eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…

[zamo-zuan]

I thought I would let others know of my recent findings. I noticed some strange volatility and patterns in eBay’s traffic for the last few days, so I thought I would research a little further to see if I could figure out what is going on, and I believe I’ve stumbled upon some major issues.

The first thing I was trying to look in to was my odd observation that all of the top sellers in our category , all who have consistently been ranked on top of eBay’s organic search for years, in addition to being the biggest investors in Promoted Listings, seem to be all ranking far down in search results. 

I was curious as to what may be causing this. As it seems to imply that both organic search rankings as well as PL are not actually being factored right now.

I began researching how Promoted Listings are showing up. Prior to this, in our category, the first 2 results were pretty consistently marked “Sponsored”. In the morning, I’d noticed just 1 “Sponsored” rather than two. So I thought I’d check again and research a bit further…

I was surprised by what I’d seen:

None of them sponsored…? I scrolled down a bit, it seemed that NOTHING was marked as sponsored?

So then I tried a search, as I usually do, to try to count how many sponsored (if any) might be on the page. Hit Cntl + F, and searched for “Sponsored”. My results:

Literally EVERY single search result is secretly marked as sponsored!! But the text is in a white font that’s not visible unless you search for it or highlight the text in the listing!

Considering nothing was showing as promoted, while at the same time everything has a secret ‘hidden’ promotion mark, that seems like quite clear evidence to me that something is indeed broken in their search/promotions system.

I had asked some friends about this, and none of them had it where ZERO promoted items appeared on the page like mine did, although they did mention the results had very few promoted items. But doing Cntl + F, they all did have every item secretly marked as promoted!

Now I thought I’d take a look at the traffic comparisons to see if there’s anything showing for promotional/organic views…

Okay now the numbers say there’s been a drop of 10.6%... But the graph looks like an increase and not a drop? What’s going on here?!

Taking a look even closer, so the organic numbers are 747, promoted 595, external 668… So if organic traffic is supposed to be 40%... Why does the dark blue bar (organic) look so much larger than the other bars…?

If we take a look into the Inspect tool (by right clicking > Inspect on the bar) it brings up the data that’s being ‘fed’ in to the graphs and this is what is shown:

1237 non-promoted page views?  These are different numbers than the statistics say! Where is this 1237 coming from?!?! And why is eBay sending data to this page that claims there’s 1237 non-promoted views when there’s actually 747???

We know these numbers are used in the eBay search algorithms. It’s needless to say that if the numbers are not correct in the algorithms, that will mean the algorithms will not be working correctly. 

So I thought I’d then look over at the Advertising page to compare how the numbers there might look:

Now clicks = views.  This page is claiming 1156 organic, and 668 promoted!!

So traffic page vs promo page:

Promoted:                        668 - 668

Non-Promo:                     747 - 1156

Non-Promo (graph)      1237 - 1156

The Promoted numbers are matching, but NONE of the non-promoted are matching up! There’s 3 different numbers ranging between 747 and 1237! The graph doesn’t match the information on the graph which doesn’t match the ad page!

I don’t know what exactly is going on, but the one thing that seems clear is that search/traffic/promotions are having major issues right now.

This is in addition to the other issues that I’ve observed with promotions that have been discussed lately. For those who had not seen the discussion, in my testing it has shown that PL rates are actually weighing on not just your promoted traffic but your organic traffic as well! I first noticed this mid last year:

I thought it may be an error, as the definition of “organic” means “free/unpaid” impressions. In hopes they might fix it. But then the next time I had tested it:

It seems they had only made it weigh EVEN MORE on organic impressions!

Is this an error, or intended? Considering it’s been nearly a year, it’s almost certainly intended at this point. If it’s an error, it’s even more alarming that such a major problem could still exist a year later without being repaired. 

I don’t know what’s going on over at eBay, all I could do is hope to bring some awareness to these issues, and gather as much information as I could, in hopes that it will help eBay address the problems!

I don’t want everyone to just take my word for it. I would like to ask other sellers, please share your own results! 

Please check:

• Your search results and if any promoted listings appear in the search results.
• If you cntl + f and search “sponsored”, how many sponsored listings are hidden in the search results?
• If the data on your traffic graph matches the bar sizes
• If any bar sizes show incorrectly, in chrome r click the bar > inspect, and see what the system is claiming your impressions are.
• Compare your Advertising page impressions to your Traffic page impressions.
• If your PL rates had resulted with changes on your organic impressions.

