I've been trying to figure out why my Ebay traffic and sales have been in steady decline for the past several weeks, and today I took a look to see what my Ebay listings are looking like in Google. What I discovered was both surprising and very frustrating, and I'm curious to know if any other sellers are seeing this.
I ran this search in google:
"patentearth" site:ebay.com
And in the first couple of pages of results I found pages like this: https://www.ebay.com/c/1633252074
This is a listing for a framed surfboard art print, and for some reason Ebay is showing it in the "Siberian Husky Collectibles" category. The listing title appears correctly on the page, but the title tag reads:
11 X 14 Print Red Siberian Husky Dog Surfer Dude Surf Surfboard Surfing Pop Art for sale online
W T F? "11 x 14" and "Red" appear to be partial snippets of randomly selected variations. The random Siberian Husky references are crammed in apparently because of the (incorrect) category association. And I have no idea where it's getting "Pop Art", that doesn't appear in the listing at all. Here's a screenshot showing the title tag and category:
The description is borked too, they just took random sentences from the description and mashed them together. And if you click "See All", instead of expanding to display the description it takes you to a separate page showing NOTHING BUT the description. It's like this page was designed to be confusing to both human users and search engines alike.
But when I open go to my inventory in My Ebay and open the listing, I get this page which shows the listing looking perfectly normal: https://www.ebay.com/itm/253048995288
And of course I checked the listing to double check the category assignments, and they are also correct. It shows this item is linked only to the "Art Prints" category. Here's a screenshot:
This is just one example, but I am finding several of these butchered & erroneous listings in Google's results. And I suspect that the fact that these garbage pages exist, and Google is finding and indexing these SEO nightmares, may at least partly explain why my traffic & sales are drying up.
Are any other sellers running into these listings? Can anybody on this discussion board that works for Ebay explain what is going on with these pages?
@patentearth wrote:
@lacemaker3@autopiacarcareI was aware of problems with item specifics earlier this month but did not know there were category changes. Is there a list somewhere of affected categories?
I'm also seeing a lot of "Home & Garden" and "Collectibles" categories in my case, but have found a few others as well. Here's a couple of examples:
Another surfboard print, this one in Sportings Goods >> Surfing Equipment: https://www.ebay.com/c/1733255046
TP poster print in Arts & Crafts >> Card Making Supplies https://www.ebay.com/c/1000542283
@patentearth Art & Craft Supplies are technically under Toys.
Not sure if Sporting Goods was one of the ones with recent changes. I'll have to look deeper into that.
@patentearth wrote:
Another surfboard print, this one in Sportings Goods >> Surfing Equipment: https://www.ebay.com/c/1733255046
@patentearth - I have a wild guess on the surf board one but take it with a grain of salt, it really is just purely a guess on my part.
I noticed the text in the tab on that one mentions Sock Monkey. That makes me think maybe when that was created, eBay had it in Toys or Collectibles or something like that where you would expect to find sock monkeys. In FireFox, I used "view page source" on that page and then used the search function to find the word "sock" and I see references to Surfing Board Bags & Socks.
What if they originally had it in a a different category as part of the major mess up from the October 15th changes, then over the last few weeks that they have been attempting to fix those issues, their AI program saw your correct keywords for surfboard and the incorrect keyword of sock from sock monkey and tried to take its best guess at a correct category which put it in the sporting goods one you see now?
@patentearth wrote:
@autopiacarcareThat is a possibility, although it doesn't make much sense for me for Ebay to be using keywords for other "related" listings like that. But nothing about what I'm seeing with these listings makes much sense - they are a just a mess.
@patentearth- I agree it doesn't make sense, from a rational human looking at it logically perspective. Who knows what makes sense to the "smart" AI bots though. 
The more I look into it, the more I think that someone let HAL2000 loose on eBay (may or may not be part of the recent category/item specifics issues) and things have just gone horribly wrong from there. For the ones we have found messed up catalog pages for, go to that actual listing by item number, scroll down to the bottom of the page and check out what eBay is listing for "more to explore".
In the case of our listing for the wax that I gave as an example, even though our actual listing is in the correct car care category and is obviously a car wax, the "more to explore" sections says "Face Waxing Kit Waxing Supplies,Face Wax Strips Waxing Supplies,wax box,mustache wax,P&P Guitar Straps,Ski Wax,Ski Wax,Legs & Body Waxing Kit Waxing Supplies,Ear Wax Removal Kit Ear Wax Removers,Wax Dolls"
Your second surfboard example, the actual listing that shows in the correct Art>Art Posters category is showing me "More to explore : Surfing Art Oil Paintings,Block Surf Surfing Board Bags & Socks,Surfing Board Bags & Socks,Surfing,Other Surfing Accessories,Saltwater Surf Fishing Reels,Surfing Pikachu,Beach/Surf Metal Detectors,saturdays surf,surf music"
And the toilet paper one shows "More to explore : Paper Small Gift Bags,Kraft Paper Gift Bags,Gift Cards,Paper Any Occasion Gift Bags,graduation gifts,Kraft Paper Brown Gift Bags,Paper Birthday, Child Gift Bags,gift wrap,wedding paper gift bags,Paper Blue Gift Bags"
I suppose it is a chicken or the egg scenario - not sure if eBay messed up the "more to explore" section first and that caused the catalog pages to use wrong categories based on the listing being linked to those keywords or if eBay created the catalog pages with wrong categories first and that is now causing messed up suggestions to appear in "more to explore" on the actual listings.
Either way it is a giant mess and eBay really needs to get their act together. The coding on this site needs a complete overhaul.
@ittybitnot wrote:The more I look into it, the more I think that someone let HAL2000 loose on eBay
LOL@HAL. Only in eBay land could one assume that if you were interested in surfboard supplies, you might also purchase some sock monkeys. I did see once an old TV commercial for KIA autos (which brings in the motors category into the mix) with sock monkeys that were surfing.
Maybe eBay's insistence and attempts at search manipulation has finally imploded.
It was either that or Skynet. 
I've joked before that we sell carnauba wax that comes from Brazil, not that other kind of Brazilian wax. I guess eBay isn't smart enough to figure out the difference.
