Question
Each month the eBay Store Team hosts a Brown Bag Lunch, an hour and half open discussion, on the eBay Store Board.
Several hours after the session ended this month, the Trust & Safety Dep't added the following posts, to the end of the four pages of comments, which has not gotten much attention as few reread the transcript.
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Hi Stores Members:
My name is Matt Halprin and I work in Trust and Safety. This thread was forwarded to me by the Stores team and I wanted to address a few of your general questions and concerns and let you know that we anticipate conducting one of these sessions devoted to Trust and Safety and Policy next month.
Inconsistent enforcement
Several store owners have expressed frustration with why eBay enforces its policies sometimes but not other times. At eBay, we don’t choose explicitly to selectively enforce our policies – we just don’t have 100% enforcement. An analogy might be drivers exceeding the speed limit. We don’t have 100% enforcement of our speed limits. Instead – the police occasionally patrol the highways the check for speeders. When the police catch one – they issue a ticket. If I’m the one caught – it may be frustrating that there were others speeding at the same time I was who didn’t get a ticket – but it’s doesn’t mean I was okay violating the speed limit and don’t have to pay my ticket.
With policy on eBay – we strive for 100% enforcement of some of our policies (e.g. fraud, guns, drugs) and try to enforce the other policies enough. We don’t look at some violating listings and choose to ignore them while taking actions on other violating listings.
Lack of enforcement
A different question is why we don’t enforce search manipulation and links policies more. In my opinion – we need to. Historically, we haven’t invested enough in our policy area – but that changed about 6 months ago and there is now a team built to look at all our major policy areas (Shill Bidding, VeRO, Fee Circumvention, Search Manipulation, Feedback, etc.) and build initiative plans for how to manage these policies better. We’re looking at whether our policies need to be updated, whether we need to explain the policies better, whether our staffing is appropriate and whether our consequences make sense in light of the violation. We have already decided to make some significant changes and will be building these during 2005. I’ll highlight a few right now:
1)Policy clarity: in May we’re moving all of our policies into a new, more user friendly template that will clearly outline the policy, the consequences for violating the policy, examples of violations, and why eBay has the policy.
2)Tutorials: we’re building tutorials for our major policy areas. Our first, for VeRO, launches later this month. These will help our members understand how to comply with our marketplace’s rules.
3)New consequences: we’re building tighter restrictions for members who violate our policies repeatedly including listing limits, forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings and suspensions. Some of you may have noticed that we suspended several large PowerSellers recently in the Jewelry category for policy violations. We will continue to tighten our guidelines since sellers who violate our policies put sellers who comply at a competitive disadvantage – which isn’t fair.
Keyword spamming
Simply put – keyword spamming occurs when members place brand names or other inappropriate "keywords" in a title, description or payment methods section for the purpose of gaining attention or diverting members to a listing. It is not permitted on eBay. Unless the text a seller puts in a listing is directly relevant to the item being sold – the seller is violating our search manipulation policies. Some sellers want to add text to help buyers find other items they are selling. That practice would be alright – as long as that text isn’t picked up in search. We are working with our product team to find ways to make this possible. We don’t have all the answers right now. However, please exercise caution – any seller who places text not relevant to the item being sold in that listing that gets picked up in search is in violation of this policy and risks consequences from our Trust and Safety team.
More to Come
The TnS Policy team would be happy to hold a special session for stores sellers next month if stores sellers would find it helpful. Please just let the stores team know and we’ll schedule time on the calendar to hold a longer discussion. All of us at eBay care deeply about our members and this great marketplace. We want to make it as great for you as we can and know we don’t always meet your expectations. Please know we are trying and will continue to try to make it better.
Matt Halprin
Trust & Safety
Answer
Very nice, "politically-correct" business language properly sandwiching what is seen AS some of the problems being brought up and what we may or may not do, with virually nothing in between. Kind of like ordering a Big Mac and getting the bun, sauce, and pickles.....but no meat.
The keyword spamming issue and selective enforcement has to be one of the biggest jokes at eBay. DARE to have the audacity to list the ACTUAL contents of a vintage catalog or magazine and you run the very real risk of being immediately slapped down and your listing yanked.....along with the 'you have SINNED~noted on your permanent record' email from the PTB. But....if you run across someone that has 5,000+ keywords buried inside a listing utilizing the white-on-white scheme......and report it; don't hold your breath that it will disappear.....those people are simply "warned" that their listings are in violation and are given time to make changes....not that they will because they have already learned that eBay typically does nothing BUT warn them. They simply let the items continue the run, and slap more listings into the system with the same keywords hidden. I've never understood how such blatant, in-your-face misuse of keywords and intentional circumvention of the KS policy is permitted to exist for a nano-second after being seen by the people that are responsible for enforcement of the rules?
Course, with the "new & improved" search brain fart they rolled out this past week.....eBay is doing enough of their OWN keyword spamming manipulations to fork up the system anyway.
Answer
2)Tutorials: we’re building tutorials for our major policy areas. Our first, for VeRO, launches later this month. These will help our members understand how to comply with our marketplace’s rules.
There is evidence that a comprehensive tutorial for the use of search engines should have been done by this time, instead of the destruction of the effectiveness of the search engine that has taken place very recently.
[quote]3)New consequences: we’re building tighter restrictions for members who violate our policies repeatedly including listing limits, forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings and suspensions. Some of you may have noticed that we suspended several large PowerSellers recently in the Jewelry category for policy violations. We will continue to tighten our guidelines since sellers who violate our policies put sellers who comply at a competitive disadvantage – which isn’t fair.[quote]
Forfeit of fees is a prominent change in direction.
Does anyone know the precise "policy violations" that these powersellers were suspended for, and how long the suspension was?
Keyword spamming
Simply put – keyword spamming occurs when members place brand names or other inappropriate "keywords" in a title, description or payment methods section for the purpose of gaining attention or diverting members to a listing. It is not permitted on eBay. Unless the text a seller puts in a listing is directly relevant to the item being sold – the seller is violating our search manipulation policies.
Unfortunately, Ebay's enforcement deems that keyword spamming applies to printed material (now: other than books lkisted specifically in the book categories) even when the details are directly relevant to the item being offered. In the case of trade catalogues, the rules state that describing the contents is in violation of keyword spamming policy and it has become risky to list them with a description that is entirely appropriate for the buyers.
The need for Key Word Spamming policy is legitimate. The results of the adjustments to the search engine in the last week though, have done far more damage to an effective search than key word spamming does. Example: Now the search for Spiderman Actiuon Figure brings up clocks, wallets, t-shirts, watches, bikes, etc. This result is far worse than any keyword spamming.
Some sellers want to add text to help buyers find other items they are selling. That practice would be alright – as long as that text isn’t picked up in search. We are working with our product team to find ways to make this possible. We don’t have all the answers right now. However, please exercise caution – any seller who places text not relevant to the item being sold in that listing that gets picked up in search is in violation of this policy and risks consequences from our Trust and Safety team.
I deliberately list in runs of "like" things. I add something to the effect of: "Please check my other auctions this week for more {items of the same nature}. Items can be combined to reduce shipping costs." I have gotten increasingly careful to be sure that the wording in the brackets is not broad enough to cause a key word spamming violation. My descriptions of the actual items, however, may still be in violation. I have not had any problems so far this year.
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The overall problem though, is that there is no point in addressing these issues, if Ebay's own alterations and policy changes continue to interfere with the areas that they address. The current search issues are a major example of this problem, and Ebay needs to get consistant sensible policy and site management if they have any chance of making the site properly workable again.
Kevin