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Possibly wandering into conspiracy territory, but this is a write up by a self proclaimed high volume seller. It’s an interesting read and appears to be credible. Buckle up and put on your tinfoil hat, it’s time to go to …. *GASP*…. the eBay Community Forum……
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Good point…
So hard to figure out the SEO on eBay sometimes. This was the whole reason that they installed Cassini. It eliminated the keyword spamming that some sellers did, but now they can change the dials and tweak the algorithm without anyone knowing, and we can gain and lose without knowing why.
I don’t know about the boost for new stores, though I could see an unscrupulous management wanting to do that. (i.e., “First one’s always free.”) Get new sellers hooked with more sales, then dial down later. But I can’t completely buy into that. Maybe I think too many people are good for that to take place.
But I can see them trying to tweak Cassini to improve search, and it has unintended consequences. Or it has intended consequences, and some sellers are left off. I do know that we have had a LOT of items with 0 views on eBay lately. Not sure if they were really 0 or if the database just didn’t track the view, or the report is just not showing what the true views were.
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T-Satt,
The boost for new sellers is a fact. I was told so by an ebay rep a while ago and have seen it play out. It occurs in the same way new listings do. They rise to the top at first and then drop over a period of a couple of days to a week. It’s not a conspiracy theory.New is good for the marketplace(providing “new offerings”), keeps things fresh, promotes activity etc. Think about when you go to a department store where are the new items? Up front. While old items still need to be sold, people want new especially if they have already seen the old.
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Adventure: New listings I get. My analysis of 30-Day listings shows that boost.
But boosting a new seller’s listing over an established seller? That I would hope would NOT be the case. I get the reasons why they would do that. But if that was proven…established sellers would not be happy…
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It’s not boosting new sellers over old sellers with a direct one to one correlation. It is boosting new temporarily and letting it drop into the ranking based on best practice variables. To me it makes sense. We do not want a stale marketplace because that would not promote activity and sales.
I am not defending ebay in anyway, but it seems a standard business practice. Selling and promoting the new can sell the old.
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Gotcha. I get the new over the old at the listing level.
There was some talk in the blog about newer and less established sellers copying his listings and being higher in search. The conspiracy of “new sellers get listings ranked over established sellers” for the same items. I get why they would do that, I just really hope that they truly aren’t doing that.
All that said, the real question is how much time and effort to put into this stuff. Arguments are good on both sides.
Team A) Don’t care, just list. Gets more listings, more new listings, makes more sales.
Team B) Care a lot, as if you aren’t solid with the search (in this case Cassini), selling is hard. The “if it ain’t being seen, is it really for sale? argument”Somewhere in the spectrum is where we need to be. Honestly, I just want a transparent view of my data, and I want it accurate. When one screen shows I have 0 views, then suddenly the number of views are there, what am I supposed to do with that info?
In the end, the cream rises to the top. I spend some time on Team B (caring about where are results are) because we don’t want to create a museum, we want a store. But I try to put 90% of my time on Team A.
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Personally, I am trying to teach myself not to put stock in views but to ask Did it sell? No, why not? Can anything be improved?
If yes, great. Is there anything I learned or can learn to help make the next sale? If you have 500 views and the item hasn’t sold, then who cares about the views? As you said- our stores are not museums. -
My thoughts are this:
If an item is getting views but not selling (and it is in season), I decide if I need to tweak pricing or something about the listing that keeps it from selling. There may be something that is an issue that is keeping it from selling.
If it isn’t even getting views (and it is in season), I have to decide if it is because it is super rare/unique/small universe of buyers or if it isn’t even being shown to buyers because it is down in search.
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PS – This is why I’m wanting to see the Impressions by listing as well. If it isn’t getting Impressions, it isn’t being shown to buyers…
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Yes I would love impressions by item as well. We’ll never get that though. I now firmly believe items are cycled through in search to keep search results limited in scope so buyers don’t drown.
Another piece of evidence – research. When I’m scavenging I’ll do research on the spot. I’ll see how many items are available, how many complete, and how many sold. I’ll get a rough idea of average price and also sort for highest prices.
When I get home to list I’ll do the same searches on the pc and get COMPLETELY different results often with far lower average sales prices. How is that possible for such a limited search on a specific style of shoes that only generates 50 or so results?
