Item views all changed to 0 and decline in sales

[rochellesthriftshop]

All of my store and auction item views changed to 0.  My sales have also declined in the past few days.  I just want to be sure that my listings are showing up properly.  Thank you

[josephinfrisican-0]

Exactly. Did anybody care if bots were viewing our items? The answer is no. If bots inflated our views, i think they also inflated our sales.

[amethystdream10]

It's hard getting excited about listing more items that aren't getting looked at.  I have still been listing every day hoping that will help make me relevant again. As for blaming low sales on gas prices (according to mrfindit) I would think that more folks would be shopping from home. There are lots of new online shoppers since Covid.

[morielhezi]

That's what the change was supposed to be. Yet, I am quite confident eBay has glitches and bugs since the Views count is zeroing even for a 7 days listings- where it should have been monotonically increasing.

Poor execution on eBay's side which harms sellers (since you cannot monitor Views trends to assess buyers interests)

[mr_lincoln]

@rochellesthriftshop,  @morielhezi , @amethystdream10 , @josephinfrisican-0 , @robinteacher19 

While historically here on The Community there have always been regular posts from Sellers saying their sales are down or dropped off or tanked (one of my favorites) but to me it seems that with many of eBay's recent changes there are MORE then the usual number of Sellers complaining about how bad their sales are ... me included.  If you sell here long enough you recognize normal ebbs and flows with sales ... but when they drop off and there is no growth after significant changes on the venue it is very obvious where the fault lies.

The numbers don't lie, just a few weeks ago Impressions were down by just over 80% ... eBay provides the data for that so its almost like they are admitting things are NOT getting found or returned in Search ... therefore, if Buyers can find it, see it then they can't buy it ...

I sincerely hope they figure it out ... back in about 2018 they killed off a 2nd account here with the GTC Mandate ... in 3 months the account trickled to a virtual halt ... in 6 months it was toast, ONE order in month # 6 after that change.  Nothing could revive it ...

Regards,

Mr. L

[morielhezi]

Just to note that my reply was relating to the behavior of the Views count and not sales. While those are indeed related, the Views Count is a simple software related thing. eBay fails to deliver robust and reliable software platform! As of sales, there are many more factors, some under eBay's control and some are not. Lets start by demanding eBay to deliver appropriate and reliable software, at least for the fees they are charging. 

[ghostprintsuk]

I don't really sell much on eBay however I create websites and rank them on google and I tell you what, one thing that's quite important is your traffic and where it's coming from especially when using ad networks which let's face it's basically what eBay is. I see a few comments here acting like the view count shouldn't drop your sales. Well it will, any one saying it won't has been smoking something funny. Even if it was bots viewing your pages it all had an impact on your rankings and your listings. So sadly if you are not getting any views you are not going to be high up on the list.

I don't know eBays algorithms but I can take a wild guess:

Title keywords

Body Keywords

Traffic and where it's coming from to target people

sales if any and how often

status of the account good standing etc

heck they could use the shop name who knows.

at the end of the day eBay is out to make money so if your shop is for say "shoes" and it's getting a lot of views for that keyword alone they will target people looking for shoes and put them in the direction of your shop.

If however you are getting 0 views chances are you are not showing up high in the listings. Like I said I don't sell much on here, I did however a few years back alots changed since then. One thing the charges went sky high...

I wish you all the best in your endeavours and hard work to push your sales back up.

[eburtonlab]

I see a few comments here acting like the view count shouldn't drop your sales.

eBay changing the way views are counted or displayed to sellers has no affect at all on traffic.

There are certainly things that eBay could do that can change traffic, or alter listing visibility that could also affect view count as well. Perhaps eBay has even done something else besides changing the way views are counted around the same time as those changes were made.

But eBay could remove the count of views entirely or multiply those count numbers by a thousand without changing any traffic or sales at all.

The view count itself is just a passive number that is displayed on a particular seller page that only the particular seller can see. It may be a useful number in some cases; it may be misleading or broken in other cases. It may count bots or it may suddenly stop counting bots, or reset to zero. The view number may represent traffic or it may not, but changing the number itself does not change the traffic.

[victorianartdecovintagejewels]

same here

[ghostprintsuk]

My comment was in regards to ranking factors where views will be taken into account. So let's say you are position 12 with 500 bot views - the bot views vanish over night your position drops to say position 60 and it keeps going lower each day you get less views - in that theory not having the botted views has now resulted in less traffic overall due to your position. So in theory the bot views actually could have helped people rank their products. Do you see the point I'm trying to make there? 

This is just to explain why people are noticing a huge drop in engagement. Once it all settles we will see how much true engagement people are getting. 

