We see a 50-75% reduction in traffic occurring after the 9/20 seller update. WHY?

[oldedale]

We see a 50-75% reduction in traffic occurring after the 9/20 seller update. WHY? We have not received any defects, just this HUGE drop in traffic. Impression were steady in 100,000 range in Sept. This dropped to 35,000 after 9/20/20. Organic impressions were 20,000 this decreased to 8000 or less. Same listings active both months. Why is this happening? We sell antiques and collectibles, have for over 10 years. Are other sellers seeing this huge drop occurring after the last seller status update? Thanks for any input. TRS - 

[melda58]

What's an "impression"?  And what's an "organic impression"?  I don't understand.  Do you mean feedback?

Rita

[patd3283]

Go to the Seller Board and you will find a number of complaints.  There are some threads about problems with new promoted listings metrics.  

[maxine*j]

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@melda58 wrote:

What's an "impression"?  And what's an "organic impression"?  I don't understand.  Do you mean feedback?

Rita

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eBay defines listing impressions as: "The point at which a listing reference, such as an image or a link, is displayed on eBay, whether or not the person clicks the listing reference."  In other words, the number of times a listing appears in a search.   Then there are "organic impressions" to compare to "promoted listings" and so on -- all of which numbers appear on a seller's dashboard. 

[argon38]

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@maxine*j wrote:
Then there are "organic impressions"

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Yes, but what are they, exactly? Are they the number of actual hits on a listing? I'm with Rita in not really knowing what it means. I did Google the term and found lots of people using it, but I can't get motivated to investigate.

[thefouravocados]

An Impression means a consumer viewed your content. if it’s organic, then that means seller didn’t pay for that view to show up. In eBay, technically sellers don’t pay for that ‘view’ unless someone buys the listed item. This is Promoted Listings. Looking at your seller metrics, it’s important to know how well your keywords are doing organically, versus how many Impresssions are simply “pay for” in style. I hope that helps!

[mr_lincoln]

@oldedale   Did your sales drop as well?  I noticed that sales dropped about that time and then in early October I started my quarterly P.L. Campaign, I run one per quarter for 30 days and simply put every GTC listing on it for a fixed % for ALL listings ... sort of a "fire and forget" approach.  Sales are back up ... while I don't want to accuse eBay of manipulating Sellers' listings based on whether or not they "Promote" them for additional fees ... it sure seems like that is happening.

[vintagecraze50]

It could as simple as the slowdown before Christmas which sometimes happens with certain things every year. People may not be looking for or clicking those particular things. Sell through rates and clicks are also depend on the price i would imagine the cheapo prices probably get the highest counts. On my stuff the cheapo’s rule for impressions.

[vintagecraze50]

Seller “A” HAS 3000 5 Dollar items, lots of clicks lot of sells. Seller “B” has 3000 200 dollar items range, lower clicks lower sells sell through rate low.

[maxine*j]

My understanding is that an "impression" means that of X number of searches on Y, which includes the item(s) I sell, Z number of people saw my item(s).   So, 10,000 people searched on left-handed green widgets and 8,500 of them saw results that included my left-handed green widgets.   The algorithims change from time to time.  All this discussed a lot on the sellers' boards, with people even including screenshots to show how their numbers go up or down after this or that change.  They also discuss ways to increase impressions.  Et cetera.

Since all my sales on eBay have always been done by someone else, on commission, I'm not personally familiar with most of this, either.  My life is simple.  He takes the stuff, along with any info about it that I think he should know, and does all the rest. 

[vintagecraze50]

Impression, they clicked on your item. Organic, they clicked it through Ebay. Inorganic, they clicked it through Google or somewhere else which is rare becuase Ebay does not pay for much of this kind of marketing and I certainly wish I could at least pay them a bit for that.

[argon38]

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@thefouravocados wrote:

An Impression means a consumer viewed your content. if it’s organic, then that means seller didn’t pay for that view to show up. In eBay, technically sellers don’t pay for that ‘view’ unless someone buys the listed item. This is Promoted Listings. Looking at your seller metrics, it’s important to know how well your keywords are doing organically, versus how many Impresssions are simply “pay for” in style. I hope that helps!

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It does help! Thanks.

[american-photography]

There is a recession and a pandemic going on with millions of people still out of work.

Antiques and collectibles are discretionary purchases that they don't need at this time when they are just trying to pay bills, rent, food, etc.

[argon38]

Well, now I'm getting confused again as people are giving contradictory explanations.

[2tswithadream]

But it did not start until September and shut downs started in March; same thing happen with me; once September hit, sales tanked