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RSS is no longer available!!!
https://www.ebay.com/dsc/i.html?_ipg=200&_nkw=tablet&_rss=1&rt=nc
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kh-shakhib
·2 years agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
electronecho
·2 years agoBy discontinuing RSS, they force buyers to browse through the standard web content, thereby exposing them to advertisements and increasing eBay's owner profits.
tihomak
OP2 years agoI don't think I see any advertisements. And the profit made on the RSS users dropped anyway as they don't go to eBay as much now.
tihomak
OP2 years agoJust checking...
tihomak
OP3 years agoYou'd think it'd be solved by now, but...
It may take maybe, I don't know, half an hour for a junior dev to set this thing up based on the already existing API.
noopynoop
·3 years agoi dont care if you all bring back rss or not but can you please come up with something better than saved searches they completely suck and its annoying having the feeds gone to be left with the gimped results, just anything that notifies me of things as soon as they are listed will work i dont care
eburtonlab
·3 years ago@noopynoop
anything that notifies me of things as soon as they are listed will work
Google "automated searches eBay" for some possible third-party options.
tihomak
OP3 years agoIt's been 4 months already since eBay broke RSS and hasn't done anything about it. Time flies so fast!
pnicz45
·3 years agoEBay Inc. said its gross merchandise volume, which is the value of all goods sold on the site, fell 5% to $18.4 billion in the first quarter of 2023, the eighth consecutive period in which that key metric number dropped.
The number of active buyers on the marketplace also fell — dropping 7% to 133 million during the period ending March 31, 2023. That too is the eighth consecutive quarterly drop.
Also, if you browse through community forums (both US and UK), you will notice that many sellers are reporting considerable drop in sales.
tube_works
·3 years agoBring Back RSS and the sales will go back up!!
tube_works
·2 years agoBring Back RSS and the sales will go back up!!
tihomak
OP3 years agoNot an update, but to make sure the thread is pinned to the top..
RSS is still not working.
adven_2383
·3 years agoI spent some time looking for the RSS alternatives for eBay and I found this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tomlocksapps.dealstracker.ebay
It's only available for Android. It helps managing multiple searches on your phone.
tihomak
OP3 years agoYeah, it's not really an alternative.
pnicz45
·3 years agoAt this point I am convinced that eBay is intentionally trying to destroy its own platform. And not only because of this RSS issue.
Other thing they recently changed is how bid are placed and it doesn't allow placing large bids in the last seconds of auction. I keep getting customers complaining that they were unable to place bids or their bids did not register and items (on our other account) keep selling way below what they should (someone was trying to bid over £100 and item sold for £26). Searching the community forum I found dozens of people complaining about this and nothing has been done about it for couple of months now!
And then they also removed location filters that can now only be accessed through Advanced filters, trying to make it as complicated as possible for people trying to find items to bid on.
Who makes these decisions and how are they supposed to help eBay? All these new "features" made eBay unusable for many buyers, as well as sellers.
kyle@ebay
Hey @pnicz45 we'll be sure to pass along this feedback about your bidders.
With regard to the filter, I double checked both the U.S. and U.K. sites and confirmed that location is still on the left side of the search. You may need to click on the "more filters" button at the bottom of the filters if you aren't seeing it there in your specific search.
pnicz45
·3 years agoHi Kyle. Thank you for your reply. It appears that location filters are back now after the backlash. Same with the new "improved" product page layout that lasted about a day before you reversed it back to normal. Sellers details were above the price and there was a dead white space on the right where it used to be. You rolled this out again apparently without any thought as it didn't improve users experience in any way, left pointless unused space on the right side and pushed all additional information such as description and other recommended and sponsored products further down the page.
Don't you have anyone testing these things and giving you feedback before you deploy them sitewide? It certainly looks that way. You should get a group of experienced sellers together and test things first. I would be more than happy to volunteer.
Kind regards
Robert
tihomak
OP3 years agoIt's been two months since eBay broke RSS and hasn't done anything about it...
cleavisan
·3 years agoBring back RSS. I have used this to send you literally thousands of customers every year. Why in the world would you disable something that is still used so heavily and works? BRING BACK RSS AND YOUR BUSINESS WILL COME BACK!
tihomak
OP3 years agoIt's been a month since eBay broke RSS and hasn't done anything about it.
gijoes1985
·3 years agoAlso, one RSS feed that still works:
https://community.ebay.com/rss/message?board.id=technicalissues-db&message.id=108908
The feed for this thread, and all other eBay Community threads. Go Figure.
tihomak
OP3 years agoWhat's funny, the only subscriber of the eBay technical issues RSS feed would be eBay. I mean who else would want to read their issues.
gijoes1985
·3 years ago@brian_burke@ebaySaved Search is frankly a garbage feature that's only providing a summary of outdated search results. I want fast notifications for searches of infrequently changing results, but also the ability quickly see high volume search results without notification when I'm available to look through them. In my RSS aggregator I can configure this, and also scan through 1000's of result previews of newly posted items in a couple minutes on a single page without having to blindly check an email or link to see if any new results exist, and if those results are even something relevant. The aggregator functionality is consistent across mobile and a PC browsers too.
