Significant Drops in eBay Impressions and Organic Page Views: A Huge Problem

[retro-treasureparadise]

Since April 6th, my eBay impressions have dropped significantly from an average above 1 million to around 500k, and now they hover at around 600k. Despite contacting customer service, I received an unhelpful response that everything looks fine. Frustratingly, I have continued to upload new listings every day, but sales have still decreased. On April 25th, a new issue arose where my organic page views showed 0, which is clearly not accurate. I reached out to customer service, but their response was again unhelpful and similar to my previous experience. These ongoing problems have made me feel unstable and unsure about eBay's reliability. I am now considering moving to another platform, but before making that decision, I want to know if others are facing similar issues.

 

 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@ekmadonna  Oh, OK....since you mentioned you don't have a FB account, I thought maybe you weren't aware of it....Sorry. 

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

I agree and experienced similar loss of sales recently but I can't forget when the problems really began exactly one year ago. Many sellers took a large hit when they decided to not count bot views and only show 30 day rolling figures. I could care less if they put emojis of piles of crap in my view counter. It's been declining with absolutely every change they make. I guess they would rather have 20% of $100,000 than 13% of $250,000.

[magicwandprices]

These new changes are making ebay confusing. Have you all seen this??? This is something that should be asked when the customer is checks out, not when they are trying to add an item. This window pops up if you click on "add to cart". If you click on the "x" the item doesn't get added. You actually have to scroll down to click on proceed. This is ridiculous. The item should be added to the cart regardless if the customer chooses a protection plan.

[femmefan1946]

Since April 6th, my eBay impressions have dropped significantly from an average above 1 million to around 500k,

On the third hand....

It sounds as if Impressions are pretty meaningless, if it takes a half a million impressions to make 120 sales so far in May.

Or about 300 in April.

Feedback isn't very useful since few buyers leave any, but it seems that you normally get about 110 FB a month and the past 30 days you got 145. Still- outliers.

The question should be how did your April 2023 sales compare with April 2022? April 2019? April 2018?

Ignore 2020 and 2021, which are outliers due to the pandemic surge in online buying.

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

I'm interested to know how Allstate is insuring items that are 40+ years old. Basically, every claim will be denied but for the buyers that do purchase the protection plans, they will receive  a piece of mind(because they are obviously missing a piece if their purchasing this), and eBay will get their cut of course.

[clyde-butler]

I am having the same issue. There are many sellers who are frustrated with whatever eBay is doing that is drastically impacting views and sales. It seems like they are trying to push sellers into their new promotions which is set up to simply take more money from sellers. 

Several days in the past couple of weeks the site just kept crashing as well. 

The people working in IT need to get it together. I feel like this is a huge reason sales are slow. 

I am branching out to other platforms since my income from eBay has dropped so dramatically. 

[jasoheat_0]

my sales have gone thru the floor , even more than the last update which just seems to make thins worst , and ebay wonders why they lost 25% of there buyers , what a joke of a company , thought Devin was bad , here Ian and he proved us all wrong , sinking fast 

[valueaddedresource]

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@ekmadonna wrote:

This is the response from EBAY about my Page View Discrepancies on May 10                                                                        

ekmadonna, 

The Product team looked at your account. The May 10th data looked odd, but after researching it here is what they discovered:

Summary:

• The on eBay traffic is accurate for May 10th. We compared both online and offline, the numbers are fine.
• The increase in off eBay traffic is coming from Facebook (which eBay typically doesn’t get a lot of traffic from). In this instance, one item (old Whiskey) gained a lot of the traffic (117 out of 216 page views)  from Facebook on May 10th.

I hope this helps bring more confidence to you that the Traffic report is accurate, and I apologize that the previous issue with the data caused you to question what we are showing. 

I’ve reached out to a couple sellers who posted directly, it’s up to you whether you wish to share any information I provided in this message about your specific case. I will not share it in the discussion since it is specific to your account. 

Thank you for selling on eBay and for being part of the community. 

Brian

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@ekmadonna thank you for sharing that info, very interesting! 

I'll echo @my-cottage-books-and-antiques that this is exactly the kind of information sellers have been requesting access to for years and it would be awesome for eBay to make this data available.

It would certainly do wonders for seller trust and engagement and also be quite helpful for sellers to be able to analyze the data for trends, keywords, etc. to optimize and improve their sourcing and listing, which would hopefully lead to more sales and be a win win for both sellers and eBay.

[wilsonharborsales]

In the past 45 days I have spoken to project leads, developers, a VP, and customer service multiple times.  My sales dropped 40% on April 1st and have never recovered, with the exception of 4 days of normal sales interspersed between.  I have had reps cry on the phone that they are overwhelmed, I was given the email of someone at eBay to contact - and they replied that they were on PTO and not to contact them, I talked to a rep who put her brother on the phone because her kids were crying.  I have been told my items are no longer on trend, my browser needs to be refreshed, the economy is bad, the pandemic is over, I had a return and that is why, my prices aren’t competitive, I need to promote higher than 25%, there aren’t enough item specifics, there are too many item specifics.

