Introduction to listing categories

Sellers often want to know where other sellers are listing items similar to theirs. GetSuggestedCategories returns a list of the categories with the highest number of listings whose titles or descriptions contain keywords you specify in a query. The list contains up to 10 categories and shows the percentage of matches that fall into each category.

Categories are arranged in a hierarchy that can be several levels deep. A given category can be either a leaf category (in which items can be listed) or a parent category (in which items cannot be listed). For the leaf categories returned in GetSuggestedCategories, the category ID and category name for these categories are shown in the CategoryID and CategoryName fields, respectively. The category ID and full category name of each leaf category's ancestor are also shown in hierarchical order, with the Level 1 (L1) category appearing first. This information can be useful in build category breadcrumbs, or just to inform the user of where the leaf category is organized into the overall category hierarchy of the eBay marketplace.

The following example is a snippet of a GetSuggestedCategories response and shows the full path to the LEGO (R) Complete Sets & Packs leaf category. As you can see from the response, the LEGO (R) Complete Sets & Packs leaf category has three ancestor categories, making it a Level 4 (L4) category.

Category Node in a GetSuggestedCategories Response

<SuggestedCategory>
  <Category>
    <CategoryID>19006</CategoryID>
    <CategoryName>LEGO (R) Complete Sets & Packs</CategoryName>
    <CategoryParentID>220</CategoryParentID>
    <CategoryParentID>183446</CategoryParentID>
    <CategoryParentID>183447</CategoryParentID>
    <CategoryParentName>Toys & Hobbies</CategoryParentName>
    <CategoryParentName>Building Toys</CategoryParentName>
    <CategoryParentName>LEGO (R) Building Toys</CategoryParentName>
  </Category>
  <PercentItemFound>19</PercentItemFound>
</SuggestedCategory>
			

Therefore, the full path to this leaf category is Toys & Hobbies --> Building Toys --> LEGO (R) Building Toys --> LEGO (R) Complete Sets & Packs

For complete information about the GetSuggestedCategories call, refer to the GetSuggestedCategories reference documentation.