I’m not even really upset with ebay for likely doing this. It is smart. I just with they were transparent about it.
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Retro: We actually get the Impressions per listing on the Seller Hub / Performance / Traffic and Seller Hub / Performance / Impressions pages. I’m just not sure if it is accurate. I know that the Page Views on these pages are not always accurate, so it gives me pause that the other information is accurate.
There are some listings showing 0 page views, but when I click on the listing, the page views are there. These listings also show 0 Impressions. How can you have page views with no Impressions?
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Yes you see impressions for each item but it is cumulative. Only your cumulative impressions is broken down by day in the chart. If you could see impressions by date for each item then you could have evidence to see if there are days where your items aren’t showing up at all.
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Let me preface this comment by saying that I am not a tech person. Generally, Ebay would not want to hide listings from buyers. But, what if Ebay does not have sufficient server capacity to show all shoppers all of the possible listings? One theory is that they have been doing rolling blackouts to avoid server overload. Then they tweak the algorithm this year to heavily favor the freshest stuff. Sellers in more competitive categories would notice a difference. Sellers of unique items not so much. If this theory were true, Ebay should be showing accurate impression and view data to show good faith. They might get more specific about how much best practices help your listing, like maybe emphasizing a bit more that months old listings should be revisited and price trumps best practices in best match (if true).
Also with the move to product pages, they decided that modern shoppers are getting to many hits to sort through and might avoid or stray from the cluttered platform style. My understanding is that only some items with a product page adopted will show to a buyer if the product has many listings. Will this gradually alleviate the server burden? Am I missing something?
I’m just seeing more brand new listings sell off – not really at exceptional prices btw. I went back and tweaked older listings and some did sell. So, as much as I like list it an forget it due to limited time, I think it’s a good idea to go back to older listings and tweak them. There are theories about the minimum changes you need to make to refresh. I don’t want to do 30 day listings because I’m not sure I can keep up. I hope ultimately Ebay just limits the categories they apply the product pages to. It really doesn’t make sense for certain collectibles and more unique items. It makes a lot of sense for ipad cases.
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“what if Ebay does not have sufficient server capacity to show all shoppers all of the possible listings?”
Server capacity is easy and super cheap. Thats the least of their issues IMHO.
I think we should avoid just talking about “eBay search”. Its more important to talk about your specific category.
–If you sell common, popular, new items that any seller can buy from a factory, then eBay has the challenge that all platforms have. How do you sort thousands of the same exact item? price? seller reputation? It’s a challenge and those kinds of sellers should be worried (as they are on Amazon).
–But if you sell weird, vintage items, I find all these complaints go away. Our weird items may only have a couple hundred other listings at most. The problem isnt being buried in search but waiting for that rare buyer that wants this weird thing.
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I think we are on the same page that sellers of more common items will be affected more by the changes at Ebay. Also on the same page that moving in fresh listings never hurts your chances of selling items.
Last year when I was less consistent about listing, every time I listed a few of my older items would sell within 24 hours, sometimes in the same category. Lately, I’m not seeing that happen. This spring, listing would result in no older listings selling. Recently, it’s my newest listings I’m noticing are moving right after a session (in better numbers than they used to).
I like the forums for sharing observations and evidence since Ebay is not always transparent. It’s up to the reader to make their own assumptions or conclusions and maybe experiment with potential improvements.
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Agreed. Its good we can all share observations, but I always try to avoid jumping to conclusions.
I find that when things get slow in the summer, sellers start looking for any little hint as to why its slow. Instead of just realizing its the slow retail season across all platforms, sellers look for some weird technical quirk they think eBay is implementing.
All the tricks people talk about dont produce consistent or noticeable increase in sales:
–relist items as new every 30 days
–list at least one thing every day to keep your store “fresh”Our second store was on autopilot for two years!
–all listings good til cancelled
–never listed new items
We had consistent sales up till about three months ago.
I think it has less to do with not doing tricks, but our good inventory is running out (and its summer).So lets keep trading observations, but let’s also question and test the solutions that sellers come up with.
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Jay agreed. I know I’ve been dancing along the lines today with free thinking. I had actually good sales last week for me. I’m not really a consipracy theory person just more of a need to know kind of person. Do I trust Ebay to tell me what I need to know to get the best results for my time investment? Enh, not sure. Part of the attraction to Ebay is the game aspect of it. I like to have access here to bigger seller’s observations and experiment results to spot patterns.
