home & Garden categories were due to be introduced from the end of March but will now be effective from August 2020.
Certain item specifics have been required in Fashion, Food & Drinks and Home & Garden categories since October 2019.

We'll continue to notify sellers in affected categories when new requirements are introduced.

View Categories With Required and Recommended Item Specifics*

*This file was last updated on 12 May 2020. If you are not seeing this version of the file, please clear your browser's download history and download the file again, or try a different browser.

Required vs. Recommended Item Specifics

“Required” item specifics are considered essential information for buyers shopping for these products. You won't be able to create or revise listings without entering these details
“Recommended” item specifics are based on frequently searched terms. Including these will help buyers to find your listings more easily and understand exactly what you're selling

Why Item Specifics Matter

Adding item specifics to your listings is crucial to your visibility and competitive ranking in search results, both on and off eBay. By adding required and recommended item specifics, you’ll benefit from:

Increased Search Visibility: Your listing will only appear in buyers’ filtered search results if you’ve added the matching item specific information to your listing.

Improved Search Ranking: Item specifics move your listings higher in search results, both on eBay and the other search engines we work with, like Google Shopping.

Connecting with the Right Buyers: When you provide item specifics, we can better connect you with buyers searching for your products.

Inclusion in New Buyer Experiences: By listing with Item specifics, your listings are included in new buyer experiences on the platform, so we can showcase similar items together, cross-sell, and suggest relevant inventory to buyers.

Adding Item Specifics When Creating Listings

eBay’s listing forms show you which fields are the most important to fill in and how complete your listing is. Simply enter a keyword-rich title when creating your listing and we’ll pre-populate many of the item specifics fields for you.

The lightning bolt meter lets you know how many more searches you will match with each additional item-specific you add.

Update Your Item Specifics with Seller Hub Features

Overview tab – if any required item specifics are missing from your active listings, you’ll see a task prompting you to add them.

Listings tab – on your Active listings page, you’ll see a quick filter that shows how many of your active listings are missing required item specifics.

After you’ve clicked on the task or on the quick filter, you’ll see an Add item specifics link next to each listing in the Actions column.

A pop-up window will appear, which will allow you to add all required and recommended item specifics.

Over the next few months, we’ll be launching some new features to help you with the requirements for item specifics.

“Required Soon” feature. This feature available in Seller Hub will give you information about upcoming item specifics requirements and the dates that they will become required for your current listings. It will become available as new item specifics requirements are put into place for your categories and will help you plan in advance. This feature will be available directly in the listing flow as well as in Active Listings.

Item specifics rankings. This feature gives you guidance on what the most important item specifics your buyers are searching for using buyer demand data (the number of searches over the past 30 days). Within each item specific section, you will see the most important item specifics at the top. Providing these item specifics will help to increase your item’s visibility especially when buyer’s use the left-hand navigation filters.

Item specifics download/upload feature. This feature will be available in the Seller Hub Active Listings page this Winter and will allow you to download a file of your listings containing item specifics information. You can make changes to the file by interacting with the file to select available values, as well as see which item specifics are required, recommended, and optional and then upload it to update your listings.

Over the next few weeks, you will also be able to quickly update item specifics using a bulk flow in Seller Hub Active Listings. You can select the listings you’d like to update and go through them quickly to choose your item specifics.

Please note that where we are changing existing item specifics to a new like-for-like item specific value, we will match these on your listings automatically when your items are renewed, relisted, or revised. If the item specific has changed and there is no exact match, we won’t do this and you will need to update these listings.