I figured out why I haven't been selling anything. I don't show up on the searches.

[musicyouneed]

I had come to the board as I came across 2 sellers who were selling CD's like me and had 1/2 of what I had listed and were selling double what I was.  I compared a lot of what they were doing and I wasn't.  They had a 2 day handling, I changed mine to 2 from 3.  Up to 5:30 today one had sold 15 CD's and I hadn't sold any. 

What they don't do: use item specifics, one uses BO and of the 218 he sold 78 were due to BO; don't require immediate payment. provide less info about the CD and less TOS.  

It still didn't make sense so I went to ebay without logging in and guess what.  Although my CD is priced lower, they completely leave it off the search when you search for lowest price unless I go to search all results, it then shows up.  No wonder I am not getting any sales. 

Remember this is search for lowest price.  It goes from 2 CD's auction to the higher priced CD's.  There are 185 listings and they only show 107 unless you click to view all results. 

Without viewing all results only 107/185 show

with view all results there is my listing

[electronicifycanada]

This has been happening to multiple listing of mine for about a while now. Here is 1 for you to have some fun with.

www.ebay.ca/itm/192918622389

Now search on eBay "Apple Watch Series 1 Case" and put it Canada price lowest to highest. 

Then you will see my listing doesn't ever come up at all. Last year that product was selling at least 1 per day, now it's 0 per month.

I've noticed this listing about 6 months ago and it still hasn't fixed itself. I haven't bothered asking eBay about it because I know I'll just get the run around. 

I think it's pretty shady considering I'm paying fees for this listing to be shown and eBay is hiding it.

[musicyouneed]

Hi it came up for me.  I am trying a couple of experiments for myself, 100 listings on .ca and 100 on .com.  I'll let you know how it goes. It showed up for me searching lowest + shipping 

[pjcdn2005]

When I searched using those terms, ebay automatically defaulted the search to the category 'cases, covers and skins'.  Your listing is in the screen protector category which is why it wouldn't show up for me.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@electronicifycanada 

For your particular example it may be just a case of too many available listings scattered all over the place. Unfortunately, its difficult for everyone's item to show up on the first page. When I clicked the main category, Screen Protectors....there are 856,151 Results. Then it comes back to a buyers search criteria to get you to match with them. This may be one of the side effects of GTC. Wayyyyyyyy too many available listings. Throw in Promoted listings and it getting actual traffic becomes even more difficult.

-Lotz

PS. An expression I heard years ago may be applicable....You can't be first, but you could be next. Next being page 27 of search results. How many folks go past page 4?

[kawartha-ephemera]

Search has been like that for awhile, not sure when it started but it is very annoying.  The categories being searched seem to jump around, one has to really pay attention as it is quite easy to think you are searching a particular category and all of a sudden realize the breadth of the search has broadened or shrunk for reasons I don't understand. Searching sold listings has become frustrating as well, there are often far fewer results than there should be, search is a mess. 

[reallynicestamps]

I wonder if a single member is Searching for an item, then redoes the Search, if the items that showed up in the first Search are repeated?

Or does the Search make the assumption that the member had rejected all those shown and show different items?

This would be useful for buyers, but would drive sellers searching for their own listings nuts.  And unexpected consequence.

[kawartha-ephemera]

Perhaps, I really cannot fathom why search behaves as it does ... for sure whatever the AI element is doing is not helpful.

[musicyouneed]

This is the comparison from last year and last month to now.  Quite a difference.  

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@musicyouneed 

Have you recently looked at your Traffic Report comparison? Inside eBay vs Outside eBay? Recent one attached. Magnifying glass may be required. Actually seems lower since I "switched" to GTC.

-Lotz

[musicyouneed]

Here is mine.  I am invisible.  

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

So similar results. Buyers looking for unique items use eBay search. Rarely or never google. I only use google for research as a backup/subsidiary search.

-Lotz

[musicyouneed]

This is from outside ebay.  I get way more action from outside ebay than within.

