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Are impressions organic or manipulated?
I looked at a chart of the past few months with my impressions and what I see is shocking.
I update my existing listings frequently. For the past 6 months I've been updating my listings using PL's and I've been setting the rate at .01% higher than the "suggested rate".
My question is this. If ebay is using PL's to show your listings to people and I'm rewarding ebay with a higher than their "suggested rate" wouldn't you think that the impressions should be going UP not DOWN?
I'd like to know what's going on. This is not right. I've been working so hard to keep my store updated and running. I have a new baby born in March. 3 kids to feed now. I need my business to be allowed to grow, NOT SHRINK!
Is this manipulation to try and get people to use their PL Advanced? If so, it's morally and ethically wrong. If I'm using PL's and giving ebay upwards of 13% more in fees I should see an increase in sales, not a decrease with 13% more fees!
Here's the image:
kh-vince
·1 year 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.
jupiter_collectibles
·1 year agoIt's a race to the bottom on eBay. eBay has found out they can milk sellers for everything they can and sellers will continue to pay them. There are so many promotion options now it's almost laughable. You're right you're promoted impression should be going up considering you're paying extra. Just another trick by eBay to make you up your percentage for promotions. More money for eBay, less money for you....
jupiter_collectibles
·1 year agoMy organic sales are up 195% while my promoted sales are down 65%. That's mathematically impossible. Why are we even paying for promotions if they are not promoting our items? I also noticed if I relist my entire store my organic impressions and views will go up as it should but promoted goes down. This proves that eBay is limiting promoted exposure because they have to pay for it. It's only getting worse and worse with every change they make....
tobaccocardyahoo
·1 year agoThe number which stands out when I read your report on impressions is your Top 20 Search Slot impressions which strike me as pitifully low.
Most buyers will never see your impressions due to a short attention span.
Your items have too much competition. If your PL rate is generating decreasing results you need to raise the rate or change your selection criteria for merchandise.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·1 year agoJust a general response to the basic topic. I think ebay has created a Catch 22 for itself with its over-reliance on First Party ad revenue. There are tools and features ebay could provide to sellers which would help them compete more effectively (and which would improve the functionality of the site). But the easier it is to compete, the less need sellers will feel for buying ads. So ebay won't provide those tools and features.
I had some hope when Jordan was the temporary CEO that ebay was headed in the direction of more, not less, seller autonomy. But Jamie has spent years going in the other direction.
firstaidfinds
·1 year agoeBay is very manipulative in many different ways they operate.
siamjane8
·2 years agoLOL- i am sure they needed to come up with a written ethics code as part of the lawsuit they lost after all the criminal harassments and cyber bullying of the Steiners. What is common sense and decency to most needs to be spelled out in print for the hires at ebay upper management lol.
meme6253
·2 years agoI have never seen the words Morally or Ethically associated with ebay., But your issue is not new, I have had the same issue & I have seen the same issue mentioned here a number of times.
valueaddedresource
·2 years ago@meme6253 eBay has a whole page dedicated to their Corporate Ethics Code....some of it is very interesting. 😂
https://www.ebayinc.com/company/code-of-business-conduct-ethics/
meme6253
·2 years agoYou can say & write whatever you want to these days, It's a matter of conviction to what you say & do.
liawri-75
·2 years agosiamjane8
·2 years agoI guess what it comes down to in reality is that any search engine is manipulation by definition and what it does- we just wish ebay would manipulate it in a way that was more organic or relevant to what the buyer types in the box.
Ebay was amazing and growing head over heels when it showed people what THEY searched for-it was a place that you could come to and find just about anything in the world. Now ebay shows potential buyers unrelated promoted items, items not at all based on the keywords searched for, and a host of other parameters that elude us all. In all their desire to have a tech led reimagination they just overcomplicated it to the point that it does not work well.
