What is going on with Google Search?

[treasure.hunter.d]

As business has been a bit on the slow side again now for a couple weeks I've been doing some research on increasing sales through promotion, search engine optimization etc..

I've been doing random checks on Google search results for some of my items, and other's items as well and have discovered a pretty disconcerting bit of info.

My most recent test search for an item of jewelry returned only 7 ebay hits out of the first 100 Google image results in a keyword search. Out of those 7, 3 were outdated, either sold or no longer listed items. There were plenty of listings from "other" sales forums but only the 7 from ebay. These results have been pretty similar across all of my tests.

This begs the question as to why are ebay items not coming up in Google searches with the same frequency as they previously have? Google search has been the number 1, and if not #1 then consistantly close to #1, traffic driver to ebay for years and now suddenly it is not even remotely effective. I know that google made some changes that negatively effected Ebay but that was several months ago now and I would have expected Ebay to get together with them and work things out or, at the very least, Ebay should have made whatever changes they needed to on their end to get listings back into the search results again.

Without Google search driving traffic to Ebay there will be a slow and painful death in the future for Ebay, there is no way to dispute that. Google controls the world on internet search without question or equal and if they are somehow blocking Ebay items ins earch results they can singlehandedly destroy Ebay.

I have looked around for more info regarding this and have not found anything conclusive so if anyone has seen an article or blog post etc mentioning what, if anything, might be in the works from either sid of this dilema by all means post the info.

Now, all of that being said, Ebay is obviously aware of this problem and if they are doing nothing about it then it is  horrendously poor judgement on their part to not only do nothing but also to continue to take people's money and promote their site as if nothing is amiss, when obviously there is something definitely amiss.

The following link is an article where a seller mentions this exact problem... http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/letters/blog.pl?/pl/2014/12/1418786263.html

There is even mention that this may be some part of a manipulation by Ebay of small sellers listings to force those small sellers into extinction. Dunno about that but, as mentioned in the article, Ebay and Google need to "kiss and make up" with Ebay, IMHO, being the one who needs to instigate this as from most of the info I have found, it has been Ebay abusing Google search that has caused this.

A quote from one of the responses to the article:

"Google did allow EBay high visibility and advertising access long after they could have.  That is why it is now EBay's responsibility to get that listing visibility back for us sellers and not to just ignore the fact that we no longer have that visibility or advertising. Google search visibility was a benefit for my fees paid to EBay for all of those years and that benefit is no longer there so I am definitely not getting as much bang for my buck as I was before when listing things on EBay.  It has now gotten to the point where it isn't worth it for me to pay such high EBay fees if I am not getting free advertising and visibility on Google searches. My business sales have declined dramatically and I am left holding the bag instead of EBay yet I am still paying the same fees.  If we can't have the google search than we should have our fees decreased because we are getting way less for our money than we were before. "

I have to say that pretty much sums up nicely my opinion as well.

I guess the bottom line here is that if Ebay and Google do not get back on good terms we are pretty much dead in the water here as without the Google search pushing traffic to us we are not going to be able to sell in any volume even close to what we have previously achieved and there will be no way for us to increase that traffic on our own.

Curious as to what others are thinking about this as well.

Cheers,

thD

[treasure.hunter.d]

A quick follow up to this as I see that people are reading it, even if there are no responses.

I have noticed that site traffic is down by a HUGE amount and page views for my store equivalently. I called Ebay to discuss this with them especially in light of the fact that they have announced that they are removing the "Traffic" tracking software and not replacing it for literally months.

To put it bluntly, Ebay stated that they had absolutely no idea why site traffic would be down but that "Things are down all over". When I put it to them that their removing the traffic monitoring software months before any replacement was due it had the appearance that they were trying to hide how bad things are and prevent people from being able to sleuth it out on their own. I mean come on, you do not remove ver 1.0 of the software until v. 2.0 is ready to go, that's just not the way it is done.

During the conversation it was also stated that Ebay is up to date with Google and therefore there should be no interruption in Google driving traffic to ebay stores. An out and out bold faced lie!

So at the end of my conversation ehere's what I know:

1)Something is seriously wrong in the state of Denmark to the point where Ebay is doing everything in their power to obfuscate the problem including removing our ability to track site traffic.

2) Ebay seems not to be the least bit hesitant to not be forthcoming with the truth about the problem and the severity of it.

3)Given the proposed roll out date of the new traffic monitoring software it appears that it will be months before any positive headway is made with this problem. How many sellers will simply give up before then without any hope of help or improvement.

In an unrelated area, I uncovered yet another problem with keyword search. I did a search for one of my items, as I do frequently to test result placement. In this case it was a vintage Dior brooch I have listed. I searched for "Vintage Christian Dior Brooch" my piece did not appear in the results, not at all, nowehere, nope! Now, my item is definitely listed and it is listed in the vintage designer signed jewelry brooches category. It does not have the word "vintage" in the title though. Now that should not prevent it from showing up in the search results even if its at or near the bottom of the results but it did not show up anywhere. I edited the title of my item and added the word vintage in and low and behold it showed up in the results using the same keywords for the search. This is not right. I reported this obvious bug and I can't wait for the response to be told, as I have with every other bug I have reported, that there is nothing wrong with keyword search and the results.

