Marketplace Connect - Ebay Categories not working

Shopify Apps

Topic summary

Issue: Marketplace Connect’s eBay auto-categorization feature has stopped working, causing products to default to the generic “lots more…other” category. Manual category selection also shows “No eBay category suggestions found.”

Root Cause: eBay retired the APIs previously used for auto-categorization, requiring manual category assignment going forward.

Suggested Workarounds:

  • Use bulk edit feature to assign categories to multiple products at once
  • Create custom Shopify metafields containing eBay browse node IDs, then map the eBay Category field to those metafields for automatic assignment
  • Contact 24/7 support at marketplace-connect@shopify.com for assistance

Ongoing Problem: One user reports categories reverting to “everything” category on eBay after 1-2 days, despite setting them correctly on both platforms. This causes loss of active promotions. Support has not yet resolved this persistence issue, and the user needs clearer guidance on implementing the metafield/browse node solution.

Status: Unresolved for users experiencing category reversion issues.

Summarized with AI on October 28. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello everyone,

Is anyone else having trouble when using Marketplace Connect to list products on eBay. The

Auto categorization

function is not working for me, products are only ever listed to the “lots more…other” category.

Even when you try and manually change the category there are no suggest categories just “No eBay category suggestions found!”

I have many listings and this will take forever manually changing categories.

Thanks for any help

2

Hi,

JoyV here from Marketplace Connect support. eBay has already retired the APIs we were using to support eBay auto-categorization. As such, it is now necessary to manually select a category before sending your products to eBay for listing. We do have plans to make that more obvious in the listings page of the app, by forcing a category selection before products can be listed.

In the meantime, you may use the bulk edit feature on the app to assign a category in bulk to your products that will fall under the same category. You may also create a custom metafield on Shopify that will hold the browse node IDs of the categories you wish to assign to your product, and once created, you may then map the eBay Category field to that metafield so we can automatically assign that category to your products once published on eBay.

If you have further questions/concerns, feel free to contact our 24/7 support team at marketplace-connect@shopify.com.

3

Thank you for the update.

1 Like
4

Hello,

I continue to have issues with categories sticking on eBay. I have set the top level category on Shopify, then set the same category manually on eBay, which will show it has worked. However, a day or 2 later, it goes back to being the “everything” category on eBay and looses any promotions I’m doing.

I’ve contacted the support email listed above, but they don’t seem to understand the issue nor can they get all the details I’m providing in reference to this post.

Can you provide more specific instructions on how to solve this issue?

I’ve done bulk editing on Shopify, I’ve done bulk editing on eBay, I’ve done single editing on both, I’ve tried all ways to get this to resolve, but I’m having no luck. I also have no idea what the other options are you suggested in this post - i.e. metafields, browser nodes, etc.

Thank you for your time.