Going down the promoted listing route definitely a short term money grab that did far more harm to the platform and its sellers than it was worth for sure----but pretty much all us us predicted that- its not brain surgery lol. So here we are - PL have run their course and have screwed up the search, sellers are frustrated and loosing interest in ebay ( who wants to put effort into something that does not return, and worse yet actively works against you). A huge portion of our ebay sales come directly from google search because the ebay search is so manipulated and irrelevant- its a shame people must use a different platform to shop on ebay. If i was CEO-that is what i would address. Just make ebay work again and get rid of all the tech led imagination bologna that is just "words"
As always - I love what ebay has allowed me to do- sell my goods all around the world and work 100% from home and have the freedom to spend more time with my family and grow a small business at the same time- I just want ebay to stick to the basics and be great again.
therapy_dragon
·2 years agoAlso worth pointing out that the history of obsession with power & control. It was only 4 years ago that eBay's global security team was charged with cyber stalking by sending cockroaches and a bloody pig head to harass and intimidate the people working at ecommercebytes.
It's extremely obvious whenever eBay changes the sales cutoff to your store. Weeks on end of daily sales at one number, followed by an immediate and sustained change to a new daily sales limit.
redlinear
·2 years ago@zamo-zuan
I think we should voice our concerns to LKQ instead of eBay. Although, I feel they are responsible for half of the issues we are experiencing on eBay motors now.
penny_sioux
·2 years agoi mean there's other variables like the general economy, seasonality of the item, other sellers going into your space and undercutting you by a dollar or promoting at a high % than you. the last two are harder to prove but easier to rationalize. i also wonder if late shipping and all those secret seller metrics affect what traffic you are given as well.
zamo-zuan
·2 years agoThis is what eBay would like you to believe, and it is honestly one of the hardest thing to deal with when people on here try to pass the problems off as that.
But those of us who take eBay as a serious business have taken all of this in to consideration. There's simply far too much evidence to share in a single post. I can try to explain it to you, but to truly give you the full picture, I would have to give a presentation that would last multiple hours.
Which, btw, I've even given eBay a presentation of the problems when they visited us on site. But most of those reps aren't with the company anymore, and it has been proven that as much as the reps would like to solve the problems, nobody at the company has the power to change anything.
I would be glad to put together and give a presentation about it if given a platform where eBay would actually listen. I'd even prefer it to be at least (somewhat) public, that way others can see the truth, and eBay's responses. And if their responses are bunk, misleading, easily proven as false, or if they ghost and never respond? Everyone can see it. They can also see in plain sight, what they acknowledge, and what they deny.
I've spent far too many hours of my life over the last 7 years trying to solve eBay's problems, when they can care less, and fellow sellers go on having no idea how bad things truly are.
dailydeals-business
·2 years agoI fully agree and have done my own tests, over 3-4 years as we "scale". Promotions is pretty much all bull. It simply doesn't make more sales, you just spend more and once you stop you're screwed until you start again. There is some sort of sales limit imposed on accounts based on overall inventory value and listing speed rates. Increase that listing rate and you'll tap into a new level of sales limit for the month? quarter? If you stop listing you simply maintain a monthly sales amount proportional to your inventory value.
But each revenue number will per.fect.ly ping. ping. ping. that sales ceiling. Quarter after quarter after quarter. Holidays be damned, summer slump, tax season. Ping. Ping. Ping you will hit the same quarterly sales figure over and over again if you yourself are consistent.
redlinear
·2 years ago@fbusoni
Search by price???
Myself, @zamo-zuan and @blacktopautoparts can pick any of our items (such as Cummins Pushrods).
I have a set of those been listed at $27.50 for seems like EVER.
Do your sorts and filters and switch to sold. Plenty of sets have been sold for more, way more, than $27.50..recently
So, either nobody searches for the deal, or nobody can find the deal.
We both know the former isn't true.
So, that leaves the latter...
Buyers are simply not being shown the whole picture. Even if they ask for it.
fbusoni
·2 years agoYes, I meant highest price with shipping, versus lowest price with shipping.
With the blue highlighted above, I know understand what the issue is.