Finally, here is the question that is on my mind. How do we force Ebay to start fixing the many problems and to take responsibility for things being so messed up. We are paying them good money and now getting very little for it in return. We still have problems with the cart system and they have basically blown us off on that as well. Is that what the future holds for us, simply to get blown off every time we find something broken, something that seriously harms our ability to generate sales and profitably sell on Ebay?

Personally, I think the writing is on the wall for we small sellers and the only real question is how long will it be before Ebay puts some sort of final nail in our coffins.

[recped]

eBay doesn't need to put a nail in anyone's coffin, many sellers are quite capable of hammering the nails all by themselves!

As far as the traffic reports go, I hope this is the start of clearing out the garbage and bringing in new stuff that actually works. The Omniture stats are notoriously unreliable.

[treasure.hunter.d]

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@recped wrote:

eBay doesn't need to put a nail in anyone's coffin, many sellers are quite capable of hammering the nails all by themselves!

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Perhaps, but many small sellers,and if not small then smaller than the giant faceless companies now so prevalent on Ebay, work very hard obviously, myself included, and to not only receive no help from Ebay but worse, to be impeded by Ebay does not speak well to Ebay's intentions toward those sellers.

As far as the current traffic software is concerned maybe it is not 100% accurate but it is acurate enough to confirm what a serious slowdown in sales indicates and again, to remove it prematurely without replacement makes no sense.

My questioning Ebay and their behavior comes from the standpoint that so long as they are charging us good money to use their service under the guise of there being fair opportunity to be successful by following their rules and guidelines, they have a responsibility to operate openly and truthfully with us.You think that is somehow my driving a nail in my own coffin? Perhaps I misread your response though , I'm not one to make veiled comments, and am not great at interpreting them either. I think if more people were "in Ebay's face" about these things maybe Ebay wouldn't feel like they were quite so free to steam-roll over us the way they do

Cheers,

thD

[38e_avenue]

Well ..... I do not complain at all ........ 

[realjazz-123]

Your sales have slowed down and mine have nearly stopped. Lots of reasons have been suggested on discussions on  this board. Out of interest, I followed your lead and Googled the first 6 words that appear in about 15 of my current listings. NOT A SINGLE ONE appeared in the first 5-6 pages of Google suggestions. I did not look past page 6. However, almost all showed my listed items (vinyl lps)   near top of the Google list as being available from sellers on  DISCOGS or AMAZON, not eBay. I am not experienced enough to know how search engines work , but it is very obvious that Google engine does not help me.

[bestchoicebrand]

Google (home page) won't load ebay website from my computer, been happening for weeks now. Sales drop almost by 40% , before I had more sales in one day than now I have in weeks.

[forester_studios]

Sales have died the past week.  March was great, April good, May - Awful and I have more items listed than 2 months ago.  Makes you wonder!

[treasure.hunter.d]

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@forester_studios wrote:

Sales have died the past week.  March was great, April good, May - Awful and I have more items listed than 2 months ago.  Makes you wonder!

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Indeed and hence the reason for my starting this thread hoping to get some discussion going and get people talking and perhaps realizing, if they hadn't already, what is going on.

I had thought I would not be the only one, and am now very interested, that others are seeing the same results with Google search.

As to what we can do about this mess, or are going to do, I'm interested in others' thoughts on that as well.

Cheers,

thD

[38e_avenue]

This month will be probably the best ever. I expected rather a weak month (usually May and June are the worst ones), instead I am flooded with orders. My listings appear on the first place in Google search. Most of my recent buyers come from Google, because they were registered in the day the sale has been made.

What I did unusual this month? I used all 2000 items from the last promotion, mostly to re-list old items.

[pierrelebel]

"Without Google search driving traffic to Ebay there will be a slow and painful death in the future for Ebay, there is no way to dispute that. "

Please allow me to dispute that.

You are assuming that Google was instrumental in driving a lot of traffic to your listings, traffic that resulted in sales.  Is this based on actual facts? Are there other factors?

Ever since I opened my eBay store fifteen years ago (June 2000) i have been keeping track of where does the traffic come from, what brings potential buyers to my listings, When is the traffic up or down (time of day, day of the week, week of the month, month, etc...

Now, in May 2014 there was a drop in traffic generated by Google.  We all know about that problem. That was a year ago.  How severe was it?  How bad did it affect your sales then?  It depends of course on what percentage of your potential viewers were directed to your listings from Google.  And what percentage of these viewers were actually buyers. In my case, it was not that severe since Google was never a great generator of buying traffic to my listings (window shoppers do not count).

After being closed for three months, I re-opened my eBay store ten days ago. "Clicks" to my listings and visits to my eBay store front page are NOT substantially different from this time last year.  A few days up, a few days down and a few days the same.

