I've been collecting information about what could be a potential problem, and thought this would be a good time to try to get some awareness out there of a potential problem.
I'll start off with some images, as images could describe a situation better than words can:
As you can see, as of September 3rd promoted impressions have suddenly taken a dive.
To explain, the blue bars are "Organic Impressions". Meaning the how often your items are appearing in search when buyers "naturally" search for you.
The green part of the bar are "Promoted Impressions", which determine how often you're appearing in your Sponsored/Promoted listings.
It seems the organic (natural) traffic has not experienced any change, but overnight there was a drop of Promoted Impressions!
Who is being affected:
Most of the sellers I know are in Motors, so up until this point I've only found other sellers in Motors who have been encountering this issue. That is partly why I am posting here; if you find you are experiencing this issue, please reply to this post and let us know what category you're selling in! Just because I haven't found this on other categories, does not mean the issue isn't happening elsewhere!
Do Trending Rates help?
It doesn't seem trending rates cause any differences for this issue.
eBay's stance:
Until this point, eBay has not given any official word on this. There's no way to tell if this is truly a bug, or a change they made, or if it's intended. I have asked the forum mods on here last week, and they had not replied. I have reported this issue to phone CSR's, and they have not received any updates from the tech team yet.
Might this also be the natural ebb & flow of eBay, or the current situation our country is in?
That does not seem to be the case. As you can see above, the organic traffic (the blue bar) has been 100% stable through this time.
This means the same amount of buyers are searching now as they were prior. The primary difference we're seeing here is for the promotions only.
This suggests, at least for this specific problem we're facing, that it is not a natural ebb & flow or economic situation. If it were, the organic traffic would have decreased. This would have also shown in the conversion rate, rather than impressions, as impressions are appearances in search, conversion rate are purchases.
Organic traffic being unchanged is hard evidence that buyers are still searching just as much as they were prior. Whether they buy or not is a different question, but that would be altering conversion rate, not impressions.
Furthermore, the change happened literally overnight, on a Thursday which is the date that is traditionally the day of the week eBay does their changes.
Could this be some type of penalty or punishment?
I've checked with eBay to make sure we have no penalties or punishments on our account, and they've said we have none. Furthermore, it seems to be category wide, so it doesn't seem to be any sort of penalty, unless if a penalty is somehow applying to the whole category.
Which type of listings seem to be the ones targeted by this change?
Sadly, due to changes in eBay's traffic page, this is IMPOSSIBLE to tell.
EBay's traffic page does NOT allow sellers the ability to sort by impressions. It does NOT allow you to sort by ANY value other than "Quantity Available". And it does NOT any longer allow you to save a spreadsheet/report of your information.
So due to these changes, there's absolutely no way for us to research the problem ourselves and find out exactly what listings are being targeted.
We're 100% reliant on eBay to figure out this one, sadly.
Might they have changed Sponsored Listings somehow for this drop to make sense?
If that were the case, it would likely mean that peer rates would have more or less weight in the new system. That doesn't seem to be the case.
Furthermore, any changes to the Sponsored Listing system which decide which listings appear in search, would mean the Sponsored Impressions would naturally move elsewhere. So far, this seems to be a drop across the board of this category, from what I've seen. As mentioned, I don't know if this is hitting other categories, but if you are experiencing this PLEASE let me know.
Why do I suspect this may be a bug:
1) As mentioned on the phone by an eBay rep, losing impressions for Promoted Listings not only hurts seller profits, but also helps eBay profits as they are entitled to the trending rate for promotions.
2) Organic impressions are unchanged, while promoted listings are much lower. This raises the question: "Where did all the impressions go?" as it doesn't seem to be a shift in who's receiving the traffic. It seems the promotions just *poof* and vanished.
3) Sponsored Listings are still showing on the search pages, but have some MAJOR issues. I have a Video linked here to display example what I mean. You can see here, some doubles ARE showing up in the Sponsored Listings section. Not only are they duplicates, but the price seems to be wrong on some of the Sponsored search results, and some of them report "Free Shipping" when the item was NOT free shipping. I searched down the page for additional listings so you can see multiple times on a single search page had this problem.
4) So far, this has been category wide across Motors > Parts & Acessories. But this problem has NOT been observed outside of this category.
5) One person who I discussed this issue with was also selling in Motors, but was not in P&A. Rather they sold items such as wax/etc. They reported that they DID have this problem at first, but the problem resolved for htem over the weekend of 9/5. Considering it was fixed on that category, suggests it may be a problem that was not yet fixed on our category. Or at the very least, some changing/experimentation is going on.