Thanks for explaining it. regards
blacktopautoparts
·2 years agoYup, you have it right @redlinear with that. There are times where when I search an item to see what it has sold at so I can adjust some prices or if our listers have placed the correct price, and I see one seller have sold the same item for $30-40 more. While there are many other sellers that are $30-40 less. I can't say that I am not also guilty of having some items be a bit overpriced these days as we know, the larger inventory you have, it does take a bit longer to update.
I think a lot of times people are not searching for the best prices, are just buying what the search through promoted listings from Google, Yahoo, and other search engines leads them to and they make the purchase. Then the issue comes about is that you get eBay displaying after the sale ads and people then start up some of the cancelations. For those that come to eBay and do a search, those people I say good luck to them, because the search is so fundamentally broken. You search on a specific item with refined keywords and the search will bring up other items that are not related.
Lately another thing I have noticed more often than not is where we will go anywhere from 2-5 hours in between sales. For the items that we have and priced fairly right, this should not be happening and never happened in the past. Then this past year, we started noticing this wild trend. This is the kind of stuff that has you scratching your head.
redlinear
·2 years agoI think buyers just get tired of looking.
They are not going to page two no matter what.
They try to find the best deal and buy it. Then cancel a few minutes later because they saw a better deal as they were leaving.
Or they were going to buy your item, but clicked on one of the adds IN your listing to see what it was about, then another, then another. Now they've forgotten which one they initially wanted, or don't know how to go back to it...and end up buying one just to be done with it.
I've stopped being the cheapest. I now run a normal search and whatever the lowest price I see, I match it or top it. eBay hides the cheapest stuff and most shoppers don't know how to get there.
vintagecraze50
·2 years agoBuyers have within a few clicks on the web to decide on whatever they want at times and that has NOTHING TO do with a promoted listing. What does matter is that you will do the best you can to get that listing seen here with whatever data you can collect. That you you know 100 percent that what you decided to do is the correct decision is a grand mystery with all the variables present. Do not mean you should not a least try to play the promoted game though. It could help a lot, some of the time.
siamjane8
·2 years ago@redliner I've stopped being the cheapest. I now run a normal search and whatever the lowest price I see, I match it or top it. eBay hides the cheapest stuff and most shoppers don't know how to get there.
You make a good point as do many other of the full time experienced sellers- Price is not the issue and the cheapest is not the motivating part of the sale....... I often sell an item that is 10-30%+ higher than the next seller....why- who knows- could be many reasons.
Like you said above though- ebay controls who sees what and its not in ebays best interest to show the cheapest listing is it?- so lets say they choose to show a section of the listings that are priced in the middle of the pricing pack- one will still be the cheapest ....but not the cheapest available- ONLY the cheapest shown!
I think the conclusion that we are all starting to see is that under the current management- no true growth is possible for any one seller because it is all predetermined and controlled and manipulated to fit into a moral/political ideal.
fbusoni
·2 years agoGo to YouTube and listen to Stef Jay talk about "economic opportunity for all" and how that "purpose and culture" guide everything eBay does (allegedly).
Search YT for "Stef Jay Enthusiasts Strategy" and start at the 1:50 mark. The video was posted 10 months ago and has comments turned off (not surprisingly).
siamjane8
·2 years ago@fbusoni that was an interesting video- thanks for letting us know it was there. Certainly does show how a company could choose to manipulate search/sales to achieve their goal. Its not a bad thing overall- but the "included" cannot become the "excluded" over time. There has to be a reasonable expectation of growth or it stifles any reason to list and run a business here.
I dont disagree with her "mission statement", its a noble cause- I dont like the "walmart" system of moving into small towns and putting all the mom and pops out of business and then raising prices while giving less service- that is corporate greed and is predatory....... but ebay needs to remember that their sellers are by in large NOT big corporations- we are almost all small time sellers trying to feed our families and pay our mortgages. Just because we get good at sourcing and selling here does not mean we are evil and need to have our sales manipulated and controlled to keep us from growing- we are the very same people that ebay wants to "include". I do not agree with punishing success. Its so odd to realize the double standard as ebay tries to grow their profits for shareholders- should ebay be punished? should ebay be a non-profit? should ebay management donate their time and not be paid millions of dollars in salary?
valueaddedresource
·2 years ago@siamjane8 the irony here is that Stef Jay was Head of Corp Development for Walmart Ecommerce before following Jamie over to eBay in 2021....and she very quietly stepped down from her role as eBay Chief Business Strategy Officer back in January of this year and left the company.