The more information we could give eBay regarding this, the better. Hopefully we could find a common denominator and figure things out!

[stainlessenginecovers]

I thought items that are sponsored will come up in a search twice; once sponsored and once organically (not sponsored)

Is it possible the one with 'invisible-"sponsored" is just the organic one and is 'hidden' because although that ITEM is sponsored, that SHOWING is NOT??

[zamo-zuan]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@zamo-zuan  Could be category. Could be you ran into a reporting glitch when you tested. Could be something else. Now that we know at least one test outside your category resulted in the sort of results one would expect, I would suggest that some sellers within your category should run similar tests, to try to determine whether your result is a category specific issue or was just an outlier.

Without more tests I don't think we can say that your one result is now the norm within your category.

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I had hoped it was a glitch, but considering it happened months apart, and it was even more extreme months later, and still follows the same patterns, that makes me doubtful.

It's been nearly a year since first noticed, so if a glitch such as this has persisted for so long, that's it's own worrisome scenario.

I'd welcome any testing! That's part of what I hoped for in my posting of this 🙂 That's the best way to figure out what's going on, find any common denominators, etc.

All I could say is in our results, it's definitely a factor. In cases that we drop our PL rate, we'll see both Promoted & Organic impressions drop. And even if we just change our PL campaigns (without changing rates) PL takes a nose dive, and organic impressions have a lesser resulting effect that seems based on momentum changes of total impressions. 

In both cases, Organic traffic has a clear link to the promoted listings. But in lowering/raising PL rates, you could see a steep drop and increase making it extremely visible. 

[josie46d]

I am a newbie (March 2022) and still learning. I do use PL and monitoring how the system works; an experienced seller researching their results will be helpful and beneficial! I've been curious when doing a similar search while not logged into eBay. Thank you so much!

[donsdetour]

Hmm this mess is such I suspect folks getting cycled with the higher to lower ratings:

Seems to be what is going on with eBay.

Can not say it is they way it is going (fact); but I do suspect it.

[zamo-zuan]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

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Excellent points. 

Had me concerned initially.  Like you, am guessing it is category driven or was glitch-festered in some way.

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Most likely category based (for now).

But requiring more than 1% investment in PL was a "test" that hit our category in 2020, and that eventually spread to other categories, and is now becoming the norm. So sadly, it seems things are tested in Motors a bit earlier than others.

I do hope it's a glitch that eventually gets fixed, though!

Although on eBay, it's always best to do your own testing! Please don't take my word, or anyone's word, for it. Not everyone has the same experiences and results on eBay. I can only share our results, but please test for yourself 🙂

[zamo-zuan]

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@stainlessenginecovers wrote:

I thought items that are sponsored will come up in a search twice; once sponsored and once organically (not sponsored)

Is it possible the one with 'invisible-"sponsored" is just the organic one and is 'hidden' because although that ITEM is sponsored, that SHOWING is NOT??

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There's been times this has happened, and times that it hasn't. This has been another thing that seems to have varied by category as well.

It could be the case that this is how it is intended to work now. But this isn't how it had worked in the past (in our category, at least). I will check older screenshots, I don't know that I had a reason to take a photo of it. But it's something I've checked with algorithm changes, and I have conversations with others discussing the algorithm changes and how many sponsored results were appearing per page (and this was the main way I use to count those results).

That said, this wouldn't explain my case on Friday where every single item had the hidden text, and there was more search results in the page than the "per page" was set to. (This has not happened since Friday)

[zamo-zuan]

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@donsdetour wrote:

Hmm this mess is such I suspect folks getting cycled with the higher to lower ratings:

Seems to be what is going on with eBay.

Can not say it is they way it is going (fact); but I do suspect it.

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I will be going over the results today and comparing Friday to the rest of the weekend.

I do think Friday had some issues that seem to be resolved now.

The "sponsored" text being hidden is different than the past, but as long as it's showing per page as it should, that doesn't necessarily imply anything further.

Although the other issues I've raised - the traffic page information not even matching itself - is something that definitely needs to be looked in to. And for if organic traffic is altered by your PL investment, that's something that would be useful to test for yourself! (And would be appreciated if you share your results!)

