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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Marketplace
Listings OnBuy has hidden from search until issues are fixed, direct revenue blocker.

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At a glance

Live count of OnBuy listings hidden from buyer-side search until the seller fixes the underlying issue. The single most reactive lever for OnBuy revenue: fixing a suspended hero SKU can move the headline by 5 to 20% within a week.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your OnBuy data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A small UK fashion accessories seller, snapshot at 27 Apr 26 09:00 BST. The seller has 240 active listings on OnBuy and the alert opened with “5 suspended” overnight.
What it means for this seller. Five suspensions is a lot for a 240-listing catalogue (~2%). But the fix is fast: a half-day of work clears all five and recovers roughly £1,000 of monthly revenue, equivalent to roughly 8% of their OnBuy take. The price-policing case is the only one needing strategic thought, if Amazon UK genuinely sits 18% below their OnBuy listing the long-term answer is either matching the Amazon price (and accepting the lower margin) or removing the listing from Amazon (which is rarely an option). The other four are pure ops: image standards and attribute completeness. The key insight: had this seller been monitoring onbuy_alert_suspension (the 24h burst alert), they would have seen the suspensions land overnight and could have actioned them by 11am instead of finding out via the daily Vortex digest.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in OnBuy’s own dashboard:
OnBuy Seller Console (https://seller.onbuy.com) -> Listings -> Filter: Status = Suspended
The list shows each suspended listing with its suspension_reason field, exactly the data we surface. OnBuy adds a “Reinstate” button per listing that opens an inline correction form for the most common fixes (image upload, attribute entry). Why our number may legitimately differ from the Seller Console: Internal identity (within OnBuy): onbuy_active_listings + onbuy_suspended_listings + onbuy_inactive_listings = onbuy_total_listings If the three components do not sum to the total, raise a sync issue.

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why was my listing suspended? Check the suspension_reason in our onbuy_alert_suspension drilldown or open the listing in OnBuy Seller Console. The five common reasons are: image quality (background, resolution), missing required attributes (material, gender, age-group), price policing (your price diverges from a brand-set MAP or sits below cost-floor), brand gating (you are listing a restricted brand without authorisation), and category mis-classification (item shouldn’t be in the chosen tree). How fast can I get a listing reinstated? After fix submission, 24 to 72 hours typically. Image fixes are fastest because OnBuy’s image checker auto-passes once the new image meets the spec. Attribute fixes take longer because they go through manual review. Brand-gating issues can take weeks (you need to upload a brand-authorisation letter). Why did multiple listings suspend at once? Two possibilities. Either OnBuy rolled out a category-wide policy change (e.g. tightened image rules in beauty, started gating a new brand), or your supplier feed pushed prices below an MAP threshold. Check the onbuy_alert_suspension burst alert; if 5+ listings suspended in 24h with the same reason, it is a policy change. Engage seller support with a single ticket rather than fixing each individually. Will fixing the listing restore my position in search? Mostly. OnBuy’s algorithm has a memory of suspended listings; reinstated listings start at the bottom of the relevance ranking and re-rank up over 7 to 21 days based on click-through and sales velocity. Plan for revenue to come back in waves, not all at once. Can I appeal a suspension? Yes, via Seller Console -> Listings -> Suspended -> Listing -> “Dispute”. For genuine errors (e.g. OnBuy’s image checker incorrectly flagged a white-background image as non-compliant) the appeal works within 48 hours. For substantive issues (your image actually does have a coloured background) appeals are wasted; just fix and resubmit. Why would my listing suspend without me doing anything? Three reasons. First, OnBuy refreshed an algorithm rule (image standards tightened, attribute set expanded). Second, a brand owner submitted a take-down request (rare, but happens with luxury or controlled brands). Third, your supplier feed updated a field that violated a rule (e.g. cost dropped below MAP, missing attribute previously not required is now required). Is OnBuy more or less strict than Amazon UK or eBay UK? OnBuy sits in the middle. Amazon is by far the strictest (24/7 algorithmic suspension, often unappealable). eBay is the most permissive (suspension is rare and usually only for outright policy violations). OnBuy lands closer to eBay than Amazon: image and attribute standards are enforced but the bar is reasonable, and human review of appeals is fast. My listing was suspended for “price too low”. Why is that an issue? OnBuy enforces some MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) policies on behalf of brand owners, especially in electronics, beauty, and homeware. If your supplier feed undercuts a brand-set MAP, OnBuy auto-suspends. Resolution: either raise your price to MAP+ or remove the listing. You cannot appeal MAP cases directly with OnBuy; you need the brand owner to release you from the policy. Action playbook:
  1. Open onbuy_alert_suspension for the per-listing breakdown.
  2. Sort by velocity x ASP descending (use onbuy_revenue_at_risk as the proxy). Fix the highest-impact suspensions first.
  3. Image issues: re-shoot or run existing images through a 1000x1000 white-background check before upload.
  4. Attribute issues: bulk-edit in Seller Console -> Listings -> Edit Multiple. A single CSV upload can fix 50+ in one go.
  5. Price-policing: check onbuy_xc_dtc_price_gap and onbuy_xc_catalogue_drift to confirm whether the issue is internal (your price too low) or external (Amazon UK undercut).

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Suspended Listings is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across OnBuy and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.