@momcqueenwrote:
Bring it up at the Weekly Chat. I’m interested to see the answer you’re given.
Update: Well, it seems the reply was effectively the same as tyler gave in the earlier thread on this subject a few weeks ago, which was:
"I looked into this and discovered that the Watcher-count from the Item Details page has been removed as a feature as of last week.
I'm still looking for more details as to 'why', but I do know that this isn't something that is considered a glitch or error.
Watcher-count will continue to display in search results and there is no plan that I can find to remove it."
And yesterday's response from 'tyler':
"This is an intentional change from mid-January. I talked about it briefly here. Watcher totals should still be displaying in search results if items are popular in search."
The "why" still hasn't been explained, nor do I think it's likely to be, at least not in any honest way. My guess is that eBay doesn't want to continue giving away free marketing/promotional boosts if they can get sellers to pay for it (Promoted Listings). No, they'll probably tell us that displaying "watcher" counts weren't effective. I beg to differ. It is a known marketing technique that gets results (otherwise why would eBay have kept it going for so long?), and, well, it was free! Uh-oh, just like "Guides" -- can't have that when eBay is scraping for every penny it can get out of sellers.
Despite what 'tyler' said, when I looked at a number of my listings yesterday that I knew from Selling Manager had many watchers, those watcher numbers weren't in fact displayed in a search (done from my alternate ID). Someone listing on eBay.de still had it displayed though. I haven't checked again today, I'm exhausted trying to keep up with eBay, done for now.