[musicyouneed]

I don't know why I pay for a store if they are not going to show my items.  This is ridiculous.  What can we as sellers do about this?

[reallynicestamps]

That "Previous 31 Days" is exactly that.

If you looked at it yesterday it would be different. If you look at it tomorrow it will be a different different.

I noticed this first when the percentage went from about minus 5% to plus 800+%, then dropped again the next day.

I use my own (paper ) records daily, weekly, monthly, annually. YMMV. And generally prefer to use PP for tracking sales-- at least the money part.

Are you selling to any particular location?  It's often reported that a seller has had a slew of sales to, say, Illinois or Luxembourg for a couple of days, then back to normal.

[silverpinups]

"I don't know why I pay for a store if they are not going to show my items.  This is ridiculous.  What can we as sellers do about this?"

That's a tough one. Since your selling more common items and have lots of competition I would use a second category to advertise your  CD's. 

I sell a lot of OOAK items, so I have lots of views, high traffic, and lots of watchers and I'm still sucking air in the sales department.

eBay's search is a mess, a decreasing amount of customers and internet sales tax are probably a few reasons why sales are down.   

[ricarmic]

---

@musicyouneed wrote:

This is the comparison from last year and last month to now.  Quite a difference.  

---

These graphs need to be taken with a grain of salt.

I used to watch my own pretty closely, especially up until a few months ago. I've quit putting much stock into them because I have seen stuff missing from the totals, I've seen comparisons to last year just wrong (because I also have the real numbers so I know what it should be) so if you have your own stats from earlier times, keep them handy too.

I'd suggest just using this as a guideline amongst the other information you have access to....

[kawartha-ephemera]

I agree ebay's sales comparison charts are highly suspect and are often meaninglesss simply because they choose ONLY 2 categories to compare, the 2 they pick can change often! Why they do not compare total sales in all categories is puzzling. 

On the other hand the impressions data can be quite revealing if the type of listings listed are somewhat consistent. Ebay.ca does not really provide enough information for .ca listings but ebay.com does for .com listings, as usual the .ca implementation comes up short.

[kawartha-ephemera]

---

@musicyouneed wrote:

Here is mine.  I am invisible.  

---

That does not look good, kind of hard to judge your typical number of daily views with that one big spike around Oct 1st ... 

My thoughts are that the ebay.com listings malaise that I began to experience back in the spring is now becoming apparent for ebay.ca listings too. 

The .com version of seller hub provides running comparisons of .com listing impressions, the .ca version does not prrovide this data. Impressions on .com listings have been steadily evaporating all summer, currently shows that impressions are off by 32.2% versus the the previous month. I've no store subscription so just list 50 each month on .com, currently the majority have had 0, yes ZERO views over the last month. This is not normal , at least it was not until this year!

It is not at all unusual, in fact it is now normal to see individual GTC listing impressions drop by 40 - 80% each month beginning with the 2nd and 3rd relisting. These are one-off items, postcards. Hard to see any reason to let them run for months or years , I just don't think they are likely to be seen now-a-days. Imo it is fast becoming unfruitful to continually relist the same items over and over for years at a time. Used to reliably sell that way, not now it seems. 

[hlmacdon]

Well one thing...the point about where searches default results to in terms of their category filter is a good one as ebay does an incredibly sloppy job of handling this. When I run a search for the Bob Dylan title it defaults to LPs rather than the top level category which is an asinine approach to handling a search since there was no text based identifier in the search term or a user profile/purchase history that would indicate a buyer preference for vinyl.  I've noticed similiar behavior in quite a few searches I've done when looking for various items.  Amateur hour.

There are other factors that will effect which results will show and where. They are pulling data from user purchase histories and extracting certain data points from there to throw into the mix. That seems to have a heavier weighting these days. Bear in mind your search results may vary quite a bit from another user based on location and purchase history. Based on what I've seen from their work on refining search I'd fire the team. Does a heck of a lot more harm than good in terms of the buyer experience.