In May eBay announced they were going to make changes to their linking policy stating it was being done to "increase safety and preserve the buying experience". While these changes would not effect the use of SSB templates many sellers were upset that more limitations to sellers were about to be put in place.

On July 31st John McDonald, Director of Trust & Safety at eBay, announced that the intended linking policy changes would no longer be put into effect! Below is the full announcement from eBay regarding this reversal. You may also read this announcement on eBay by clicking here.

Hello everyone…Back in May, I announced a number of important policy
changes for sellers.

One of the policies I mentioned was an update to our Links Policy which governs the types of links that can be included in a listing. Our Links Policy is intended to increase safety and preserve the buying experience.

After my announcement, we received questions and concerns from sellers about this change. At eBay Live!, our staff made it clear we would be going back to reconsider some aspects of the policy around how third-party links would be treated.

As promised, we’ve been reviewing all the different types of situations that our sellers have brought to our attention, and we’ve been meeting with additional stakeholders to understand how our policy update would impact them. After this additional research and discussion, we’ve decided to leave our Links Policy as it was before my May announcement. There will be no Links Policy updates at this time. (Please read the Links Policy for more information.)

I want to thank our sellers for your support and patience around this matter.

Sincerely,
John McDonald
Senior Director, Trust & Safety