RSS is a robust, off-the-shelf standard, and flexibly used protocol. If eBay isn't at least using RSS on the backend of Saved Search then you're really pumping money into a proprietary boondoggle. Saved Search has a long way to go to reach the quality of use that already exists for RSS. The problem is eBay has been presented with a proven tool but doesn't know how to properly use it.
Etsy doesn't have the quantity of listings for what I search and buy, but they do have RSS feeds and I've seen more Etsy listings this last month than eBay. Looks like that's going to be how it is from now on if eBay can't undo this braindead decision.
rozdia
·3 years agowhat a terrible decision. Ebay is going down the drain
retro*dream
·3 years agoLoss of RSS basically killed the Twitter account that I was using to promote my newly listed items (for free no less). Huge thumbs down.
bricks_by_brinks
·3 years agoHi Simon,
Thank you for your invite. I have myself tried to whip something up, initially locally for myself, but I thought it would be useful for all rss-users that shop on ebay. So I set up a website where you can create rss-feeds:
https://rssbay.net
Please let me know if you guys have any suggestions or improvements.
cronkusa
·3 years agoHi guys & gals,
I hope eBay reconsiders and gives us back the RSS feature - we really need it !
In the meantime, i've been working on a Windows program here to try and replace the missing functionality.
It was just going to be for personal use, but it's doing a fairly nice job now & does not rely on RSS so I thought if any of the following 12 awesome people (see below) who have contributed to this thread so far would like to be a beta tester, send me a message !
@tihomak tihomak
@pnicz45 pnicz45
@jacobert jacobert
@olnavi olnavi
@stevangelion stevangelion
@fubarbazquux fubarbazquux
@nngys9anbnyv nngys9anbnyv
@bricks_by_brinks bricks_by_brinks
@mediasave mediasave
@miss_upsetter miss_upsetter
littlerubberguys
flawless-transactions
Cheers, Simon
olnavi
·3 years agoThanks very much for stepping up, Simon! I just sent you a private message.
jasoncjung
·3 years agoHi Simon, I'm not one of the 12, but if you need a tester I'm happy to help. I've been using RSS feeds to scour eBay. The positive side to all of this is I have my idle time spent doing other things (or on other shopping apps), and in the last few weeks, have spend the money elsewhere that I normally would have on eBay - on things I didn't need or "didn't know I needed" (as I tell myself).
Great job ebay.
flawless-transactions
·3 years agoIt does work, now without RSS all you have to do is manually scroll through the "51,000+ results for tablet".
miss_upsetter
·3 years agoThis is so disappointing. I have 100+ searches using RSS and it has worked beautifully for me for years. RSS drives me to purchase on eBay, since I can quickly see what is new each day. Searching the site has become more and more gross throughout the years (top 100 is default, browsing categories often doesn't work for me, etc.), so driving customers back to the site needs major UI upgrades is a hard fail.
To be solutions focused, give the people what they want: An RSS-like experience on eBay itself. Improve the saved searches page and introduce more dynamic features to allow users to customize preferences. I believe eBay could vastly improve on the RSS experience and make an awesome page that brings all saved searches to the user in a customizable manner.
If they don't find some equivalent, I know I'm definitely not going to be buying as much - not because I don't want to, but because the things i'm looking for aren't as easily put before my eyes....C'mon eBay. Take advantage of my whims.
mediasave
·3 years agoMe too, I had 50+ searches to find the odd item that may come up very rarely, now I miss out and so does the seller! I too do not have time to manually check the saved search emails, they are just far too basic!
eburtonlab
·3 years agoI had 50+ searches to find the odd item that may come up very rarely, now I miss out and so does the seller!
For very rare items, you may want to look into some third party services to perform automated searches and notify you by email or text only if there are results matching your criteria.
Google automated searches eBay for some possible options. These services typically provide additional flexibility compared to eBay's current saved searches.
I set up several searches for rare items years ago and still receive an occasional email message when there is a hit.
olnavi
·3 years ago@fubarbazquuxstated perfectly why "saved searches" aren't nearly as useful as RSS feeds. Many of us here had a multitude of ebay feeds (I personally had well over 100) that we peruse throughout the day and now they're all empty. I don't know about the others but I absolutely do not have time to do +100 searches manually on ebay.