6) It's likely that issues that would cause such a drastic change in impressions, and therefore changes in sales, would have some sort of warning from eBay. Not to say eBay doesn't change things that could alter your impressions (they do often). But if it were intended for Sponsored Impressions to go from 281,000 to 35,000 overnight, they would have likely informed sellers.
7) Motors > Parts & Accessories is one of the biggest selling categories on eBay. It simply serves no logic that eBay would WANT impressions to drop for such a large category! And that's assuming we're the only category this is happening to. I've yet to find out if there's others being targeted by this problem!
What do I hope to achieve with this post and/or what can I do to help?:
I have reported this issue last week, and eBay has been direct with us and said that their queue for tech support is based upon how many reports they have of this problem, and he mentioned something about there still being a follow-up on the case, so that means the report was still in queue.
In other words, unless the people who are experiencing this problem are able to discover it and report it, it may not be fixed any time soon.
This means it's of the utmost importance for us sellers to check if you're experiencing this problem, awareness is the first step! Then if so, make sure to report it to eBay! I would also appreciate it if you could post here as well, including the category of products you sell in, as any information we could provide eBay about exactly what the problem is could hopefully help in getting this issue resolved as fast as possible!
As mentioned earlier, again I have to stress that one of the biggest problems here is with the changes to the traffic page, we are 100% reliant on eBay to figure this one out. They took away the tools that would allow us to go through our inventory and find out which listings exactly are the ones that lost Promoted impressions.
Thank you and wishing all the best of luck on eBay. Hopefully we figure out this problem and get it resolved, or at least get an official response, as soon as possible!
Thanks for all the responses! I'm going to try to reply to them here:
@aldente28 wrote:All of the affected paid result bars appear nearly identical in height, so I'm wondering if there is some kind of daily cap on impressions, or something that functions as a cap, like a time cut-off or some such thing. Whether it's a bug or not, I couldn't say, but on the surface, I wonder if something like that is happening - you reach a limit on impressions and paid listings ends for the day, starting again the next.
I noticed how it basically "flatlines" as well, so you may be on to something, but I have no idea.
The only reason I doubt it might be the case for paid listings, is we don't technically get pay based on impressions, but purchases. Although it might be true that there is some sort of "cap" for the promotions.
Although one oddity if this is the case, is this does not seem to be applying to every category. I'm not sure why they would cap some, as that seems to only hurt both sellers & eBay, while I'm not able to think of any advantage.
@kawartha-ephemera wrote:
For example, right at this moment, the report is showing Saturday, Sunday with crazy high PL impressions and today on trend to record the same. Tommorow it will most likely have CHANGED the Saturday number, instead of showing a 300% increase it will have reverted to a normal level. I fully expect when I check on this tommorow it will show Sunday, Monday crazy high and Tuesday on trend to be high.
Interesting. That sounds like it's an issue in reporting, rather than an actual accurate estimate. Due to other numbers, I doubt this is the same issue we're facing (more on this later as I'll go in to this more in response to another poster). But it does lend some credibility in to something fishy happening with promotions!
@seadawg42 wrote:This is a posting ID but under my selling account, all items are under Motors>Parts & Accessories>Boat Parts.
This does look like the same exact issue! Very sorry this is also happening to you, but it's useful to have confirmation that it's happening in a category outside of car parts.
@luckythewinner wrote:Thanks for the explanation. I was thrown by the 150,000 impressions - mine are closer to 150 🙂
But then I looked at ZZ's account and saw the 50,000+ feedback and understood that he's in a different league than I am!
As a software engineer, I am trained to look at issues like ZZ has raised and try not to make assumptions. My first instinct is to question whether (a) the impressions have actually dropped, or whether (b) the impressions are actually fine it's just the reporting of them that is broken.
I'm also a software engineer, so I can agree that's the correct first step in trying to diagnose this! That's one of the first things I checked as well.
Yet I'm fairly confident it's not a reporting issue for our problem (although the poster above with increased promo impressions DOES sound like a reporting issue!)
Reason being, our views are also down around the same amount, which is likewise having a decrease in our sales. It seems to be across the board, and visible everywhere, including where it hurts most (on the bank account).
Example:
Regarding sales, prior to the 3rd we were up 5% from the month earlier. Now, less than 2 weeks later, already we've seen a drop of 11% from last month. Which is a quite substantial amount of sales at our level.
I don't want to give the wrong idea, though, as it could be worse. Promoted impressions was a larger bulk of impressions than organic, but organic lead to more views/sales. The difference is certainly noticeable, though.
@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:
As a software engineer, I am trained to look at issues like ZZ has raised and try not to make assumptions. My first instinct is to question whether (a) the impressions have actually dropped, or whether (b) the impressions are actually fine it's just the reporting of them that is broken.
