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nu.life asked

Finding: What is the best way to find listings for exact items that aren't in ebay's catalog (have UPC)

I'm using the Finding API to find completed and active listings for specific products. I would like to ensure that all (or most) returned items are an exact match, so searching by UPC is ideal.


Q: Am I correct that supplying a productId (type: UPC) will only work if the item is in the catalog?

Example: findCompletedItems -- <productId type="UPC">...</productId>


I've found that Ebay only has around 3% of our products in its catalog. This would mean that it fails to retrieve information for the majority of our products, which would be a problem.


Which brings two followup questions:


Q: Is there a way to filter products by UPC as an attribute? (and would that be the best option?)

Q: Otherwise, what is the best route to go to ensure that we're getting proper matches? We have UPC, brand, manufacturer, & MPN, but that could lead to a lot of errant results

findcompleteditemsfinditemsadvanced-findingfinditemsapi findig
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ankit_developersupport answered

Hi @phyr0x,


Product details are used to pre-fill item information, which is used to describe the item and can also help surface the item in searches.

eBay supports the following types of product ID types: ISBN, UPC, EAN, and ReferenceID (ePID, also known as an eBay Product Reference ID). ReferenceID values are returned when available. A UPC, ISBN, or EAN product identifier will be returned only when a ReferenceID is not available.

This productId value can be used as input with findItemsByProduct to retrieve items that were listed with the specified eBay catalog product.

This field is only returned when a product was used to list the item.


For more information please go through this Doc REF: https://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/finding/CallRef/findItemsByProduct.html


Best Regards,

eBay Developer Support


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nu.life answered

Hi Ankit, @


Thank you for responding. I am getting the error "Invalid product ID value." These are valid UPC codes, however, they are not in the Ebay Product catalog.


My first question was, does searching by UPC only work for items that are in the Ebay Catalog?


Thanks

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ankit_developersupport answered

Hi @phyr0x,


The UPC value for products in Music (e.g., CDs), DVD and Movie, and Video Game categories.

If you know a product's UPC number, you can use this value instead of the eBay Reference ID to search for that product.

REF: https://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/finding/CallRef/findItemsByProduct.html

If the product is in the eBay catalog, you’ll see similar products otherwise, it won't work.


Best Regards,

eBay Developer Support

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