Maybe some of that Walmart mindset came with her and it's had similar devastating effects on mom and pops here?
Either way, clearly the strategy eBay has pursued the last few years isn't working as well as they had hoped it would and it appears she may have been selected to be the sacrificial lamb offered up to shareholders.
vintagecraze50
·2 years agoIs everybody here forgetting that the economy has a big deal to do with all this stuff on this long thread. People in the lower and middle class are struggling bad right now. They are maxed on their spending. The credit cards are loaded to the max and many cannot pay them off. WE are not in a good economy now at all.
vultaros201
·2 years agoJuly is typically a slow month for me and I am wondering if the new ad structure is making things worse. Sales have tanked about 30% from last month(not surprising by yearly trends) but unit sold compared to last year same period has tanked by 30%(concerning). My listing compared to last year are up compared to prior year but traffic is down.
Ebay is still my bread & butter, but the trends are forcing me off platform to other sites to make up the difference in volume.
fbusoni
·2 years agoOnly if buyers are actually looking at and deciding whether to purchase your items. When I do shop here, I never click on promoted listings because I assume that the listing in question is overpriced to begin with. And a quick comparison will often validate said assumption.
If there is a decline in interest, for whatever reason, in the items that you are selling, is it not conceivable that impressions would go down, whether the listings are promoted or not?
Meantime, why would eBay do anything that would prevent a positive cash flow for eBay?
jupiter_collectibles
·2 years agoIt's all manipulated. Numbers change days later. Meaning none of the numbers they give you are accurate. It's made up numbers and eBay never comes clean about it. Just less transparency from eBay....
vintagecraze50
·2 years agoRemember also that the slots avail using off site ads are also limited and rotate and are subject to Googles rules for inclusion.
iamtoplease
·2 years agoi really question if it's even worth doing standard PL in situations like this. you'll see great majority of the impressions are from promoted listings. while OP doesn't show the views, I'm going to guess that the great majority of the page views are from organic impressions (that's how it is for me at least). If this is the case, then PL destroys a seller's click through rate. Assuming click through rate is an important factor in the search algorithm, then non-promoted listings would have much higher click through rate (5x higher click through rate in my case) and thus organically rank higher in search and have better sales without the need to pay for PL.
luckythewinner
·2 years agoMy question is this. If ebay is using PL's to show your listings to people and I'm rewarding ebay with a higher than their "suggested rate" wouldn't you think that the impressions should be going UP not DOWN?
You are only looking at one variable in a very complex and dynamic system. Impressions are not affected by your promotion rate in isolation; they affected by pricing, competition, supply and demand, buyer behavior, and luck.
If you are frequently adjusting your percentages, don;t you think there are thousands and thousands of other sellers doing the same thing?
movieman630
OP2 years agoI get what you're saying... Now I want you to think of what the purpose of having variable percentages in the PL settings is for?
If it's not to get more exposure, then what? I just feel like giving ebay more money just to do so? What is the variable percentage option supposed to generate for the seller?
redlinear
·2 years ago@movieman630
I used Promotion for cross listings. To get my listings inside of competitors listings.
I feel that the higher % you choose will get your items cross listed in more places, more times.
However, some users have tracked this best they could, and don't see More traffic at a higher %, vs a lower %
IF promoting gets you better placement in a search result...it's not for very long...if at all.
Before you promote, you have only Organic (what WAS this number?)
After you promote, you have both Organic and Promoted (is this number higher?)
That would be a way to compare, but, your items may have changed or some other factor may have changed.