Many sellers report a drop in sales.  We have seen the same thing every month since the beginning of time.  Based on law of average and millions of sellers on eBay, there will always be some sellers showing large increase in sales and others will show declines.  We do not hear from those with large increases but many experiencing decreases find their ways to these discussion boards, trying to identify the problem.

The real question to ask is: are your lower sales the result of lower traffic or something else?

Over the years, I have experienced very slow months and very active months.  Do I blame eBay or Google or whoever/whatever else when sales go down?  Do I credit them when sales go up?

Many sellers use more than eBay to sell online.  Often, sales increases and/or decreases on eBay will compare to other venues.

Sellers who really believe traffic on Google would help their sales (not just traffic) should invest some money and advertise their eBay store on Google.  Some sellers do that.  It is a matter of conviction.

It is important to understand the difference between "traffic" and "sales".  Traffic is nice, sales are better!

eBay does not need Google to survive.  Some advertising is necessary of course but much more paid advertising would result in higher fees and that is not what most sellers want.  When I look at the "big picture" overall sales by eBay sellers are UP.  Yes, sales overall are UP, meaning while some sellers experienced a drop others are doing fine.  Google may not be as relevant to eBay as you think.  It may be a factor for some but certainly not leading to "a slow and painful death in the future for Ebay" as you stated.

Good Luck.

[rose-dee]

Hi 'treasure.hunter' -- I've been curious too about the relationship of Google and eBay since May of 2014, and I asked a related question a couple of weeks ago at the Wed. Board Hour.  See posts #10 and #18 (my questions and screen shots, and Raphael's reply, respectively).  Each of us can draw his/her own conclusions I suppose -- not everything that comes from the eBay.ca staff is always 100% accurate, but I think it tends to be more reliable than what comes from eBay "customer service".  

http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Weekly-Board-Hour-Session/Weekly-Board-Hour-May-Special-Edition/m-p/3016...

I also recently did some tests on Google, using fairly generic search terms for items in my store (e.g. "antique sewing pattern", "Edwardian blouse pattern", etc.).  What happened was a bit surprising, although I don't know whether it's because I'm running an updated OS (I've got Windows 8.1), or whether Google has significantly changed the way it displays and routes searchers.  

Here's what occurred: When I clicked on the first, generic search term that popped up, I got Google's pages of the usual sort of results, in a list, and none of my products was to be found in the first few pages.  Most of the results were either private websites offering such products, or blog sites -- my eBay store itself was nowhere to be found in the first 5 pages (I didn't go further), nor were any of my listings. 

However, I re-entered the search terms and scrolled down 2 or 3 lines in the search box -- voilà! -- there were a couple of my listings as "live" links.  I clicked on one, and at the top of the page was a whole panel of other, similar items offered in my eBay store, very prominently displayed.  Now this panel doesn't normally show up at the top of my eBay listings, so I have to assume it's a Google feature (or perhaps something Google has worked out with eBay, who knows?).  

Sales, for me at least, have been lagging generally over the past few months, yet I occasionally have big flurries of activity that I simply can't account for in any specific way.  I wish I knew, because I'd happily repeat whatever it was that caused these sudden upswings.  Why is it that 10 customers all decide at once to purchase from me in a 2-day period, then no one else decides to buy for days?  

Whatever mechanism it is that drives this pattern -- if it can be called a pattern, since to my mind it's more chaotic than that -- I've given up trying to guess.  Now I simply try to keep my head above water every month, follow eBay's best practices wherever I can, avoid defects and cases whatever it takes to do so, and continue to offer new listings.  

One thing I can say is that my overall income in 2014 was down about 15% from 2013, yet I'm listing more than ever before, spending more time on my listings and store generally, and still hanging onto my TRS (by the skin of my teeth some months due to low transaction volumes).  

I'm at a loss at this point as to what more I can do, but I personally don't think Google is the sole cause of the ups and downs.  I think the equation is so complex and so opaque that none of us sellers will ever know the full picture.  I think there are many more peaks and valleys these days for us "boutique" sellers, and that a great deal does depend on what category one is selling in. 

When Pierre refers to overall sales on eBay being up, when looking at the big picture, we have to remember that eBay is helping its bigger retailers every day with its own site advertising, which in turn will affect the "big picture" of sales volumes.  Just consider the kinds of ads that greet anyone who logs into eBay.  

Those ads do everything to promote commercially mass-produced products, particularly tech, fashion and household goods listed by significant retail sellers on eBay.  That doesn't do much good for those of us who are still holding on by our fingernails selling interesting or OOAK items.  Nor has it done any good for Canadian sellers that eBay HQ has had no interest in resolving the "cart disconnect" problem.  Nor do all the frequent changes and bugs on this site.  

In that respect, I think we can place at least some of the blame squarely on eBay.  All I can say is that the other site I sell on has none of these problems, and I have a regular, more or less predictable sales flow.  But then I feel I sell here despite eBay (it's a challenge and a struggle, for many reasons); I sell on the other site because their policies support and assist sellers like me (and it's a pleasure and it's easy).  Sad to say but true. Fortunately the two of them together make up for what I've lost on eBay over the past 2 years.