Just to be sure what I am looking at?

[richard1rst]

The following graph is from my metrics page labeled “Page views”

The light blue is labeled “organic views” while the dark blue is labeled “external views”. Notice that there are NO promoted listings (I don’t use them).

It looks like about 1/2 of my views are from external sources - Google? I see so many complaints on these boards that claim eBay is not uploading to or being indexed on Google. Yet isn’t that what is happening here? Or am I misreading the information.

[craft-stash]

I just want to see the GREEN!

💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@richard1rst  Without knowing more about the specifics of your business, it's hard to know how to interpret this. For example, it could mean your listings have very good SEO for external sites like Google. If so, congratulations! But, on the flip side, it could mean that the percentage of external views is comparatively high because your listings are not getting good organic exposure on ebay.

As far as what it says about ebay and Google....ebay submits listings to Google Shopping every night  , ebay also pays for ads on Google (and other external sites), and I believe the latest stat ebay has provided is that about 20% of ebay's traffic originates from outside ebay. I don't think we an really conclude much about ebay's overall Google traffic from one seller's view summary. 

[stainlessenginecovers]

Yes; about 1/2 your views are from search engines (typically Google/Bing). Mine looks the same and has since they started showing that graph X years ago.

I see my stuff on Google/Bing (from ebay) all the time

[buyselljack2016]

My listings seem to be doing just fine with "external" search.

When I am on "time away" my graph always has some black bars, so my listings are being "searched & showing" someplace.

Granted, most of my listings are GTC, multiple quantity, long running listings, so I can not attest to "external search results" for new, or one-off listings, but mine are seen outside of eBay.

[sapphire_studio]

That's definitely interesting that you get so many external views despite not paying for promoted. I always thought they were probably related.

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

Googles actually being sued by the DOJ for second time over market advertising dominance.  Almost anything searched you'll find eBay items not coming up anywhere near as often as they should given venue sizes and traffic.  I constantly see places like Mercari, private little shops, Amazon obviously, Walmart obviously show up first.  Most of the time I literally have to click another link to get at eBay results on Google.

If you want "opinion" from a software engineer/marketer perspective eBay should have far more robust storefront software for sellers.  They ought have ability to buy a domain that links to said storefront(s) and said storefronts also then become an "eBay Online Mall" internal to the site which can be viewed in varieties of ways including localization.  Each domain index with Google and other traffic aggregators.  Aside from the venue the ability to have transactional ad rates and associated "plugin" code for external webs.  It's about evolution.

[richard1rst]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@richard1rst  Without knowing more about the specifics of your business, it's hard to know how to interpret this. For example, it could mean your listings have very good SEO for external sites like Google. If so, congratulations! But, on the flip side, it could mean that the percentage of external views is comparatively high because your listings are not getting good organic exposure on ebay.

As far as what it says about ebay and Google....ebay submits listings to Google Shopping every night  , ebay also pays for ads on Google (and other external sites), and I believe the latest stat ebay has provided is that about 20% of ebay's traffic originates from outside ebay. I don't think we an really conclude much about ebay's overall Google traffic from one seller's view summary. 

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques 

Thank you for your response. An interesting and very valid point about  "external views is comparatively high because your listings are not getting good organic exposure on ebay."  So I checked the eBay traffic report. It says in the past 30 days I had 2.7 million listing impressions. With nothing to compare it to I have no way of knowing if that is good, bad, or somewhat average.

As for the SEO - I do make it a point to fill out the description block where I so Oh so many who do not bother. I researched SEO years ago and applied the lessons learned.  I do note a fairly high representation of my pictures on Google Image pages when I search for specific items.

Thanks again for your input.

[ladyindecadence]

If it helps you any I have about half as many items as you have and I get roughly 18 million listing impressions a month. Only about 10% of my page views are from external sources.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

Impressions will vary drastically by number of listings & the types of items being sold, so IDK that I can provide any good comparison there, but my external source is tiny, tiny, tiny - typically less than 10%.  I do PL's & my PL's & Organic are rougly the same, but PL's always outstrips Organic, like it should.   I have 4 1/2M impressions/month, but only around 1500 listings.   

Delving deeper, my highest external site view day is 10.9%, most are 1-5%.   Hope that helps you some. 

ETA: You get a lot of external views, but @my-cottage-books-and-antiques  makes an excellent point.  

[richard1rst]

RE my comment: It says in the past 30 days I had 2.7 million listing impressions

After I posted that I realized that page views might be a more accurate scale. Impressions are described as "when a link to your listing appears on eBay" - apparently whether or not anyone even sees it or actually acts on it even if they do see it.

But page views (which is what the chart does show) are described as "the number of visits to all of your listing pages". In other words someone made a specific decision to click on a link to, and visit, one of my pages as opposed to it merely being amongst a bunch of others on the screen.

But again without something to compare it to it meaningless number. When I apply the sales conversion percentage it approximates the number of sales I have made.