If you had two user ID's with the same amount of the same listings over the same time period? Then you could track it.
vintagecraze50
·2 years agoIt’s a lot more about luck than anything else.
vintagecraze50
·2 years agoLUCKY has the right answer here. Many variables other than what you pay for the promotion. Extremely high rate does not quarentee a sale whatsoever on a consistent basis. Depends on audience online at the time, price too high or just right, yes, supply/demand, BIG ONE. And the luck of the slot machine rotating the listings.
zamo-zuan
·2 years agoIt's more complicated than this as well. And some of us have tested these things extensively over the years.
I can tell you that in our testing, let's say we decide to double rates from 6% to 12% without changing the price? It doesn't do A THING! Logic dictates that based on how they explain these rates to us, it should increase traffic. It doesn't. Based on our testing, there's a "minimum" rate that you must invest (for the moment 4-5%) and as long as you do that, the "traffic switch" is turned on. There's nothing you can do to improve it now.
The testing has also proven that investment DOES affect your ORGANIC traffic! This is literally defying the definition of what an organic impression is. Organic traffic should NEVER be altered by ad investment. But here we are, this is a NORMAL thing on eBay. If your Promoted traffic increases too much your organic traffic will DECREASE. On the other hand, if you invest so little in promotions that the "switch turns off" your organic traffic plummets by 80%+.
Taking this in to consideration, it's more than just the "slot machine" of listings. Because eBay will actually have a ceiling for how much traffic you have a day. Slot machines are random, and without consistency. So how does eBay have consistency for weeks-months at a time? Those of us who are in to online marketing know that real traffic is VERY random. But eBay is anything but random. Impressions may swing by 20-30%, but views will stay the same, sales will stay the same. Organic views may be 2x promoted views, but promoted sales will consistently be 2x organic sales.
Now what about the truth that eBay exposed in how their algorithms work? How during errors where promoted impressions are not being read from their database properly, the views literally REDISTRIBUTED before our eyes? Going from 0 promoted impressions 1000 organic impressions 100 organic views, to 1000 promoted impressions 1000 organic impressions 50 promoted views 50 organic views? This proven that eBay is NOT simply retrieving/displaying traffic numbers, but is instead CALCULATING the views in real time and expecting a discrepancy. They are EXTRAPOLATING their traffic pages.
You guys are too trusting of eBay, and are too quick to dismiss what sellers have experienced on here with "easy explanations" that we have already considered, tested, and tests have proven things aren't so simple. You can have the cheapest price, you can have higher ad investment, and eBay will STILL cut off your sales at the same exact number every day. Once you hit your ceiling of your limits, there's nothing you can do to raise that bar. And before you guys even start the rumor that there are no limits, there are, and eBay has even admit it.
redlinear
·2 years ago@zamo-zuan
We see the same thing in our research
zamo-zuan
·2 years agoI don't doubt it! As long as you have a decent bulk of orders for a nice sample set to work with, these things are quite obvious to see in action.
Sadly, the challenge isn't convincing sellers like us (we are forced to work within these rules for our livelihood). It's convincing other people who throw shade and doubt on our experiences. Because eBay staff will openly admit that their teams work by tickets and the more people added to a ticket is necessary for things to be fixed. So without enough people not only aware of this, but also being familiar enough to convey it to eBay staff members, it'll never be fixed.
We're reliant on others to get these things fixed, but unless sellers are large enough, they trust in eBay over the experience of those of us who actually are top sellers on here and can see how bad things have become.
movieman630
OP2 years agoWell said and totally true. Maybe one day ebay will realize if they take their thumb off the scale we could actually raise revenue all around. Healthy competition breeds good business and weeds out the bad sellers. "Spreading around the wealth" isn't a long term plan in my opinion. We're living through an experiment right now. One day the execs will realize that playing "big brother" to micromanage other people's business' isn't really the way to go. Allowing a free space where people rise and fail based on their own merit and hard work will always be the best way to go.
Let's hope someone realizes this before long. It really would be nice to be able to grow.
vintagecraze50
·2 years agoHealthy competition happens when sellers use the promotion rates to the extent that they can price themselves among the competition, not JUST HERE, but all over the web selling that product.
fbusoni
·2 years ago"You can have the cheapest price, you can have higher ad investment, and eBay will STILL cut off your sales at the same exact number every day. "
Would you be so kind as to explain to me why eBay would do anything to inhibit sales, since doing so cuts into eBay's revenue stream?