Trying to give you guys our money should not be this difficult.
brian_burke@ebay
@tihomak As you are likely aware, we stopped supporting RSS last year. Many factors go into deprecating functionality, including amount of usage and cost to continue supporting it.
Some other platforms discontinued supporting RSS about a decade ago.
@All who posted in this thread. If there is functionality that is not in Saved Search that you would like to see, please let me know. No promises that it can or will be built, but I'm willing to bring ideas back to the team. Please don't state reinstate RSS, it will be a waste of all of our time.
Thank you.
Brian
fubarbazquux
·3 years agoHello Brian,
The functionality that I got from RSS feeds that Saved Search doesn't currently provide revolve around timely, concise, easily digested data. An RSS of a search will update on whatever schedule I put the RSS reader (I use Thunderbolt) on, it provides me real-time information about what new things have been posted, it won't clutter my view with things I've already seen, I can access a lightweight application to see everything, and I can scan and sort and curate a long list of posts quickly to see if there are any I want to click into and investigate.
As far as I'm aware, Saved Search will give me a daily email summary about the searches I've saved, I need to open the site and look through postings as if I had just made the search manually, and if I want to get updates throughout the day on any of those searches I need to load up the eBay site and navigate to those searches and see for myself if anything new has gone up.
If I'm incorrect on any of that I'd be happy to be corrected, I haven't used Saved Searches for years due to RSS' efficiency and ease of use so my memory of it may be dated. RSS is what has allowed me to look through thousands of postings a day - and throughout the day - in mere minutes to find the things that exactly fit my desires before losing out to someone who managed to see the post sooner. I realize that a sale is a sale in the view of eBay, but leaning on the functionality that RSS affords me has been invaluable to me as an eBay customer and so functionality in Saved Search that mimics or enhances those aforementioned features of RSS would go a long way for me continuing to have a pleasant user experience with eBay that isn't time consuming and leads to successful purchases of things I highly value that may only briefly hit the market once every few years.
Thank you for your time,
Ryan
nngys9anbnyv
·3 years ago> If there is functionality that is not in Saved Search that you would like to see
RSS feeds.
Please reinstate them. They're the only reason I buy from ebay instead of amazon.
tihomak
OP3 years agoRSS is simply irreplaceable. Nothing can substitute it. Just to give you an idea of the functionality loss to people who use RSS, it's like replacing the eBay website with a mail order catalog.
eBay is useless without RSS. You can probably get around by querying eBay's REST API directly to generate a feed or using a third-party tool, but it's not easily available to most people.
RSS will stay with us forever, just like SMTP or HTTP.
bricks_by_brinks
·3 years agoPlease reinstate rss, saved searches are wasting my time.
I stopped buying on ebay now rss feeds are no longer available. I can't understand why you would make it more difficult for your customers to find what they want on your site and spend money.
littlerubberguys
·3 years agoI was using RSS to feed eBay search results into a web app. So if a user was looking at x item in the app, it would show them the first 5 eBay auctions related to that item.
What can I use to replace that functionality?
pnicz45
·3 years agoBrian, as you can see from all other replies in this thread, RSS was important for a variety of individual regular buyers on eBay - maybe it's just a small portion of overall userbase but it doesn't end there. I have a website that is getting thousands of hits every month and was using RSS to display numerous feeds to my visitors and driving traffic worth thousands and thousands of dollars to eBay (based on my EPN statistics). And this is just me as a single person/business. If there are thousands of other people using RSS to display eBay products on their websites in a similar way, you are now talking about millions of dollars that could have been spent on eBay. Not supporting RSS might then be justified only if its maintenance costs you more than what you are losing by discouraging all these buyers to visit your platform. Guess we will see in the next quarterly review. Kind regards, Robert
stevangelion
·3 years agoFine i have zero problems not using eBay if eBay has no desire to listen to its users. This is absolutely ridiculous.
hofstragroup
·3 years agoHi Brian,
I've got almost a thousand eBay RSS feeds that I use for buying. As of a few weeks ago they're all unreachable and I can't buy anything. What do you suggest for being able to use eBay again? Is there maybe a place I can upload an OPML of my feeds and generate Saved Searches from them?
Regards,
Peer
buckchow83
·3 years agoHi Brian.
I just wanted to thank you for embarrassing yourself and eBay in general with your ignorance about how the eBay site functions and how eBay is used by buyers (who, if you didn’t know, are those people who pay to keep this whole ship afloat).
eBay did not stop supporting RSS last year (2022). What happened last year is that /sch/ requests including _rss=1 were forced to be redirected to URLs without _rss=1. This created the very unconvincing illusion that RSS was no longer supported. Changing /sch/ requests to /dsc/ requests continued to allow _rss=1 to function demonstrating that RSS functionality was definitely still present and functional.
