eBay

pinetreecottage · ‎08-14-2017

Out of 31 listings, 8 completely unrelated listings get large # of views. These are all different with various endtimes, pricepoints, shipping details, while the rest have had had no views. There seems to be no pattern in how the bots are "allowing" views. Some listings get many immediate views, others sit in the dark forever.

"Selling" on ebay now, and I use that term lightly, is like buying a lottery ticket, and hope to win.

Yes, I know others have the same concerns, but it would be great if someone could do something about it.

silverpinups · ‎08-14-2017

These are the dog days of summer... August has traditionally been a slow month with most people in holiday mode.

That should change later in the month when kids are getting ready to go back to school in September.

Your "8" items are probably more popular then the other items you have listed. Buyers will view all 31 listings and pick the ones that appeal to them. Popular items will have many views while unpopular items will have fewer......

Remember your selling 31 items during a very slow time of the year. I have 860 items currently and have only sold a few this month.

You need to go with the odds, the more listings you have, the greater the chances are that something will sell.

femmefan1946 · ‎08-14-2017

How wrong would I be if I guessed that the teacups are not the items being viewed?

And with fall coming on that you're seeing some views on the blankets and jackets?

pinetreecottage · ‎08-14-2017

No, actually 6 of the cups are viewed, as well as the vests. Everything else has 3-6 views. That's the odd thing.

femmefan1946 · ‎08-14-2017

So cups and vests are getting views.

Unrelated to each other, but two categories.

esclyons · ‎08-14-2017

yes you are in a limited market,, i would be happy you are getting any views at this point in the year.. and yes there is the ebay whirlwind known as lights on and lights off periods of time..

and i know it happens although it can't be proven..

i am accumulating evidence but i am years away from proving anything...

femmefan1946 · ‎08-15-2017

You don't have to prove anything.

EBay says that not all items are showing at all times and/or in all markets.

They just don't have enough hardware to keep everything live all the time.

Neither does Amazon, but they don't admit it.

At least eBay is random about what is not being seen. No one is being targetted.

This is another argument for Fixed Price/ 30 Day listings over shorter term Auction Listings.

Eventually during that 30 days your item may be showing when someone is looking.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-15-2017

EBay says that not all items are showing at all times and/or in all markets.

They just don't have enough hardware to keep everything live all the time.

Neither does Amazon, but they don't admit it.

I haven't heard that not enough hardware theory before but I don't subscribe to the 'ebay hides listings' theory. Ebay does say that your listings 'may' not be shown regardless of search sort order but I think that is more to cover themselves in case there is a problem and listings are not showing up. Any time that someone has come on here and said that their listings are not being seen in search, other sellers are able to see those listings or else there is a reason they can't be seen such as the seller not setting of proper shipping options.

Here is exactly what ebay says in the user agreement about search results...

Where and whether your listing appears in search and browse, results may be based on certain factors including, but not limited to, listing format, title, bidding activity, end time, keywords, price and shipping cost, feedback, eBay policy compliance, seller's history, including listing practices and detailed seller ratings. Accordingly, to drive a positive user experience, a listing may not appear in some search and browse results regardless of the sort order chosen by the buyer.

hlmacdon · ‎08-15-2017

I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories either. Like any other large database driven site they are likely running a host of cache servers which may or not be in sync with respect to indexing information or experience random caching errors where part of the data doesn't get captured. Couple that with typical database errors and general site errors that accompany the level or scale and general programming capability here and you may experience some visibility errors from time to time. Hardware is less the issue then the fact software sometimes hiccups and is rarely infallible.

You also need to differentiate between impressions and views. Impressions will give you a sense of how visible your listings are in terms of them getting captured in broader searches (ie your listing appeared on a search results page). An impression turns into a view if someone clicks on your listing, but you can have thousands of impressions for an item without a view. Your item may be visible but people may not care enough to actually click through to a full view. If you figured out how to reliably increase your conversion rate to views without resorting to the price hammer or clickbait you would literally be an ecommerce marketing genius. I don't think the Canadian side has impressions yet as I believe that is tied to Seller Hub, but it is helpful in that it gives you an idea if your are listings are being "seen" by customers.

General visibility is driven by how many people are searching for relevant key words in your description, where you rank in the best match algo, and how much natural browsing you might get from a store or repeat customers. From working on large scale ecommerce sites I've experienced plenty of situations where skus had very limited visibility. Consumer searches tend to cluster around direct keywords or part numbers (one relevant bit of item identifiers) whereas their natural browsing is typically limited to "new" sections, sales pages, and landing/banner pages. With a large general site it can be difficult to get noticed, hence why thousands of dollars get spent on a monthly basis for site placement. Selling on ebay is a bit like selling one item in the world's largest Costco and having your product stuck at the top of the pallet racking.

patphotog · ‎08-20-2017

That is a lot of words for not saying much.

Try it.

Use a VPN or TOR browser and do not log in to your ebay account (anonymously).

Browse or search for your low or no view listing items....could you find them????

Make sure your hide your IP address from ebay and test it.

The buyer are seeing ebay exactly the way you see it when you hide your IP address.

If you see a dip in sale or no sale for a period of time try this test...you'll be surprised.

No conspiracy theory here...just fact.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-20-2017

When other sellers complain that their listings are not being seen I rarely have a problem finding their listings in search. I'm sure there is the odd glitch but I don't believe that eBay purposely makes listings invisible. What would be the point?

patphotog · ‎08-20-2017

The believe is that common people with basic or premium store are taking sale away from the big player ...Diamond and above.

Here is a test.