I should hasten to add that in 25 years of selling I have never paid eBay a dime to promote my listings. I am also TR Plus, which I have found to be enormously helpful in accelerating my sales. I am content as a seller, and do not concern myself with analyzing impressions, etc., because I do not feel the need to so. Thanks and regards
redlinear
·2 years agoeBay is not stopping sales.
Either intentionally or inadvertently, they are making sure everybody gets seen.
If you deserve to be on that 1st page of results, you'll only get there sporadically.
If you don't deserve to be there, you'll still be there as much as the next seller.
There's a word for something run like this. To the point of everybody being equal.
I have enough inventory that I have no problem being BY FAR the cheapest.
I can spend the time with much of my inventory that I can be BY FAR the highest quality...and the cheapest
I've got the feedback, the numbers, the reputation, and fast/on time shipping record.
Yet none of that matters any more.
I can list 300 1995 Tacoma parts and use every tool at my disposal. And you can take a new account and bumble your way through listing the same 300 with higher prices, cruddy pics, no description, poor quality.
We'll sell about the same amount in about the same amount of time.
Standard business cut throat practices that worked in the past simply no longer work...because eBay won't let it work.
Due to Best Match, Due to promotion, Due to where search pulls it's results from, Due to allowing sellers to MASSIVE keyword spam with no policing of the site, Due to Sort and Filter not doing as stated, AND...due to eBay flat out trying to hide many direct match results....apparently in an attempt to cover/hide listings away from where they should show up?
Due to any single, and/or all those factors, Search results are manipulated.
And from anybody that's done some research, it's not hard to see that search results are manipulated to spread the wealth.
Yep, there's a word for that and it's not capitalism.
The quickest way to double your sales is to have two seller ID's.
fbusoni
·2 years agoThere's a word for something run like this. To the point of everybody being equal.
Is it a three letter acronym? One that has been in the news lately?
therapy_dragon
·2 years agoImagine a Karen boomer who already has more money than they ever need. They're no longer interested in financials. But now they are in a position to play god within their own realm. Become supreme leader of their own HOA like they always wanted, dictating what others can and can't do on a whim.
In other words, it's about control and getting power-high.
blacktopautoparts
·2 years agoGlad you posted this here. There are certain individuals and we know who you are that continue the parade that peoples inventory is the issue or the sellers are doing something wrong every single time. That kind of talk needs to stop. There is some very strange things that are going on in the backend, and whatever it is, its not working. Then add how screwy the economy has gotten, so add that in the mix with how eBay just keeps changing so many things that they should probably leave alone.
I've been hounded for months and months to get on to off site ads. After how abysmal things have been and getting a $300 credit to do so, I gave it a chance. Do you know that even with me bumping up the amount a bit past what they are suggesting, we have only had "1", yes, "1" off site sale in a matter of 6 days. For the amount of items that we have, and the kind of sales we have made in the past, this is wild. eBay has gone down a path that they should never have with off site ads, because it proves it is nothing but a money grab at the end of the day.
Promoted listings can be good or bad depending on who you talk to, but if we need to use them that is fine. But do not introduce store and offsite ads that do not work, let alone how broken the reporting is on the basic promoted listings as zamo has proven so many times over the years. I asked the ads growth advisor for data on the offsite ads and even promoted listings for our category, and I get the answer that they can't access that or produce it for us. How can you get people onboard with any of this if you can't provide data to your sellers.