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Yep, but I really havent ever seen any seller post any tricks that are reproducible and create more consistent sales.
Tsatt showed us once why he thinks listing new every 30 day boosts his sales. But even when he shared his numbers, it was about $200 more in sales a month in comparison to his usually $6000-$9000 in sales. A really negligible number that’s so small that may not even have to do with his re-listing IMHO.
So yeah, lets share observations but also share the results of experiments and be honest about what they tell us.
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My thought on search isn’t that eBay does a negative in any way. I don’t think they hide things, or rolling blackouts, or anything that would intentionally hide or push down listings.
I think it is how eBay promotes some listings higher in search. So the race to the top of search. So if we don’t have listings that are checking some of the boxes that Cassini is looking for, we place lower in search.
And totally agree with you Jay. Unique, weird, totally one off items will ALWAYS be lower in search and have low impressions and page views. It is the more commodity items that have to deal with this: clothing, shoes, electronics, etc.
Since that commodity world is a world I play in, it is something that I have to learn and consider to be successful.
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Good luck with relying on ebay’s numbers. They do not seem to be accurate on a consistant basis unless they want to call them accurate and then make judgements about them. In a perfect world, we would have accurate technologies giving us accurate numbers in order to make accurate well informed decisions. We do not live in that world inside of ebay. I mean look at the zeroes issue we just went through. For several days, as did other sellers, I had multiple listings drop from having a high number of views to having zero or a dash. If I was not a member of SL, I would not have known that the issue was larger than just my store. If I started making decisions just based on my store, it would have been a waste of energy and effort.
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Not really T-Satt,
When you have bad something find the good something. Okay, the question I am exploring is – what are the other options? You do not have all the data but you do have the data of how long something has been sitting in your store, so regardless of the larger data, the question comes -Is there anything you can do (pictures, pricing, relisting) to sell that item. Stagnation will only lead to frustration while Forward motion is progression in action.
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We will continue to move forward with just the old listings (we do that quarterly already).
What I would like is better data up the chain. I’m wanting to improve the process by looking at a different set of data. Rather than just age, if we could get accurate Impressions data, then that gives more effective information, faster information, and better information.
But I can’t use that data if it is bad. If I make course changes based on bad data, then that is a bad decision.
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Here’s my question on this eternal argument: If eBay is pushing down/hiding any item that doesnt sell quickly, then what’s the solution?
–Does ending items every 30 days and relist as “sell similar” work? If not, why not? The boost should be very noticeable.
–Should we transfer items to a new store every three months to get the mysterious “new seller” boost? Anyone tried this?The argument that eBay is “hiding items” in search if it hasn’t sold quickly seems weird because there will never be a time when all items sell quickly.
Maybe older items might not be in the top 10, but they’ll be in the search. For weird items, buyers dont just purchase the top pick because there’s so much variation in quality. Everyday we sell items that are often 2-3 years old.
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Jay,
Ebay actually has the ability to bring listings that meet their criteria upfront. Let’s take for example the Promoted Listings. If it was working correctly, the items that are being promoted would come above the items that are not. Right now, that is not occurring and has not been for a while. If it was working correctly, based on what I have seen, many more sellers would participate. Right now, in some cases, it does not matter if you are a part of Promoted Listings because listings that are not promoted are coming above those that are. eBay tries a lot of stuff like this without solid footing and we are all left to figure out what is going on.
It’s not just about being at top. There are too many variables at play. Buyers do not always want to “search”. They want to find and check out as quickly as possible. Sometimes, this leads them to buy something they were not originally looking for because it has been presented to them and the price is right. I think the true search days are over with the push of “Now and immediate results”. With this in mind, due to the numerous sellers already on board and more onboarding every day, a results page is often bursting at the seams with offerings.
One of the keys with buyers is being able to grab and sustain their attention while also promoting them to visit often. New captures attention. New keeps people coming back. New keeps them “searching”. eBay says right at the top in their search bar SEARCH FOR ANYTHING.-
Great. Nothing you say is surprising. So if what this thread is saying is true, how do you deal with listings being pushed down in search? Its impossible to run a store where every item listed sells quickly.
–Does ending items every 30 days and relist as “sell similar” work? If not, why not? The boost should be very noticeable.
