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EBay sent out a message today about getting your items in Google searches. Of course one of the things mentioned was to have white backgrounds. I’ve only done this for a few items. So I got curious, what of mine shows up in google shopping?
So I went into incognito mode in chrome and just typed my store name (same as my user name on forum) into the search box on shopping.google.com .
Shockingly many items showed up! I didn’t see a one that had a white background either. It was a representation of all the items I sell, mostly used, vintage stuff, not as if it was just new or UPC codes ones, so that is good.
Then I clicked on the google search numbers at the bottom and added up how many showed up. 40 per page for 11 pages plus 5 more for 445. I only have 750 items in my store so that seems great!
I even typed in a few unique named items I have into the google shopping search and sure enough they popped up. Cool!
Now is when things get weird. I went to make sure that I could see other stores.
Look up Ryanne and Jay’s store. Yep a bunch pop up. Cool! Count how many: 550 or so. Whaaa???, they have 10x the inventory I do, shouldn’t I see 5000 items?
Look up my sister’s mini store in South Carolina, 69 listings. None show up.
Look up Craiglist’s hunters store name in Illinois, 5 items come up. Really?
Then I notice that even though I’m in incognito mode it still knows that I’m in Portland, OR (shows my location in top left corner). Can that be it?
I try a few ebay stores in Portand, I either don’t find their listings all or I only find a few items for them. Weird, now I have no clue.
Anyone else want to do the experiment for me? Can you see your own items in a google search? Can you see other sellers? Ryanne and Jay if you put your store name in do you see hundreds (or more or less) of your own store items? The whole google shopping algorithm is bizzare.
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Here is a screen cap of me searching for part of a title in one of my listings. Mine is the second on on the top and the longer listing the bottom. Both use my mid-century modern dining room table background that is on 95% of my listings. 🙂 Note only one of them that comes up in search has the white background.
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Yeah, very weird.
–“You must have all white background”.
–Most listings dont have all white backgrounds.-
I know. I’ve tried to use the remove background option on the eBay phone app a few times and it is pretty klunky. Less than 10 of my listings have it because it worked. I’ll stick to my natural background for these vintage things. Maybe it does matter for new goods? Who knows….
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I just now used a site called “roundupreviews” to search for the category single pieces of American Tempo. I found Mickdog’s five listings easy to spot, because of the grain of the wood! Only one out of 18 listings had a white background. Most were on wood (table?) backgrounds, some on grey, one on grey carpet, one on lace and one on what looks like sand.
An eBay seller I know personally has taken to including his foot in the photos. He seems to be doing okay with auctions; the buyers haven’t complained about not receiving a foot with their purchase.
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I think ebay overstates the case when they say you MUST have a white background. I think it would probably be better to describe a white background as a “best practice”. And as someone suggested, it could be that a white background is necessary for new items, but not necessary for older stuff.
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