When I find out that I am one of the few in my category promoting as aggressively as I have been and I know what my rates are at, but now we are seeing rates at 19-20% for eBay Motors. I'm like come on, who in their right mind is promoting this high eBay, when I've been told my many people at eBay that not many are promoting as high as we are. I've heard from others on how eBay is just taking the numbers from your selling account on sales and other factors into the algorithm and they are pre-manufacturing these numbers, meaning they aren't even showing real promoted listing numbers. I can believe it at the end of the day because I have done comparisons with other sellers that sell the same exact items which also have a part number attached and our advertising rates are different on the same exact items.
redlinear
·2 years ago@blacktopautoparts
@zamo-zuan
I can promote standard and see an increase in sales quickly. Yet my monthly average remains same as before. Starts out appearing to help, then tapers off to normal.
I can offsite promote and the same thing happens.
BUT, if I end either of those promotions, I see an immediate drop in sales. Below what was normal before I started promoting. And monthly average begins do drop.
If you ever start promoting, don't stop and don't lower the percentage.
penny_sioux
·2 years agoi feel like this is true. i don't quite understand it, but once you start PL then you're a slave to it. i can also see my impression traffic is like 70%+ promoted but clicks are 70%+ organic, and yet 70%+ of sales are charged as promoted. so how does that make sense when most of my clicks are organic (you gotta click on the thing to buy it, right?) but don't remotely correlate to organic sales if the theory is they are charged a PL surcharge
zamo-zuan
·2 years agoThis is what I was referring to in my other post. I've actually made spreadsheets of our statistics, and have the same as you.
There's a few issues with this. First off, there's far too much 'consistency' in the statistics. Traffic fluctuates. And things like clicks/conversion rate are less controlled. These traffic patterns resemble a variance algorithm. Because if you do the math, you will see EVERYTHING sits between a certain amount of variance, and there will be 0 outliers.
Second, as I have shown back in 2022, they have had MAJOR issues with their traffic page that exposed the truth. If you look at the raw data and compared that to the charts on the traffic page, they did NOT match. This one was eventually fixed, but it exposed several things.
I believe a screenshot will be best to show this, and you can make sense and come to the conclusions on your own:
I ask that you please take the time to look at that and try to piece together what is going on.
Problem with these types of issues is that these numbers are the ones being used in the algorithms, and when the numbers don't add up properly , that means the algorithms do not act properly either.
And now that leads to what was exposed in their errors when their system had an issue where promoted impressions were not being retrieved.
Here is an article covering it with screenshots:
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/what-happened-to-ebay-promoted-listings-impressions-views/
The issue here must be emphasized. Once promoted impressions were being read again, the system literally redistributed clicks based upon how many impressions there were! Like magic, Organic views turned in to Promoted views.
How is this possible? Well we can look at the total views. In the example above, there was 1940 views in both cases. But the existence of Promoted Impressions turned a percentage of those 1940 views in to Organic impressions.
This means their formula for Organic Views = Total Views - Promoted Views.
We can be 100% sure that they are NOT simply reporting Organic Views and Promoted Views, because the behavior we observed would not happen.
And for those in software development, we know the only reason to calculate things this way is because you EXPECT a discrepancy, and any left over numbers will go in to organic.
There's more I could say but I don't have the time to post more right now.
zamo-zuan
·2 years agoThat is another flaw in the system. Promotions start without proper traffic and it takes time to gain momentum.
What this means, is if you EXPERIMENT with your promotions, you must prepare for a loss. Then if you notice things aren't working and go to EXACTLY what you had before, the traffic does NOT return to where it was prior!
Even touching promotions results in PERMANENT loss of traffic. Making it risky to mess with them.
To make it worse, not only promoted traffic drops, but ORGANIC drops as well:
That promo was temporarily lowered, and due to plummetting, it was returned to EXACTLY what it was before.
This defies the definition of organic traffic (which should not change at all from promotions). But here we are. And this is something that ALL eBay sellers should be alarmed and upset by.
Back to promo standard, there is a substantial drop if you're below a certain amount (as you can see in the pic above). But as long as you reach that minimum investment? You're "on" and that's the best you can do.
Further investment beyond that will do as you say, it'll make things LOOK like it's improving, but it all rebalances.
We've tested extensively, since Feb of 2023. Not only is the site facing loads of tech issues that haven't been fixed, but nothing seems to raise the bar anymore. Not investment in promos, not cheaper prices, not ship time, not anything.
