Insanely High Number of Bot Views

[*discount_designer_clothing*]

Hi,

I apologize if I'm in the wrong forum.  This is actually the first time I've tried to get help from the eBay community. 

So.. I sell repurposed clothing.  For the last two or three weeks, a number of my items have been receiving a ridiculously high number of views, from what I have to imagine are bots.  Typically, my listings will average 3 views each per day.  But for the last 2-3 weeks, every women's item I list gets hundreds of views within the first few hours of being listed.  And, some of my men's clothing items get the same result.  In fact, one day last week, as I was creating my daily listings, 3 men's shirts which I listed over the course of 30 minutes received a total of more than 1500 views within 3 hours, with no watchers or sales.  As I said, my items typically receive 3 views on an average day.  At this point I'm sure all of my metrics are incorrect because I think I've received over 5000 bot views on 30 total items over the last 2 weeks. Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

[wolfbyte]

I'm seeing something similar, although not quite as many views as you and not all new listings have a high view count. For instance, I've recently seen 44 views in half an hour, or over 100 views in less than 24 hours. Not typical. These high number of views haven't necessarily resulted in many watchers, if any. Odd. Makes me wonder...

[teddibubbles]

its a bot.. but in a way its good. I hear it helps with placement. so maybe its good.. lol for me its the reverse I make hand made things alot. and I don;t think Jewelry made at home is getting veiws. i post it everywhere trying to get views lol PASS SOME BOTS HERE!

[citrine146]

Views in thousands would be insane. I'd be having a party if they were real. 🙂
The most I have on an item was 100+ views and the item was listed for 5 days. It sold in the end with a mini bidding war which I was very pleased.
I guess best to have viewers than none at all. At the end of the day, may they be 5 or a thousand viewers is that the item sells.

[*discount_designer_clothing* · Accepted solution]

Thank you all for your responses.  I would have replied sooner, but I assumed replies to my question would show-up on my notifications (which they obviously didn't).  At the very least, it's a little comforting to know that it's not just me, and that other sellers have had the same experience.  In reply to one of the responses, I've heard conflicting versions of the effect of a high number of views without a sale.  Some sellers have said that it results in lower placement because it demonstrates that the item won't sell regardless of how many people view it. Others, like you, have argued that it demonstrates interest, and therefore gets higher placement.  My response would be that, I am a top-rated-plus seller with free shipping, and I offer all of my items within the lowest 3-5 priced items on eBay.  But, when I search for my items in question, a couple of them were more than halfway down the first page (even while having "New Listing" status), so I suspect that, unfortunately, the former may be true.  I suspect that more views without watchers or a sale actually results in lower placement, which leads me to suspect the high bot views may possibly be a tactic used by other sellers to force competitor's items into lower search result placement.  To reiterate, I am a top-rated-plus seller with free shipping who offers listings priced in the lowest 3-5 listings on eBay.  When my items are searched for, I would imagine they should show-up first, or close to it, not 1/2-3/4 of the way down the first page.  This leads me to suspect that another seller, or possiby a group of sellers, assign their bots to repeatedly view competitors listings, forcing those listings lower in the search results.  I understand that this sounds paranoid, but it only happens to me with a specific type of listing (women's shirts/tops). Interestingly, I ended many of these listings and relisted them multiple times, and got the same result every time (within hours they all had a minimum of 60 views with no watchers or sales).  If this is the case- that competing sellers are deliberately spiking listings, I wouldn't have any idea how to combat it short of an extremely prolonged, drawn-out process with eBay, which would likely not be successful anyway.

[xs_xxs_lady]

I am glad to see I am not the only one having this issue with high number of views on my listings. I sell clothing as well. I do not have big inventory, so I do not suspect I could have some competitors:-) That would entertain my ego lol, but no, I strongly doubt that. It happened to me a few days ago when I relisted my items. I saw an increased number of views within a couple of days. First I thought that my profile was mistakenly exposed somewhere. However, high number of views is not for all of my listings! For example, I have some on BCBG, Guess, bebe items, but on various BCBG items I have a huge gap between number of views, and it does not make sense. In other words, I do not see any pattern or any explanation to it. Please share your updates regarding this topic if you have any. Thank you!

[opal2111]

I have several listings with over a hundred views. A few items were just recently listed, and within a half an hour it had 75 views. If it's affecting my sales I want it to stop. It could be competitors but they are johnny on the spot if so. 

[*discount_designer_clothing*]

Well, if it were competitors, it actually wouldn't really require them to be johnny-on-the-spot. They would simply have to assign their bots to repeatedly view listings which were in direct competition with their listings.  Since the entire effort would be automated, it could be accomplished very quickly with no immediate direct effort from the actual competing seller.  But this was simply one hypothesis.  I don't think it's anymore likely than any of the other hundreds of possibilites. 

And.. it seems like it only happens to me at cetain times of day.  I listed a Lane Bryant women's top yesterday morning, and before I went to bed last night, I was very happy to see that it had zero views ofver the course of 16 hours! I thought, "maybe the problem is finally resolved!" Then I woke up this morning to find the listing had gained over 160 views during the 8 hours I was aslep, with no watchers or sales.  So, apparently, the problem isn't quite resolved yet!

[jenni-dressforless]

Yes, I have some items with incredibly high view counts suddenly. At first I was pleased thinking perhaps EBAY made some changes that would garner us more viewers- hence more sales- but now the number of views is so ridiculously elevated without any increase in sales that I think it is all a hoax. Makes me wonder what other false information they could be providing us.

[*discount_designer_clothing*]

Well, hopefully this will be my final reply in this thread.  It's been 4 days now without the anomaly recurring.  I think (and hope) it was just some kind of temporary glitch in the system. I haven't had any unusually high view counts on any items I've listed since 7/15/17 (today is 7/19/17), and I've listed a number of women's tops (which seemed to be the main culprit) since then.  So, fingers crossed, it looks like the situation is resolved.  I'd be curious to know if you (or anyone else) is still having this experience, or if it has resolved for you also.

[opal2111]

For the most part. I ended all the listings with the crazy view numbers and relisted them. All of those seem  to be getting the usual number of views. There are a few listings that seem suspect but not as abnormally high as before.

[artistsunion1]

Today I also noticed extremly high views number on some items (it's the 3rd day from the listing date) - e.g. the difference was from a single number of views to 1275.

After while, though, they returned to the previous status.