What changed in recent weeks? Is it that RSS support was really disabled? Maybe, maybe not. What did happen is that /dsc/ requests are now all redirected to /sch/ requests.
Since you probably don’t know, and clearly whoever enabled the latest forced redirect doesn’t know, /dsc/ is the old way that searches that include the description were requested. This has since been replaced by the LH_TitleDesc parameter (0=title only, 1=title+description). Since the forced redirects from /dsc/ to /sch/ aren’t ensuring that LH_TitleDesc=1 has been set for equivalent functionality, it’s abundantly clear that whoever enabled the redirect had absolutely no idea what they were changing. Blocking access to /dsc/-based RSS functionality appears to be little more than a side effect of someone grossly mishandling an attempt to retire /dsc/.
Something else that was broken/disabled recently was “p.html†which now is forced to redirect to “i.html.†“p.html†was a cleaner (less bloated, less server-side processing to create, less bandwidth devouring, faster client-side) version of search pages. Since eBay is determined to burn as much as cash as possible and make the user experience as slow as possible, forcing everyone to the bloated “i.html†is completely in line with the current business strategy. As a bonus failure, anyone who requests a bookmarked URL that used both “p.html†and /dsc/ is now sent to an error page. Complete failure is complete.
I’ll be looking forward to absolutely none of this being fixed but many more problems being added in the future.
hofstragroup
·3 years agoRe:
> Some other platforms discontinued supporting RSS about a decade ago.
Maybe RSS was the wrong technology for those other platforms. But it turns out to be ideal for finding items to buy on eBay. In fact, buying on eBay is the only thing that I used RSS for.
matt314159
·3 years agoI was using RSS to follow the listings of several sellers. I want to see all their items, not just some.
It seems a saved search isn't allowed when the only search term is a seller.
RSS is a very basic thing to implement and maintain, there was no good reason to remove it. I'm sure eBay had bad reasons to remove it, since it lacks tracking information, the chance to show adverts etc.
pnicz45
·3 years ago"As of Q3 2022, there are 135 million eBay users worldwide (eBay, 2022). This refers to the number of shoppers who have bought something on eBay at least once in the past 12 months. The number of eBay users in Q3 2022 marks a 2.2 percent fall from the previous quarter and a 11.2 percent decrease from the year before."
eBay is losing more and more users at the moment so why make it more difficult for them to find what they are looking for?
watrwest
·3 years agoFor my purposes, the advantage of dsc was that the resulting page was very "clean"...
...the sch page has much more lint...
... but dsc is gone and I doubt very much that ebay will resurrect it.
watrwest
·3 years agoI'll start off by saying that I have no idea what an RSS feed is.
However, I see in your URL you are still using ...ebay.com/dsc/i.html.
In the last few days Ebay has killed the "dsc" and switched to "src" instead.
When I clicked on your dsc URL the resulting results page of 62,000+ items came up as...
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_ipg=200&_nkw=tablet&rt=nc
Usually eBay automatically switches from dsc to sch.
But sometimes not and you get the little kid & "we've looked everywhere."
If that is what you get, try going into your bookmarks and changing all the dsc's to sch.
tihomak
OP3 years agoNo, eBay did not kill dsc since the URL clearly works:
https://www.ebay.com/dsc/i.html?_ipg=200&_nkw=tablet&_rss=1&rt=nc
What does not work is the RSS feed. The URL above used to generate a feed, and now it shows HTML instead.
This is what an RSS feed looks like in a browser:
stevangelion
·3 years agoDoesnt work for anything else other thant that ONE search for some reason. I don't understand why eBay is so intent of getting rid of RSS. I'm not the only one who uses it religiously. I'm going to be spending less time on eBay and spending less money on eBay now because of this.
Why can't we have RSS? Please someone from eBay explain this.
olnavi
·3 years agoRSS feeds are my primary method of viewing listings and I'm a frequent buyer when I find the things I want. Bring them back, please!
pnicz45
·3 years agoFor those using Wordpress and looking for alternative solution - Fast eBay Listings plugin works well, even though you will only be able to display certain types of searches. For example, you can't use some of the advanced search options or show recently sold items. But still better than nothing. There's a monthly fee for this by the way.
jacobert
·3 years agoI used to have several odd RSS feeds and once or twice a week these oddities would come and I would buy them. going into ebay and searching through this each day to find it its not going to work. And no, setting a saved search will not work as these items are not named in a standard way.
I still dont understand why they removed this other than the new kids doing the coding dont use it.
pnicz45
·3 years agoThis is so ridiculous. Completely phased out RSS without any warning or official statement. Our website uses numerous RSS feeds to display eBay items to thousands of our customers, making eBay more money in the process. This morning I just found out that the whole thing just stopped working completely. Great job eBay.