[katzrul15]

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@zamo-zuan wrote:

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@katzrul15 wrote:

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Excellent points. 

Had me concerned initially.  Like you, am guessing it is category driven or was glitch-festered in some way.

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Most likely category based (for now).

But requiring more than 1% investment in PL was a "test" that hit our category in 2020, and that eventually spread to other categories, and is now becoming the norm. So sadly, it seems things are tested in Motors a bit earlier than others.

I do hope it's a glitch that eventually gets fixed, though!

Although on eBay, it's always best to do your own testing! Please don't take my word, or anyone's word, for it. Not everyone has the same experiences and results on eBay. I can only share our results, but please test for yourself 🙂

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Appreciate the insights and will work to test as well.  Thx!

[siamjane8]

No - ebay changed that policy because of the duplicate listings causing double the search results. They only show one or the other now... Guess which one shows up?- Promoted 99% of the time.  The do not disclose how they determine which one will show- just trust us that we will show the most relevant to the search. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@siamjane8 wrote:

No - ebay changed that policy because of the duplicate listings causing double the search results. They only show one or the other now... Guess which one shows up?- Promoted 99% of the time.  The do not disclose how they determine which one will show- just trust us that we will show the most relevant to the search. 

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"Most relevant" from an item I searched this morning:

No clue how that's even remotely coming up in their system as a match... lol. And top results are from Lithuania (for the unmatching item). BTW, the bottom 2 in the first screenshot are the ones actually matching the search code.

[zamo-zuan]

Seeing that a lot of this discussion was built upon the "Sponsored" text being hidden, and if that may be normal or not, I thought I would dive in to that a little further to dissect this part of the search page and explain why it's unusual (aside from that fact that the Sponsored text did NOT behave this way in the past).

Forewarning, very long technical post incoming:

Let's take a look at the elements that make up the search results, I'm choosing a random item on the search results page- 

So here is an item appearing in search results, and I've made a box around one section of it. This is called the "item__details" section. 

This is what the HTML for that section looks like: 

So you can see here that there's 8 sub-sections. Each sub-section is either labelled "primary" or "secondary". This refers to if it's on the left side, or the right side.

Let's now look through each of these one by one: 

This first one is the item price, and since primary, it's on the left side.

Second one here is the Top Rated Plus banner, on the right side.

This third one is the "Buy It Now" banner.

Now I want to make a note about something. You may be able to already notice that everything is listed in order, from left to right, as you would when reading something. First on the top left is the price, second on the top right is TRS banner, third on the 2nd row is Buy It Now.

So let's go to the fourth, which in order should be the seller:

As expected, the 4th is the seller.

5th is the Free 3 day shipping banner.

6th is the eBay Item Id

7th is Free Returns.

Now on the item__details section, that's everything we could see in the search results. So what is this 8th sub-section?

This 8th one is the "Sponsored" text. But this one was hidden. Which is already different from everything else in the item__detail section. There's nothing else hidden in this whole section.

So now, let's take a look at another item for comparison.

Now this is a good comparison for a few reasons. First, there's some differences between these listings. This one does NOT have the TRS banner, it does NOT have the Free Returns banner, it does NOT have the 3 day shipping banner, and it does have a few other items. Rather than 4 items on the left side, this one has 6 entries on the left side. Price, the percentage off, buy it now, free shipping, sold, and sponsored. And it has 2 items on the right side. Adding up to 8. 

We can see that it does indeed have 8. Two of them being secondary, everything else being primary.

First is price, as before.

Second is seller.

Third is the price comparison.

Fourth was the itemId

Fifth is buy it now.

Sixth is free shipping.

Seventh is sold.

And the final one, again is the sponsored text.

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So now let's put our observations together.

As you could see, eBay follows a pretty standard system. Items are added from left to right, marked "primary" for left side, and "secondary" for right side. And then stack on top of each other from top to bottom. 

One thing is made quite clear. If something is listed on one item - such as "Arrives in 3 days" and it is NOT included in the other, it is NOT included in the HTML. The TRS banner, if it is not included on the listing, it is NOT included in the HTML. If the price comparison is not included on the listing, it is NOT included in the HTML.

