The 'Browse Page' explained: that landing page with all the products before you get to actual items

[momcqueen]

It's what the kids are doing these days....

From our southern cousins: https://community.ebay.com/t5/eBay-for-Business/All-About-eBay-Browse-Pages-The-Benefits-of-This-New...

All About eBay Browse Pages: The Benefits of This New Way to Shop

We’ve noticed something lately. New online shopping patterns have emerged, especially with Millennial buyers. Instead of visiting specific online retailers for a single-purchase transaction, shoppers are using search engines to turn up results based on keywords.

This behavioral change means that buyers are looking for inspiration and guidance, and they’re more inclined to explore and discover to find what they want. That’s where our new browse pages come into play.

So, how will these new pages help browse-hungry buyers? Let’s say that you’re in the market for a new toaster oven. You type “toaster oven” into a search engine like Google, and start browsing until you’re inspired enough to click on the following link:

[momcqueen]

To further illustrate this point, when I do a google search for 'Disney Cars diecast' which is one of the things that I sell, this is the page I get:

Of course, none of my items are among the ones featured here.

What bothers me more is that I have, in fact, written a comprehensive guide to Buying Cars that should be included here except that ebay Canada doesn't recognize the guides we write for some unknown reason. The link is broken. Or so I was told. 

[momcqueen]

If you click See All Results halfway down that page, you get the same old listings in the form we always got and mine appears there once which I'm not going to complain about. Once is better than not at all. 

I'm raising this not as fodder to gripe but as a matter for ebay sellers to ponder. This is another kind of Best Match we need to figure out how to place highly with. Canadians may be at an inherent disadvantage due to our UPCs for the same products in America not matching too. I know mine don't with Disney Cars. The USA has theirs, Canada and the rest of the world have a totally different system of assigning UPC to the same characters. 

[momcqueen]

I rank way higher with Best Match on a directly-on-ebay search for Disney Diecast cars than I do with the Browse Page. I get none on the Browse Page but a See All Results shows 12 of 50 products are mine. So this new Browse Page system buries my offerings significantly. 

We need sot be asking ourselves (and ebay) what we need to do to get placed on the Browse Page.

All my items have the required Product Identifiers and did from the start.

[momcqueen]

It's like ebay installed a door between the google search and Best Match on ebay and are calling it a good thing. Except it's closed to everyone but a few sellers who've fit some criteria of which we're left unaware.

I would encourage all sellers to google search their own product lines and see what they get on the Browse Page that ebay offers. 

[ricarmic]

I came up well, 3 in the first page, however they are GTC lots that have been around for years, have multiples (I keep replenishing them) and large numbers of views many 1000s.

An interesting side note, a competitor who shows up a lot more than me for 1 of a kind lots does so, I believe, because of a very good "sales per day" ratio....

[momcqueen]

Ah, interesting. Thanks for sharing. If you place well under those factors perhaps the circumstances themselves lend well to what the Browse Page is looking to feature. Insight is good. 

[kitschnvintage]

OMG ~ Have you noticed the very ODD comments that come up under some of those listings? See the 2nd one down ... I wonder how ebay is pulling the information from the Sellers listings ????? 

This one below is from some xmas ornies I was looking at:

25 pieces. Seems many are not finding the choices. Different methods are better for different distances and weights. There may be critical points that were not mentioned or photographed.

Maybe you should be happy none of yours come up on the first page ? lol 🙂

[kitschnvintage]

This was under a jewelry listing:

It measures 3/8" wide, 16" long and weighs 73 grams. I think it's cheesy and insulting. That said, I do stand behind my diamond grades and my gemstone identification. What does “estate” mean?.

This could keep me entertained all night. Sorry for bombing your otherwise serious thread.

[momcqueen]

Please, no apologies necessary! You always provide an interesting point-of-view and I really had not spent much time investigating the descriptions pulled from the listings featured. I wonder if this is the same 250-word description eBay warned us was coming for mobile device-viewing that is being repurposed for the Browse Page?

[i.am.vivian]

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@themodernowl wrote:

This was under a jewelry listing:

It measures 3/8" wide, 16" long and weighs 73 grams. I think it's cheesy and insulting. That said, I do stand behind my diamond grades and my gemstone identification. What does “estate” mean?.

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The seller actually said it was "cheesy and insulting"?  It might be true but not a very good selling point.  There could be someone out there who says "Cheesy and insulting?That's my sister all over. I'll buy it."  but I wouldn't think so. 