And the issue can't be more blatant than what you see in ORGANIC IMPRESSIONS in the above screenshot. There is no circumstance that organic traffic should decrease with promotion investment. NONE. It shouldn't be possible.
This means one of two possibilities:
1) Organic traffic is not truly organic at all, and is also paid traffic.
2) The entire traffic page is smoke and mirrors.
Based on evidence from eBay, either could be true. We can see without a doubt that organic traffic is not truly "unpaid traffic" as it is defined as. But based on their flubs, we can also see that the traffic page "rebalances" and organic views magically turn in to promoted views, and their changes to the traffic page have also exposed that at the very least "clicks" are CALCULATED/EXTRAPOLATED and not actually counted.
penny_sioux
·2 years agoi've noticed this as well, but was blaming it other factors like seasonal. i tried out promoted advanced (pay per click) recently but chose a pay rate much lower than the suggested. while i still get hits, i wonder if it's leeching from my promoted standard traffic as the timeframe all kind of fits. i can also use terapeak to look at the overall market sales for my keywords and it looks about normal so not an obvious market or economic decline. i don't like playing the victim game, but i also have years and years of typical traffic data and clicks are abnormally or dare i say historically low this month.
fbusoni
·2 years agoDo you know that even with me bumping up the amount a bit past what they are suggesting, we have only had "1", yes, "1" off site sale in a matter of 6 days.
I am trying to understand what the complaints are about. You are selling auto parts, and you are top rated plus.
I too have been hounded for months with the same $300 credit you referred to. But because I am, like you, TR Plus, eBay is already promoting my items on Google. I refuse to pay for any advertising because I do not think that a plethora of ads is remotely a substitute for a good price.
Put another way, advertising something that is priced too high is a non-starter.
You are paying for ads, yet they are not working.
Put aside for the moment organic vs. non-organic, all the fancy charts that eBay allows us to make (none of which I have ever used in 25 years of selling).
If ads don't work, then logic dictates that you stop paying for them.
Have you experimented with lowering your prices so that they might be more appealing to buyers?
I am not being sarcastic. My experience is that buyers search by price. Ads are worthless if the price of something is perceived by the buyer to be too high.
I slashed the prices of all my books by between 10% and 35% and have sold several since doing so. Till then, I had dozens of people just "watching" my items.
One guy immediately bought a book when he was alerted that the price had dropped a whopping 99 cents.
If I am completely missing the point of your post, please let me know.
esg-enterprises
·2 years agoZamo, great to hear your insight. The current situation with the platform is concerning all serious sellers.
siamjane8
·2 years agoJust a thought.... allot of these changes and the slow down of sales seems to correspond with the announcements from CEO about introducing more AI in searches and they have been leaning heavily on this artificial intelligence to "outsource" human jobs lately. My personal experience with AI - everywhere- even google, is a very poor one. It randomly returns irrelevant results and in most cases is just replacing what i actually searched for with "who knows what".
I remember over the years as ebay started replacing the "key word" matching search algorithms with the "we know what you want " search - sales decreased as people were no longer shown what they typed in the box.
Could this be having a neg result on sales again?
fbusoni
·2 years agoI N D U B I T A B L Y
caldreamer
·2 years agoAn impression counts when a link to your listing appears on eBay, and the buyer is ONE CLICK AWAY from your listing. This is really "useless information" because it does NOT mean that customers viewed your item.
Of course, promoted listed will have more impressions (that means EBAY promoted your listing and gave customer an "opportunity" to click on your item).
I viewed some of your items and when you go down the page....I can see that "your competitors" are selling exact same item for much cheaper price. If you want "fast sale" you should lower your price to beat your competitors. Remember, customers do not care if you "promoted listing" or not....they just want cheapest price.
movieman630
OP2 years agoI don't know which products you were looking at but I constantly research prices and try to make mine the lowest. Some items it's not possible though because of shipping. (ie: heavy iron items or oversized items) somehow some sellers are able to sell things for $8 that would cost me $25 to ship.