There's only one part of the ENTIRE item__details section that is included on a listing no matter what, and that's the Sponsored section. It does not function like the rest of the search results.

Taking this in to consideration, there's no technical issues that would prevent them removing it from the list if it wasn't included on the item, same as the TRS banner, sold numbers, comparison, free returns/shipping, etc. 

Just to prove this, we could actually delete that part from the HTML...

Before: 

 

Deleting: 

After: 

And to see how it shows up in search results:

Shows up perfectly. Just has that "sponsored" text gone. So there's no technical reason as to why it wouldn't function like every other item on the page.

Next question would be: "Could this be for cosmetic reasons?"

Considering most search results are based on the size of the image, that's unlikely. Example:

Search text is nicely aligned with the images, right? Text fits well. Doesn't look misaligned and is pleasing to the eye.

Hiding the sponsored text actually harms the cosmetic quality of the search results page! It is actually the culprit of causing items to be misaligned!

As you could see above, each items line spacing is different from the last one. There's no consistency between rows. Frankly, it looks misaligned and unprofessional.

I will search the page for "Sp" to highlight the sponsored text:

The invisible Sponsored text is contributing to misaligning each of these items!

Let me edit the HTML real quick to remove this invisible text and then we can take a look at it again:

It's still not perfect, as eBay has allowed more text that could fit within their image size. But it's far more pleasing to the eye than it was before with the invisible Sponsored text.

Making the Sponsored text invisible is certainly not making the page any more cosmetically pleasing. If anything, it's hurting it more than helping it.

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In conclusion:

Their item__details section has proven to be capable on a technical side. Their HTML has proven to be able to support it easily, where it can be removed or added without any issues (same as everything else in the item__details section). And it's only hurting the search page cosmetically, not helping.

So now we're left with a question. Why are they doing it this way?

As others have asked earlier, yes it could be the case that it's simply included on all items and only visible if promoted. But this implementation is still very odd. It's unlike every other part of the search results. And considering all the other issues with search acting strangely, traffic pages giving inaccurate numbers, and organic/promoted numbers not matching across different pages, it's just one more piece of evidence we should keep an eye on.

And, hopefully, one area eBay will take a look at to make sure their system is functioning correctly. As if their own pages don't even have statistics that are congruent, it's hard to rely on their statistics to be A) accurate or B) transparently telling us the truth. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@zamo-zuan  Again, I'm not a tech person, but "As others have asked earlier, yes it could be the case that it's simply included on all items and only visible if promoted. But this implementation is still very odd. It's unlike every other part of the search results. "

My guess? It is exactly what you just said. The implementation is different because the other things, such as price, seller ID, etc are STATIC at the time of search. 

However, as we know, whether a promoted listing is shown as "sponsored" or organic is DETERMINED at the time of search, based on a number of factors (including what ebay knows about the person doing the searching etc)

The seller ID WILL show up, the algo does not have to make a decision about that on the fly.

However, the word "Sponsored" will ONLY show upon the Search Results page IF the algorithm decides to promote the listing rather than show it as organic, a decision not made in advance of search but made during the search..... so the word "sponsored" is there should it be needed. Basically, in every search, the PLS algo flips a switch and decides whether to position the listing as sponsored or not. 

So, I just don't see anything out of the ordinary here. There seems to be some dispute about how long it has been this way, but even if it wasn't this way at some point in the past, that simply suggests to me that ebay was using a different way of doing the same thing, and now is using this method. 

Maybe ask the question on the Tech Board, or try to get a blue to pass this on to the Tech team or ads team , whoever is responsible for this.

An aside: you mentioned using the information about sponsored to determine whose listings are sponsored etc. But as I mentioned above, and ebay has been clear about this, you could conduct the exact same search I conduct, and we might see different listings showing as sponsored, because one factor ebay uses is from the searcher side.  

I don't know how accurate it is, but I'll mention again that I believe when you do a Terapeak Active search you can see which listings are in a PLS campaign. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@zamo-zuan  Again, I'm not a tech person, but "As others have asked earlier, yes it could be the case that it's simply included on all items and only visible if promoted. But this implementation is still very odd. It's unlike every other part of the search results. "

My guess? It is exactly what you just said. The implementation is different because the other things, such as price, seller ID, etc are STATIC at the time of search. 