I am not a rude or confrontational person.  I list daily, top rated, free returns, promote up to 25%, 100% feedback, etc etc.  I am supporting my children and two elderly parents with this business and am working my hardest at it, as people are counting on me.

I can not compare my numbers to 2019 because my store has grown exponentially since then.  My feedback is a lagging indicator as many of those buyers purchased items prior to April.

Anyway, I just feel done talking about it and running into brick walls.  Hundreds of other large stores (10,000+ items) have experienced the same fast drop in sales and are feeling the same frustrations as I am.

Good luck everyone.  Hang in there.

[jamjoathletics]

Hello, and hope all is well  - this has greatly impacted sales, in a way I haven’t seen before . It’s pretty incomprehensible. is there are ticket out for how the dropped impressions have lowered sales considerably, which is essentially the effect of this traffic cause? Thanks for your help. 

[etrusca]

Hi thanks for sharing this - a warranty is totally inappropriate for your collectible. it sounds like this was meant for a brand new appliance or tire /motor parts category and i didn't know they were offering that.

i recommend you report it right away and ask to speak to a supervisor at ebay in the selling dept and/or have it escalated to reporting technical difficulties beyond this thread which is different. that's very concerning!

[blacktopautoparts]

I have gotten to the same point like you have and at a loss with what is going on. I'll give a good example of some whacky things going on with our account. On Thursday we had an $1100 drop in sales from Wednesday, which Wednesday we had $2400 in sales. So doing the math we were at $1300 for Thursday, then on Friday after a very slow morning into the afternoon, someone at eBay hits the sell button and sales pickup where we end at almost $2900 for the day. Then come to today we have only sold $1200 with a $1700 drop from the day before and it has been super slow. This up one day, down the next and vice versa every day is just ridiculous. We no longer have any ebs and flows like we did before May 2022 when they started making all of these changes to promoted listings and removal of the bots to start a chain of change after change.

Even today my son goes to list brand new listings, and they have made changes again to the Item Specifics on our account. I am not sure what in the world is going on over there, but someone is bored and they love to just keep playing around with the Item Specifics.

We are in the top 15% of sellers in the eBay Motors category, and I know @zamo-zuan is in the top 5%. What does that tell you when many of us that are higher up in our categories and have a decent sized inventory are suffering the way that we are in many different ways?

Even the Listings Quality Report doesn't have accurate data and they were going to completely sunset this feature and then for some odd reason decided to keep it around. I have had conversations with many in the company besides CS with regards to this report and how its a joke with inaccurate data.

[bamboovintageclothing]

FOR THE ATTENTION OF EBAY 

what are you guys playing at? This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever witnessed a multi million company do. 

Stop replying on these boards with the same old “as per our IT department, the glitch has now been resolved”.

The glitch has not been resolved at all. What ever stupid unneeded updates you guys are working on has really messed things up this time. 

If the glitch has been resolved, why are so many people on here and on YouTube still complaining about horrendous sales? 

HELLO EBAY, ARE YOU LISTENING? 

Your software is broken. The fact that it has been broken for over 1 month is plain and simply ridiculous. There is no way your competitors would have let this issue carry on for all this time. It’s no wander your company has been on a steep decline for the past 10 years when glitches like this continue for so long. 

HELLO EBAY! This is some peoples lively hoods. This is how we pay bills. 

Why don’t you get the top IT teams to have a meeting, gather the data, figure out what’s causing this stupid issue and work around the clock until it’s finally resolved. 

I MEAN SERIOUSLY GUYS, ITS BEEN OVER 1 MONTH AND STILL ONGOING? READ THE BOARDS, WATCH THE YOUTUBE VIDS. WE ARE NOT MAKING THIS UP! HELLO! THERE IS A SERIOUS ISSUE THAT NEEDS RESOLVING. 

[bamboovintageclothing]

Can some at EBay just give us a honest explanation to what is going on behind the scenes? 

We are paying for store subscriptions, we are your customers and we deserve real honest answers. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=279Hvh7IV0U 

Just read the comments. Do you think think everyone in the comments and everyone that has commented here are complaining for nothing? 

The evidence is all over the internet, everyone is complaining about lack of sales. It ranges from small stores like mine, through to large stores with 10000+ items. 

Why not get someone from your PR team to make a video and be honest and transparent about what has been going on and when the problem will be resolved. We just need to know when this will fixed so we can work around the problem. 

COME ON EBAY, GIVE US SOME ANSWERS. 

[nilis13]

Well said,  as my freefall of sales along with others continues!!  I also have a store subscription and will most likely downgrade by year's end..