Significant Drops in eBay Impressions and Organic Page Views: A Huge Problem

[retro-treasureparadise]

Since April 6th, my eBay impressions have dropped significantly from an average above 1 million to around 500k, and now they hover at around 600k. Despite contacting customer service, I received an unhelpful response that everything looks fine. Frustratingly, I have continued to upload new listings every day, but sales have still decreased. On April 25th, a new issue arose where my organic page views showed 0, which is clearly not accurate. I reached out to customer service, but their response was again unhelpful and similar to my previous experience. These ongoing problems have made me feel unstable and unsure about eBay's reliability. I am now considering moving to another platform, but before making that decision, I want to know if others are facing similar issues.

 

 

[whatmorefabric]

This is not just on Ebay.    This has nothing to do with Ebay or how it is run.

There is not a site on line that is not experiencing a drop in sales.         My Etsy sales are down about 70 % and my Amazon are down about 90%.     My shop is not fairing much better.

If you read forums on other sites,  you will see that everyone that sells on line is experiencing some sort of down turn.

Every wholesaler I use is offering deep discounts on Halloween and Christmas fabric because of poor sales.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@valueaddedresource  Good point. Something I've been wondering about---If I'm not mistaken, some promoted listings can be promoted off ebay? If that's true, is it possible that those views are counted twice? Since they are both a promoted view AND an external view? 

[44012]

For  many it is about what the traffic report is showing us which seems like the counts are a problem. I think all of us agree in a drop of sales due to the economy. Does your traffic report show significant difference in the past week with zero organic views and all the views 3rd party or promoted views? I think that is the issue, at least for me.

[44012]

[whatmorefabric]

My promoted views are down also.

On Etsy,  which I have had the biggest drop,   my views are up,  but my sales are down.

[valueaddedresource]

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@valueaddedresource  Good point. Something I've been wondering about---If I'm not mistaken, some promoted listings can be promoted off ebay? If that's true, is it possible that those views are counted twice? Since they are both a promoted view AND an external view? 

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques that's a million question I've been asking since 2021 when they introduced External Promoted Listings. 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Announcing-external-Promoted-Listings-Another-way-to-con... 

I asked about it again in this month's community chat as well.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Monthly-Chat-with-eBay-Staff/Monthly-Chat-April-12th-at-1-00-pm-PST/m-...

kyle@ebay  - I know you had said you would pass it on to the appropriate team, did you ever get any answers from them about how promoted external views are shown on the traffic chart?

[wilsonharborsales]

A drop in sales because of the economy does not make sense if sales drop 90%-95% overnight and never recover.  The recession will trend sales lower, but it doesn't happen on a single day in the middle of the night and never recover.  Many people reporting this issue (myself included) have large stores on eBay and have been doing this for decades.  

Even on the buy side there are issues.  I collect certain items, but when I search for them on eBay it only shows me international items.  Further to that, if I click the 'US Only' box it still only shows me foreign items.  The link to the first picture on listings show up very small when you click on it.  Buyers are having troubles combining purchases in check out.  Items that are available are showing 0 quantity.  An item will show that it has international shipping, but when buyers go to check out it says 'does not ship to your area'.

There are many glitches, and that is part of the game and we all understand that.  We understand the economic issues.  What doesn't make sense is an overnight collapse for very large stores with perfect metrics.  I have spoken to a seller with over 150,000 items in their store who have only sold 200 items in the month of April.  In March they had sold 3000+.  

I'd really love some clarity from eBay on this if possible.  We all love the platform and the business, we just need some clarity.

[deltilogical]

My sales are up whenever I can add new material and work my older listings- but it is an unsustainable 100 hour work week thing right now.

[stainlessenginecovers]

Just as an FYI; 

It is NOT sitewide as I am not experiencing any variance. 

[valueaddedresource]

This is also somewhat similar to a reporting bug with Promoted views last year.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/help-understanding-organic-impressions/m-p/33258930/highlight/... 

As @zamo-zuan reported back then, it appeared that for these reports, eBay isn't just measuring/counting organic views, promoted views, and external views independently but instead there may be some formula or calculations being used to extrapolate the graph data.

In that instance it was Promoted views that were "missing" and it appeared they had been lumped in with organic views, so it was a slightly different issue but still worth mentioning just because of what it revealed about how eBay may be arriving at the data shown on these reports.

[bumbleebuck]

1 organic view in 3 days on a 2000+ item store. I avg about 250 organic views per day . Something is wrong and when I called ebay they said they are aware of the problem. 

[zamo-zuan]

---

@valueaddedresource wrote:

This is also somewhat similar to a reporting bug with Promoted views last year.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/help-understanding-organic-impressions/m-p/33258930/highlight/... 

As @zamo-zuan reported back then, it appeared that for these reports, eBay isn't just measuring/counting organic views, promoted views, and external views independently but instead there may be some formula or calculations being used to extrapolate the graph data.

In that instance it was Promoted views that were "missing" and it appeared they had been lumped in with organic views, so it was a slightly different issue but still worth mentioning just because of what it revealed about how eBay may be arriving at the data shown on these reports.

---

It does look like this is another case of that. As realistically, it's VERY unlikely that this user is not getting ANY organic impressions at all. And a quick search proves it not to be the case (for today, at least).

They definitely broke something on the traffic page again. If I adjust the start date, it only shows "Sold":

We've also been getting strange results in traffic/performance lately, and this is a likely culprit, as the traffic statistics are used in the algorithm, so if there's issues with the traffic statistics, then the data being fed in to the algorithm is likely being incorrectly reported as well.

[zamo-zuan]

Thought I'd share this too since we're seeing a slightly diff version of the OP's issue on our page:

Now the problem is really noticeable when looking at the total amounts of views. 164 organic views, 17 organic sales. So we supposedly had a > 10% conversion rate on the 24th!? The 25th is stating at 9% conversion rate. There's NO WAY that this is accurate nor possible.

Yet another flub that shows these numbers are made up and not in any way accurate. 

[aeparts1]

The real question: How are your sales???

Up, down, the same?

[wilsonharborsales]

Down 80% for the month of April