However, as we know, whether a promoted listing is shown as "sponsored" or organic is DETERMINED at the time of search, based on a number of factors (including what ebay knows about the person doing the searching etc)

The seller ID WILL show up, the algo does not have to make a decision about that on the fly.

However, the word "Sponsored" will ONLY show upon the Search Results page IF the algorithm decides to promote the listing rather than show it as organic, a decision not made in advance of search but made during the search..... so the word "sponsored" is there should it be needed. Basically, in every search, the PLS algo flips a switch and decides whether to position the listing as sponsored or not. 

So, I just don't see anything out of the ordinary here. There seems to be some dispute about how long it has been this way, but even if it wasn't this way at some point in the past, that simply suggests to me that ebay was using a different way of doing the same thing, and now is using this method. 

Maybe ask the question on the Tech Board, or try to get a blue to pass this on to the Tech team or ads team , whoever is responsible for this.

An aside: you mentioned using the information about sponsored to determine whose listings are sponsored etc. But as I mentioned above, and ebay has been clear about this, you could conduct the exact same search I conduct, and we might see different listings showing as sponsored, because one factor ebay uses is from the searcher side.  

I don't know how accurate it is, but I'll mention again that I believe when you do a Terapeak Active search you can see which listings are in a PLS campaign. 

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These things aren't necessarily static, as they change along with stock amounts/buyer location & estimated shipping time/etc. You and me (or results logged in and out of browser) won't be the same.

Same as the order of search results isn't the same if searching promoted or not, or if opening an incognito browser and searching. Or even repeated searches a few minutes later.

All of these variables constantly are changing, turning themselves on/off, etc. Not any different from promotions. If the placement in search results can change, and if the shipping time can change, so can the promotion element.

The explanation you mentioned still begs the question as to why showing or not is hiding rather than simply not including it. As it IS triggered on or off, and that trigger could either include/exclude the sponsored element, or add a class that hides the element. Either way it's manipulating the html. Same question is still asked as to why they would do it this way.

If the data received shows 3 day or 4 day shipping is true based upon the buyers location, it can add that element. If the data shows free returns is true, it can add that element.

For example, for the "flip switches" you mention... If the data that shows promotions is true, it can add that element as well. But instead of doing that, they're having it manipulate a class. Include one class if promotions is true, another if promotions is false. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@zamo-zuan 

Again, I recommend trying to talk to someone from ebay's tech team. I'm not a techie.

But I look at it this way: Yes, # in stock can change from time to time, but that's what I'd think of as a data feed, same as a seller revising his listing and reducing the price. If I reduce my price, that data is fed into the html for the listing. No need for the PL algo to DECIDE anything, the data feed updates things. But the choice---sponsored or not---is made every time a search is conducted. It isn't simply an updated data feed. I would see even a shipping estimate as basically a data feed matter....buyer's zip code is this, so data feed says estimate is this. Buyer's zip code is this other, data feed says estimate is whatever applies to that zip code.

Those are all basic to search.

But the decision whether to choose PLS or organic is , let's say, layered on top of that. In fact, it is likely that some of that data must be present first before the algo can decide whether to choose PLS or organic....

While it may work more seamlessly than this, I suspect the best way to look at this for the non tech person is:

1. Regular search algo with its data feeds ensuring seller ID , shipping estimates, etc.

2. THEN the PLS algo determines PLS placement (within search order) and whether a particular listing is or is not Sponsored. 

Again, I just don't think there's anything here to be alarmed about. I think this is probably the way it is supposed to work. What you saw the other day? With no Sponsored listings? I can't say. A glitch maybe. 

But I don't think there's anything alarming about this., and I don't think there's anything "hidden" here. 

[partfinds]

I am not sure what is going on. Today I went to search on EBAY APP on ipad and I searched 1298110131. At first my item was in the first spot and had sponsored. I scrolled down and then up. I pulled page down to refresh and 2 min later it changed position and the “sponsored” disappeared. I pulled again and it changed position again and the word “sponsored” didn’t come back. 

it seems that maybe I am not promoting at the highest as some other seller stays on top and has fixed position everytime it is refreshed and his “sponsored” is never fading away. 

also upon refreshing ebay was adding an extra item that was not listed previously.