Another former software engineer here & my thought is exactly the same as Lucky's. Is it that the impressions have dropped or is there a reporting issue. That IS a very odd looking graph. Did your PL sales seem to match this graph? My first thought is it's a reporting issue.
IDK if this helps you at all, but I looked at my graph & I use PL's quite a bit. I sell mainly in Fashion & my graph looks perfectly normal & I am not having this problem. My purple & blue lines match up quite closely & nowhere does my PL Impressions line dip below the Organic line.
Yes, the change in PL sales DOES match the graph. So it does not seem to be a reporting issue here.
@magikal_tech wrote:I personally am having a problem with sales and my graph looks very similar, have tried many different things to switch things up, even tried having my shop ‘reset’ by eBay assistant, hasn’t seemed to help at all
category: mostly phone accessories> memory cards
Interesting. So we seem to have confirmation of some categories outside of Motors/Car/Boat parts. Adding memory cards to the list!
@nilis13 wrote:Thanks for the information. My impressions seem to be consistent, but yes since 9/3 my sales have dropped dramatically.
Sorry to hear that your sales have dropped, but it's good that impressions don't seem to be changed! Hopefully you're able to find out what caused the drop? Does your conversion rate seem to have moved much?
@coolections wrote:Nothing to see here. Promoted listing only show a couple on each page. You sell in one of the most saturated categories so there are hundreds of pages. Most sellers here do not have that problem so please don't pull the scare tactic making people who come here think Ebay is hiding their items. Maybe it would be best to mix your over saturated items with some stuff that has less competition ? You can also open your own website and get more traffic ?
I would like to politely ask to please stay on topic, and please do not discount sellers experiences and/or the problems that may be facing these categories. This thread is not about hiding listings at all. Nor is this about category saturation, competition, or websites. None of those apply to this specific issue with promoted impressions suddenly changing.
@hubcapjoes wrote:I am experiencing the exact same issue in motors and I mirror your exact issues. My sales have dropped considerably. I have always felt that eBay Motors was the "forgotten son" always being ignored when 100,000 free listings would be handed about as well as other promotions. But this goes beyond all reason and sensibility. I made a video about this as well because it concerns me greatly, this is our income, we rely on eBay for income and these tech issues should not happen people.
Sorry to hear this is affecting you! That video does show the exact issue very well!
It looks like in the comments, there's even more sellers inside these categories facing the same issue!
Furthermore, there seems to be confirmation of the "display error" in some of those comments as well!
It seems we be may on to two different issues going on right now!
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Now an idea I've had, now that we have a number of people. When I speak to eBay, I'm not sure if this is an option, but I'm going to see if there's any way we could share a ticket # of the case investigating this, to see if all of us experiencing this are able to add ourselves to the same case. Maybe this might help get some attention to these issues a bit faster?
Not sure if that will work out. But I'll give it a try!
Thanks again to everyone for the replies and I hope we come up with a resolution for the mentioned issues soon!
My sales are down this month some, mostly because my inventory is down as well. Impressions and promoted seems to be working as normal. eBay Motors>Parts & Accessories>Car & Truck Parts
@valueaddedresource wrote:Well, this could explain a lot. 🤔 Wonder which of the "hundreds" went live on September 3rd.
"eBay Rolls Out Hundreds of Software Releases a Month"
https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2020/09/14/ebay-rolls-out-hundreds-of-software-release-a-month/
From EcommerceBytes:
https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2020/09/14/ebay-rolls-out-hundreds-of-software-release-a-month/
"Duraivenkatesh wrote the post to explain how software product quality goes well beyond simply avoiding bugs at eBay.
“Given that the customer experience is a cohesive end-to-end journey, with each journey possibly split into multiple different possible scenarios, there is a possibility of a kink in the chain.” But, she said, “we are not always talking about bugs. A suboptimal customer journey is also considered a break in quality from a product perspective.”
She said the general tendency across most organizations was to focus on testing at the end of the software development life cycle (SDLC), but eBay looks at a release with a holistic perspective.
“eBay is consistently at the forefront of quality in execution and delivery. To take quality to the next level, we looked at the whole lifecycle of software development and identified key factors that typically have a cascading effect,” she said."
"The result of eBay’s approach to quality resulted in a 25% increase in release volume, and an across-the-board 79% reduction in overall bugs."
Well that's good news.
Only 21% of the dodge balls remain on the court.😉
As a contrast I'm mostly in Fashion with some electronics. I'm seeing no problems - business was very slow because of difficulty still in obtaining inventory, but has almost doubled in this reporting period. I'm seeing steady impressions so both use and reporting of promoted listings seems to be OK for these categories. We've been having IS changes if that makes any difference.
