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.

 

 

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@bamboovintageclothing wrote:

Can some at EBay just give us a honest explanation to what is going on behind the scenes? 

We are paying for store subscriptions, we are your customers and we deserve real honest answers. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=279Hvh7IV0U 

Just read the comments. Do you think think everyone in the comments and everyone that has commented here are complaining for nothing? 

The evidence is all over the internet, everyone is complaining about lack of sales. It ranges from small stores like mine, through to large stores with 10000+ items. 

Why not get someone from your PR team to make a video and be honest and transparent about what has been going on and when the problem will be resolved. We just need to know when this will fixed so we can work around the problem. 

COME ON EBAY, GIVE US SOME ANSWERS. 

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@bamboovintageclothing Thank you for the post. The reported issue was about the metrics on the traffic report, not a sales decline. My response was specific to that issue, which the team confirmed has been addressed. It was not to deny any sellers perspective or experience with a sales decline.  If it came across like that I apologize. 

Slow sales or a sales decline can be caused by multiple factors, and rarely is there a single response that would apply to all sellers.  

Brian

[stevemartin60]

Methinks someone went to politician school...lol.

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@ekmadonna  brian_burke@ebay 

Brian, This is one reason so many of us have been begging ebay to give us the sort of granularity you guys obviously have....not just external views, but where they came from (in this case, Facebook).

You have that data, so why not share it with us?  I'm not the only one who has been asking for that info for years.....I think we used to get it way back when...remember Omniture? 

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques  and @ekmadonna     Thanks for post on this. I'm not sure why we do not share that information, but I have forwarded to the Product team responsible for the Traffic Report. 

Brian

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@wilsonharborsales wrote:

My promoted listings impressions dropped by 40% overnight on April 1st and never recovered.  If you go to YouTube, you will see many big store sellers say that they are experiencing the same thing.  Sellers are being forced onto other platforms to keep their businesses alive.

Something happened at the start of April and the issue isn’t fixed.  Even if the metrics are now being counted properly, it doesn’t account for the outsized drop in traffic and sales on April 1st.  

I am not sure what else to say or do.  

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@wilsonharborsales -  and the others who reported a drop in PL impressions since April. I forwarded it on and will circle back when I hear back.

Thank you for reporting this specific issue. 

Brian

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@stevemartin60 wrote:

Methinks someone went to politician school...lol.

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LOL - I don't think I could ever pass off as being a politician, and that school sounds a bit boring (no offense to the politicians 😀) 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Thanks brian_burke@ebay 

 If they do not want to provide that granularity, perhaps we could better understand the situation if the team would explain their reasoning. As noted, ebay obviously has the data, so it isn't lack of data, and presumably ebay has the engineering talent to provide the data to us. 

Thanks for any insights you can obtain....

[zamo-zuan]

Comparing the traffic report to the (ever changing) ad page shows that we certainly can not rely on any of these traffic numbers

Comparison from last week and this week on the SAME page with COMPLETELY different numbers:

Notice how the Traffic and Ad page do not at all total to the same numbers... With the ad page far exceeding our totals on the traffic page.

[stevemartin60]

It has become totally obvious that eBay does not consider itself to be in a partnership-- even metaphorically--with its sellers.  

At this point, it feels like they will continue to say or do anything they want to us and our withering accounts if they they think it will somehow (?!?!) add to THEIR bottom line.  (Talk about ODD thinking!)

I know, based on past efforts to clean up truly fraudulent sellers with them in the fine arts category, that being above board and honest is not a high eBay priority.  Now, obviously, neither is having a platform that is in anyway fair, or that is at all above being just marginally functional.

[bamboovintageclothing]

The sales decline started when the metrics on the traffic report occurred and has not improved since. So when you say the the issue has been resolved, sorry, but I have to disagree with you. I made 1 sale on Saturday. My average conversation rate has been hovering around the 1% mark for years so even with a small store of 400 items, I should be selling minimum 4 items per day. 

I was one of the unlucky ones to have been affected around the end of March. 

I called customer service and escalated the problem to management and was fobbed off with the usual “we have spoken to our IT department and there is nothing wrong with your account”. 

It was obvious to me something went wrong. I was listing multiple items daily, most with a medium to high demand and getting 0 or 1-2 views per item. Then some of these new listed  items were showing having 2 or 3 watchers with 0 views. When I called called customer service, I gave them item specific numbers to check the view count. These items were showing as 0 views on my side but on your side they were showing as 10-20 views in the first 2 days of being listed. 

My suspicion is your view counter is totally broken. This whole thing started when you introduced the update to get rid of bot traffic and things have never been right since then. 

Whilst I appreciate the point you are trying to make with your “Slow sales or a sales decline can be caused by multiple factors, and rarely is there a single response that would apply to all sellers” comment. I have to disagree with you on this occasion. 

I think your view counter is still not working and has never been correct since the update to remove bot traffic. 

Its difficult for me to prove this now as I haven’t purchased new stock to list as sales have been so bad, I’m genuinely wandering if there is any point in re-stocking.

There have always been ups and downs but I think it’s never been this bad before. Yes the economy is a mess, however I was out in bars and restaurants at the weekend and they were jam packed so people are still spending money.  

At the end of the day, there are hundreds of sellers on here and thousands of comments on YouTube videos complaining about low views and sales at the moment. My question is, why is there not a team of top level employees sat around a desk right now working around the clock trying to figure out what exactly is causing this issue and how can it be resolved asap. 

The fact that you seem to think the problem has been resolved and the lack of transparency from EBay is extremely frustrating. 

[stevemartin60]

Very elucidating.

They should be on here with DETAILS and UPDATES every couple hours, about  what they are doing to resolve this!!

[nilis13]

Hi Brian,

I am having the same issues also - called and still nothing - please add me to the list of names also.

[toolz4youltd]

The problem is ebay main search bar (what buyers use) is conflicting against what we are selling. eBay are adding new categories and making sellers put items in the new categories, but the ebay buyer search is searching in old categories, meaning that the potential buyer is not seeing all items on offer. Just try searching for something you're selling and then try listing it for sale, look at the categories. 

[zamo-zuan]

Updated image with a comparison that I quickly aligned the dates as best as I can in short time:

The fluctuations seem less in the recent chart than the past ones, but minor ones (particularly in Organic impressions) is still there.

Numbers are still off comparing to the traffic report. I'll use the 10th and yesterday as examples:

[nells250]

When I joined Ebay in 1999, I was able to sell spare items from my various collections, and other items that needed a new home.  It was fun and provided a very small amount of "play" money.

Fast forward to 2023, and I pay fees for listings that get NO HITS, thus NO SALES.  I don't know if Ebay is on the ESG bandwagon, but after 24 years I no longer have any faith in being able to sell ANYTHING here. 

Perhaps they would rather we all just toss our unsold items in the trash... instead of giving them new homes... not very "green" now, is it?  }:-(

[mybigsale]

@nells250 

Perhaps they would rather we all just toss our unsold items in the trash... instead of giving them new homes... not very "green" now, is it?  }:-(

Have you tried promoting your items with a 100% Ad Rate?

You may not have to trash your items AND eBay will be where they want to be with fee earnings. A win-win situation. 🙄 A very "green" solution for the environment AND for eBay. Not so much for sellers. ☹️