My Quick Fix

Problem

I need to send a mate a link to an item on eBay after breaking his strimmer. The nice people at eBay have reworked their URL structure recently to improve SEO, so a link to a single item now looks something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Medium-duty-bump-head-for-Kawasaki-brushcutter-strimmer_W0QQitemZ190302614007QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Home_Garden_GardenPowerTools_CA?hash=item2c4eeb71f7&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65:12|66:2|39:1|72:1686|293:1|294:50

..which is not exactly Twitter, Live Messenger or email friendly. Long URLs break often in email and instant messengers when they ‘wrap’ at the end of a line (like the above is doing).

Solution

Here’s the old style linking system that still works: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190302614007

So you can use that structure for a link to any item. Just paste…

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=

…into your browser, email or anything followed by the item number, as above, and it’ll work.

If you can’t find the item number in the complicated URL, remember its on each item listing page here:

Bonus trick for Chrome or Firefox users:

Chrome and Firefox both allow custom searches to be added easily via bookmarks. These allow you to type a ‘keyword’ into the address bar, then a ‘search phrase’, and automatically search a specific site for it. This useful functionality is perfect for getting a link to an eBay item. What you do is create a custom search with the keyword ‘el’ (for ‘eBay Link’, but use whatever you’ll remember, keep it short!) and point it to ‘http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=%s’. Note: the ‘%s’ is substituted for the search phrase – in this case an item number – when the search is done.

Chrome Instructions

Open the Chrome options:

Then follow this process:

1. Click the  ’Manage’ button in the ‘Default Search’ area.
2. In the ‘Search Engines’ window, click ‘Add’.
3. Name the new custom search.
4. Give it an easy to remember keyword.
5. In URL enter: “http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=%s”.
6. ‘Ok’ the window, and ‘close’ out of the others.

Here’s the visual process:

Now to use your new custom eBay item linker, type “el [item number]” into the Chrome address bar, and hit ‘enter/return’. You’ll notice that as soon as you’ve typed “el” and a space and start to enter the item number, Chrome shows that you’re about to do a custom search:

great right? Yea I love it too.

FireFox instructions

In firefox it’s a very similar process:

1. Open the ‘Organise Bookmarks’ pane with Ctrl + Shift + B (on a dirty mac it’s Shift + Command + B).
2. Under ‘Unsorted Bookmarks’ add a new Bookmark and name it ‘eBay Item Link’ or whatever.
3. In Location enter “http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=%s”.
4. Add an easy to remember keyword like ‘el’.
5. Click ‘Add’ button then close out of the bookmarks pane.

Here’s a visual prompt for the process:

And here’s what it looks like when you use it:

There, If you know a better or quicker way, or have an issues, please leave a comment below.