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@themodernowl wrote:

OMG ~ Have you noticed the very ODD comments that come up under some of those listings? See the 2nd one down ... I wonder how ebay is pulling the information from the Sellers listings ????? 

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Do you mean that one where the seller says, "We are happy to help. If not, we will relist the item & file an unpaid..."

Odd is right.  Not very friendly either.  I wouldn't buy from someone who threatened me before I've even decided if I like it or not.

[momcqueen]

I'm definately going to have to redo these searches and look more closely at the text blurbs being pulled from item descriptions. Looking at my own screenshots above, I see one that reads the items are '11 per cent authentic' which is not for me a great selling point. Like at all.

[kitschnvintage]

One of my items came up in the browse page ebay offers - with no text writing under the title thank goodness - last night ... but this morning that same item does not come up in the browser results. I found another one of my items in a different category came up in the browser this morning - with no text writing under it ...  

I had 5 sales last sunday so maybe that's why I can get some of my items to place higher in the search results? Although they don't seem to stay there...

I tried that Mobile Friendly view test ebay has to offer, which sometimes works and sometimes errors out ... but when it works none of my listings are mobile friendly 

[momcqueen]

The official reposes on this from Raphael at http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Weekly-Chat-Session/November-9th-2016-Weekly-Session/td-p/356339

I will update this thread as we get more information. 

Best Match bears no resemblance to what I see on the Browse Page. My products appear readily on a Disney Cars diecast search within ebay but there are none whatsoever to be found on this landing page that is the new bridge between an internet search like google and ebay. I ran the test again. Nothing. Is this because I sell on ebay.ca? 

[rose-dee]

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@mjwl2006 wrote:

Best Match bears no resemblance to what I see on the Browse Page. My products appear readily on a Disney Cars diecast search within ebay but there are none whatsoever to be found on this landing page that is the new bridge between an internet search like google and ebay. I ran the test again. Nothing. Is this because I sell on ebay.ca? 

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That may be it, or at least the fact that you're listing as a Canadian seller.  I noticed there were two eBay "browse" results on Google for one of the searches I did -- one with a .uk URL, the other with a .com.  It's possible these browse pages are site specific.  

Yet I list almost exclusively on .com and none of my items appeared on either browse page.  They did appear, however, on an eBay search using the same terms, which is what I'd normally expect.  

I wonder if this is eBay's way of getting around the tiff they had with Google a couple of years ago?  Design-your-own landing results based on a browser search?

[momcqueen]

When I go back to google and redo the search terms as 'Disney Diecast Cars Canada' I do eventually get a result at the bottom of the page that leads to this Browse Page on ebay.ca.... but the results are still 100 per cent USA or China. Even Japan. Literally not one on the Browse Page is from Canada. So that cannot be it. Unless the difference between this Best Match and the Browse Page was in my user-specific List Search Result settings which I had saved to sort as Highest Price first which overrides their default Best Match even after that View All Results button on the Browse Page is hit. This may be it. Perhaps there was no difference ever, it was my saved settings coming to the forefront. As a buyer, I always sort my searches at Highest Price first since it's the only way to bypass all the cheap junk available. 

[momcqueen]

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@mjwl2006 wrote:

When I go back to google and redo the search terms as 'Disney Diecast Cars Canada' I do eventually get a result at the bottom of the page that leads to this Browse Page on ebay.ca.... but the results are still 100 per cent USA or China. Even Japan. Literally not one on the Browse Page is from Canada. So that cannot be it. Unless the difference between this Best Match and the Browse Page was in my user-specific List Search Result settings which I had saved to sort as Highest Price first which overrides their default Best Match even after that View All Results button on the Browse Page is hit. This may be it.* Perhaps there was no difference ever, it was my saved settings coming to the forefront. As a buyer, I always sort my searches at Highest Price first since it's the only way to bypass all the cheap junk available. 

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*If that was the case then I have made a big hullabaloo about nothing. 

[rose-dee]

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mjwl2006 wrote:

If that was the case then I have made a big hullabaloo about nothing. 

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I don't think so.  I have no filters or customization set for searching, and I get similar results -- two significantly different lists presented. 

[momcqueen]

I ran another search and got the same irregularities between Browse Page and Best Match as I did before except more pronounced. Raised it again at Board Hour and Raphael said they were looking into it. http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Weekly-Chat-Session/November-23rd-2016-Weekly-Session/td-p/357771/page/2...