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!