[mr_lincoln]

@eburtonlab , @ghostprintsuk 

At the end of the day eBay's Views counting is the result of Members actually opening a listing.  To me that means it is more the result of how things are searched for, found, placed in search results and then eventually clicked on and opened by someone.

eBay's new method of counting Views is in its infancy but for myself I am a little more concerned with being able to sort the Views column.  I noticed a significant drop in Impressions several weeks ago (80.5%) ... basically down from about 4 million to less then 1 million.  Below is  good read on "Impressions" ... I thought the section titled "Served Impressions versus Viewable Impressions" was interesting and maybe that is something eBay is moving towards.

In any event, when sales take an unusual steep drop its natural to try and figure it out and of course we can only work with the information we have ... Impressions being one bit and Views and Watchers being others.

Impression (Internet) | Common Language Marketing Dictionary (marketing-dictionary.org)

My one son writes content for a website enhancement company and their work consistently ranks on the high end of Search results placement ... items have to be found and returned relatively high in Search to have their best opportunity to be Viewed (clicked on) and ultimately purchased.

Mr. L

[eburtonlab]

My comment was in regards to ranking factors where views will be taken into account. So let's say you are position 12 with 500 bot views - the bot views vanish over night your position drops to say position 60 and it keeps going lower each day you get less views - in that theory not having the botted views has now resulted in less traffic overall due to your position. So in theory the bot views actually could have helped people rank their products.

eBay could certainly change the way pages are ranked in Best Match or other sorts, and this could change the actual traffic that sellers experience when users search using that sort order.

But a change in the way search results are ranked is a separate issue from the issue of how views are counted and displayed on the seller's page, and whether that number represents a cumulative count or just a thirty day window, or whether it resets to zero during a transition.

There is currently some discussion on the Technical Issues board about recent changes in the way that certain relisted items appear lower in a Newly Listed sort order than they have in the past. While previously such items would appear at the top of the Newly Listed sort order upon relisting, apparently now they appear ranked by the original listing date rather than the relist date. That would certainly have the potential to greatly affect traffic, particularly if many users have saved searches set to display newly listed items within a very narrow period.

[mr_lincoln]

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@eburtonlab wrote:

My comment was in regards to ranking factors where views will be taken into account. So let's say you are position 12 with 500 bot views - the bot views vanish over night your position drops to say position 60 and it keeps going lower each day you get less views - in that theory not having the botted views has now resulted in less traffic overall due to your position. So in theory the bot views actually could have helped people rank their products.

eBay could certainly change the way pages are ranked in Best Match or other sorts, and this could change the actual traffic that sellers experience when users search using that sort order.

But a change in the way search results are ranked is a separate issue from the issue of how views are counted and displayed on the seller's page, and whether that number represents a cumulative count or just a thirty day window, or whether it resets to zero during a transition.

There is currently some discussion on the Technical Issues board about recent changes in the way that certain relisted items appear lower in a Newly Listed sort order than they have in the past. While previously such items would appear at the top of the Newly Listed sort order upon relisting, apparently now they appear ranked by the original listing date rather than the relist date. That would certainly have the potential to greatly affect traffic, particularly if many users have saved searches set to display newly listed items within a very narrow period.

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@eburtonlab   That last part makes sense and I would venture to say "Time remaining" may factor in to that in a way that Auctions come up sooner then say a first time GTC listing that has a longer duration.  I say that because last month I went through a period were I was not seeing very many GTC items sell but more then normal the number of Auctions selling.

Below may be a good example of that ... three Auction items with bids ... one is at the tail end of its 5 day cycle and the other two I listed late last night (note the time left on the right- I removed some columns for security reasons).  Now one of the most interesting of these three items is the red one ... I know for a fact that mine is the ONLY one for sale on all of eBay ... its a train chassis with NO MPN reference at all yet it was found quickly by several people and is already bid up over starting price ... 

If eBay let us see who our Followers are (like they used to) I would be able to check IDs in that regard.  Off hand I did not recognize IDs but then I don't make it a point to try and do that.

[knight*light]

Here here!

[north-by-northeast-finds]

what are "bots"? I have heard people say that "bots" are customers who view the listing from an external search engine.  Anyway do we need a PHD in computer science to sell on Ebay now? If I actually believed that hiring some kind of search engine consultant would help me make money I might actually consider it. 

[kimstreasures64]

The economy is hurting everyone. My views are 0 on most items and my sales have dropped! There has been something that has changed within Ebay. On a good week sales would be 12+ items and  and now 1 to2 items. My account is not large but every sale counts and soon shipping cost will go up again, so hold onto your hat sales will drop again! I like seeing the view count. I will adjust cost, shipping etc. to get an item moving. I have been a member since 2007 and would like to continue selling, but cannot sit on inventory for months and hope that it sells. Thanks all for the great comments and ideas. Hope we get to selling again soon!!