Search for Linda William in the Music CD category. (no "s" at the end of William)

Hide your IP address (Do not use US or Canada on your VPN...cookies will be recognize and logged you in automatically)

Try UK and search for that CD...any success??

I am actually curious if you could see it on .ca or .com.

Give it a shot and let me know...see attachment for pic.

hlmacdon · ‎08-20-2017

@patphotog wrote:
That is a lot of words for not saying much.

Try it.

Use a VPN or TOR browser and do not log in to your ebay account (anonymously).

Browse or search for your low or no view listing items....could you find them????

Make sure your hide your IP address from ebay and test it.

The buyer are seeing ebay exactly the way you see it when you hide your IP address.

If you see a dip in sale or no sale for a period of time try this test...you'll be surprised.

No conspiracy theory here...just fact.

The listing appears fine on .ca using the search term Linda William. Changing the search term to Linda Williams also captures the listing. So far so good since it ensures even with a misspelling a buyer will find your listing.

Let's find out what happens when we try to find the listing on another ebay country site. Searching on .com for the search term Linda William brings up all the listings that partially match Linda Williams, and it also captures the Linda Ferreira...by William Vollinger listing which is a US domestic listing. The William Vollinger listing also gets captured in the ebay.ca search results for the search term Linda William. Your listing is however not captured.

The behavior here is a bit strange as a .com domestic listing gets captured in the .ca search, but a .ca listing doesn't get captured in a .com search. There seems to be some sort of technical glitch or differences in search functionality at the root of your issue. In order to confirm that is the case versus a conspiracy theory explanation, let's look at a few ways we can try to force your listing to show up to ensure ebay isn't hiding it for nefarious reasons. First let's apply a search modifier to separate William from any Williams results. We can do this by using the search term Linda William -Williams, which will remove anything that matches after the -. We can see your listing now shows up.

For the next test we can try to trigger a more specific search which should narrow the results to what we want. Here we will use the search term Linda Williams Traces. As we can see your listing now shows up.

I would suggest bringing this up in the next weekly chat to see if they can offer some explanation for the search behavior exhibited. The .com search seems to handle partial matches fine for domestic listings where we have a William vs Williams scenario, but it glitches and omits a.ca native listing. Do your other listings appear fine or was this the specific case you found?

As for visibility on other country sites I didn't dig into that that but I've always found visibility to behave weird once you go beyond .com, more so when you factor in there is a pay for visibility function at work as well. As a side note 389 of your listings have link target issues (Linda William listing is not one of them), you may want to get those fixed.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-21-2017

For the last week or so quite a few US sellers have been complaining that their listing are showing under international sellers. Neither Canadian or US sellers should be showing as international on .com so there is obviously a problem. I notice that when you narrowed down the search on .com the Linda William CD showed up under international sellers. I am going to guess that it didn't show up the first time because there were so many results for the search that there was not a section shown for international sellers. When I just searched now on .com that listing came up in the regular section, actually as the first listing. But that is likely because I had found it earlier and clicked on it.

I'm curious, did you use your ip when you searched? I don't understand the reasoning as to why someone would see a listing when signed in and not see it if they are anonymous. Is the poster saying that ebay only shows it to people when ebay recognizes the ip? That doesn't really make sense to me. I thought that perhaps it would have something to do with where that item would ship to but if someone is shipping worldwide then any ip would see it if that was the case.

hlmacdon · ‎08-21-2017

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

I'm curious, did you use your ip when you searched? I don't understand the reasoning as to why someone would see a listing when signed in and not see it if they are anonymous. Is the poster saying that ebay only shows it to people when ebay recognizes the ip? That doesn't really make sense to me. I thought that perhaps it would have something to do with where that item would ship to but if someone is shipping worldwide then any ip would see it if that was the case.

No, I used a VPN (if you want to replicate this, the Opera browser has a free VPN service built in) with several IP's across several countries. As I mentioned in another thread, if you are not signed in, ebay will based your ship to location based on your ip address (geo location). This could explain some disparities in search results where a seller may not ship internationally and your ip is detected as international, but that isn't the case here and as you note there is something else going on with search and specifically how it handles results from listings that originate from a different ebay country site. Other posters listing on .ca might want to do some tests to see how their listings show up on .com. I only list on .com so I can't reproduce the issue with my own listings.

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-22-2017

@hlmacdon wrote:

No, I used a VPN (if you want to replicate this, the Opera browser has a free VPN service built in) with several IP's across several countries. As I mentioned in another thread, if you are not signed in, ebay will based your ship to location based on your ip address (geo location). This could explain some disparities in search results where a seller may not ship internationally and your ip is detected as international, but that isn't the case here and as you note there is something else going on with search and specifically how it handles results from listings that originate from a different ebay country site. Other posters listing on .ca might want to do some tests to see how their listings show up on .com. I only list on .com so I can't reproduce the issue with my own listings.

Most of the sellers I've seem comment that their listing(s) are showing under international sellers in search are in the US and do list on .com. But it seems to be happening to some .ca listings as well.

lady.stark · ‎08-31-2017

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

Most of the sellers I've seem comment that their listing(s) are showing under international sellers in search are in the US and do list on .com. But it seems to be happening to some .ca listings as well.

I've seen this multiple times. I bought items from seller X and then searched her other listings by clicking on "View other items". Some of her items were showing up in the "International" section even if the seller was located in the US and only listed her items on .com.

Or an item was not visible at all when clicking on "View other items". That listing only appeared on the completed listing page of the items I bought (on top as a suggestion). That's how I was able to purchase another treasure. I wondered why it never appeared among her other items. Very strange.