Reviewed 30 September 2026 · quarterly cycle
Why does an old link still work but show a different item?
Because the seller renewed the listing. A renewal can carry a new item identifier while the old address continues to resolve, so the link works and the target has changed.
The evidence
Renewal is a routine seller action rather than a fault. A listing that has run its course is renewed to reset its position, and depending on how the marketplace handles it the renewal may produce a new identifier rather than reusing the old one. When that happens, the old address is left resolving to the new listing, which is why the link does not break.
The symptom is subtle. The link opens, the page loads, and the item looks similar because it is the same product from the same seller. What has changed is the identifier, and the practical consequence is that any saved reference to the old identifier now points at something else. If you were tracking a price or a variant against the old identifier, that tracking is now wrong.
The check that catches it is comparing the item title and the seller name rather than the price. Prices change routinely and are not evidence of renewal. A title change with the same seller, or the same title from a different seller, is. In our sampling, price changes were constant across saved links while title changes were rare and always accompanied a renewal.
When this does not apply
Where a seller edits a listing rather than renewing it, the identifier is preserved and the address continues to point at the same item. Editing and renewing are different actions with different consequences, and only renewal produces the silent retarget.