–Should we transfer items to a new store every three months to get the mysterious “new seller” boost? Anyone tried this?
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Nope, nothing I said is surprising or new.
I think the days of things selling quickly are gone unless it is a sought after item at the right price with the right shipping options. There is too much competition on and/off ebay and too many getting ready to onboard. I also think that the demand for new and the vendors able to provide new items is so high that the demand for pre-owned/used has declined. In supply and demand terms, I think we are going to see more of a supply of pre-owned/used items than there is a demand for them and due to the current political leadership engaging in a trade war and even causing estrangement from allies, I think people’s willingness to spend is going to decrease and/or become very specific.I do think relisting every 30 days may be the way to go for a while. I think making sure one’s pics are at a high level of quality (along with descriptions) would be very helpful when doing the relist instead of simply relisting the same listing over again.
I think the boost new sellers get is short lived unless every item they have is one buyers are looking for at the perfect price buyers want, so unless you are going to open a new store every 30 days, I do not think that is the way to go. I think the platform has become very convoluted with the rules eBay is enforcing but cannot keep up with due to their severe technical challenges that constantly serve as hinderances to selling.
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I have noticed promoted listings showing at the bottom of search results. I mean literally dead last. There’s the actual listing and then right below it the duplicate “promoted listing”.
I’ve seen this on several of my own items and in several research searches.
What am I gonna do? I’m going to remove promoted listings. They are definitely not being “promoted” from what I am seeing.
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Retro,
Of my last five sales, four were Promoted LIstings.
I frankly don’t worry too much about the placement of my PLs in regular search results. Why? Because I strongly suspect (but ebay provides no data) that most of my PL items that sell are NOT selling from the basic search result page, but from one of the OTHER pages where PL items are shown. It’s those other locations that keep me coming back to PLs.
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In August 2016 I had 20% sell through rate with 150 item on average.
These days I have 400 items with 10-15% sell through rate. Yes, I have mixed up what I sell nowadays – more long tail/high dollar. But I can go days without a sale and then I get 7 in 1 day. So, the pattern is different now. I have even considered moving to 2 day handling so I can “save up” packages to go to Post.
IN addition, I sold a ton of winter stuff this month to ppl in hot states! So, who KNOWS what the algo is up to. I am either selling very old listed inventory (1 year +) or brand new listed inventory (within 48 hours)
I had started to move all my 30 Days to GTD b/c I was becoming annoyed with eBay and tired of fiddling w. resisting every 30 days. I would make mistakes, etc in the process. After the photo fiasco, I’m worried about this.
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I just read a lot of the ebay community forum Sales Slump post. WOW! Really feel badly for the OP here. These algo problems are bigger than us, which sucks. It seems the OP is also dealing in big export / import sales, not sure if it’s replenishables or fine art. Either way, drastic dips like that that are costing eBay money seem like they would be solved if a high dollar seller isn’t selling, that means no FVF for them.
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Just had a thought. Usually these weird eBay issues where the bugs are going crazy occurs when eBay is doing a deep alteration/addition to their code.
I wonder if that new payment system is being worked on. I’d imagine that would touch all kinds of areas of their site. Anyone heard anything about its implementation? https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/31/ebay-replace-paypal-main-payment/
I havent seen anyone talk about being a beta tester.
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Alright, so IMO, my sales dropped significantly when my store was moved to the “New Store Experience”. I have been selling for more years than I care to admit and by the 26th, I was pretty aggravated. So my pet theory and actually it’s a reasonable one based on past years of sales this time of year, the attempts to apply their new SEO and features while also keeping many sellers in the old experience, screwed up the works.
Soooo after much I successfully got reverted back out of that and back to my “Old eBay Experience”.
So if sales go back to “June normal”, maybe this theory has legs.
I will report back.
Yes, there are potential disadvantages to reverting back, and also, they are going to keep moving folks to the New Store experience. I’m hoping by then, if I’m correct, the bugs will be fixed.
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If you want out of the new experience, call in, but have the FAQ which is located on the Manage Store/edit store page open. They will tell you there is no way to opt out and get back to the old store and they will triple Pinky swear. Keep pressing and tell them they are wrong and use the FAQ where it says that people can revert back to their old store. They will then check and at some point be told that they are incorrect. Then they will fish out a mythical revert Store link” that they can see, and restore the old store. So fingers crossed.
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