eBay

knifeaholic · ‎07-17-2022

I have a vexing problem – I have three items (out of 745 items total) that are completely unresponsive to Ebay keyword searches.

I sell about 250 to 300 listing a month, and I list about the same number every month.

When I look at my total “Active Listings” … eBay says that I have 745 listings.

So far so good.

I have one exact stock-related keyword that is in every description.

When I do a global keyword search for that keyword in the item descriptions, … then eBay says that I only have 742 listings ( I use this keyword search all the time for truing up my listings, and it always works...til now).

Likewise, when I do keyword searches of all my items based on keywords specific to these three items, unique words that are in the title and/or description of these three items, nothing comes up – zero listings found.

Just out of desperation, I ended the listings, deleted the ended listings, and I recreated each of the three listings from scratch.

After waiting an hour or so for things to settle, tried again, exact same results. No listings found. Just for these three.

Any ideas as to why this would be happening?

There is nothing different or unusual about these items (not that that should make a difference) – similar items, same categories as 90% of my listings, very basic and similar to the ones that show up properly.

Thanks to whatever glitch eBay is having that is causing this, I have wasted my entire morning on this problem.

It started when I had a customer wanting to buy a particular item, I of course told him I had the one he was looking for, but then he could not see it via search.

The three listings DO show up for me ONLY when I search by my assigned SKU number, unique for each item. But I'm the only one who can see that, it would never do any good for buyer searches anyway.

allthingssurplus · ‎07-17-2022

Here is a response I just gave to another Seller. This info was provided by a CS rep and some of the info came form the eBay IT dept.

This much I can tell you. We found that some of our fast moving product was only searchable if the Buyer had the entire listing title, almost impossible or the listing ID, only possible if they were already looking at the listing. What we found is we were listing product in the correct category and eBay's big computer in the sky was changing it to what it felt was the correct category. This effected around 15% of our 4000+ listings. I had a CS rep that worked on this problem and confirmed that that is exactly what happened. So now when we come across a non performing listing we check what other peoples listing for the same item have used as a category. The result is we are listing product incorrectly which could open us up to defects and returns. All this due to the platforms attempt to streamline everything in order to adapt it to the cell phone. Really a sad state of affairs. So check to see if eBay has moved your categories without you knowing.

allthingssurplus · ‎07-17-2022

Updates to listing used to be real time. There are many things on the platform that are real time, like negative feedback or anything that is a punishment to a Seller. Revising listings can make or break a sale. I had a listing last week that did not have free shipping. A Buyer emailed me asking to include shipping and he was will to pay $12 each for the items. We had the items listed at $8.99 each. By revising the listing I could have made and additional $40 on the sale, eBay would have made an additional $4. and the customer would have been happy. I made the revision which did not show up to the Buyer until 36 hours later. Yets it showed up in Seller Hub right after I made the change. The Buyer could not wait, needed the product shipped that day. I lost the $480 sale. This is a platform that had no interest in helping Sellers sell.

inhawaii · ‎07-17-2022

@knifeaholic wrote:
Just to be clear, the term GroupD is a search term that I put in the description only for my own use in truing up my store listings - actual vs what I think I have. No buyer is going to search for that.

I understand.

I think if you put that in the TITLE it will work.

I see other sellers doing it from time to time.

Zero To Sixty In Five - Pablo Cruise

lacemaker3 · ‎07-17-2022

@allthingssurplus wrote:
Updates to listing used to be real time. ...

@allthingssurplus

You are correct, that at one time revised listings did not have to be re-indexed. But, that was a very long time ago.

This had to be changed within the first few years of eBay. Scammers will find any loophole at all that they can exploit, and they exploited the fact that revised listings did not get re-indexed at first.

Scammers would post a listing that was completely within eBay policy, wait until it was indexed, and then revise it because they didn't want to comply with eBay policy. They would change the terms of the sale in the description; this was back when most payments were sent by mail, not digital, so there was no buyer protection at all; or change the item being sold to something prohibited.

eBay was forced to change the process so that when a listing is revised, it is taken out of search, and goes to the end of the queue to be re-indexed. That way, they could make sure that the listing still complied with policy. Usually this is very fast (within a few minutes) so it's not very noticeable. But sometimes, indexing and re-indexing can take longer. By experience, this usually applies to higher-value items, ones that are frequently counterfeited, or items that are high-fraud-potential for other reasons.

lacemaker3 · ‎07-17-2022

@inhawaii wrote:
@knifeaholic wrote:
Just to be clear, the term GroupD is a search term that I put in the description only for my own use in truing up my store listings - actual vs what I think I have. No buyer is going to search for that.
I understand.
I think if you put that in the TITLE it will work.
I see other sellers doing it from time to time.

@inhawaii, when you do a search for active listings, there's a checkbox that allows you to search both the title and the description. That's what @allthingssurplus is doing, and it works just fine.

Of course, since the last few years, it also searches the category, item specifics and who knows what else. There's no way to stop it from searching those.

lacemaker3 · ‎07-17-2022

@allthingssurplus wrote:
Here is a response I just gave to another Seller. This info was provided by a CS rep and some of the info came form the eBay IT dept.

This much I can tell you. We found that some of our fast moving product was only searchable if the Buyer had the entire listing title, almost impossible or the listing ID, only possible if they were already looking at the listing. What we found is we were listing product in the correct category and eBay's big computer in the sky was changing it to what it felt was the correct category. This effected around 15% of our 4000+ listings. I had a CS rep that worked on this problem and confirmed that that is exactly what happened. So now when we come across a non performing listing we check what other peoples listing for the same item have used as a category. The result is we are listing product incorrectly which could open us up to defects and returns. All this due to the platforms attempt to streamline everything in order to adapt it to the cell phone. Really a sad state of affairs. So check to see if eBay has moved your categories without you knowing.

@allthingssurplus

OP's problem is not because eBay is restricting the search to certain categories.

Two of the three listings they are asking about are not showing up in search even when searching All Categories.

They are all in the correct categories as well. One of them has now been sold to a best offer, so at least one buyer found it, but that may have been related to traffic from the eBay community boards. The sold listing is showing up in the completed and sold items search, so its indexed now.

inhawaii · ‎07-17-2022

@lacemaker3 wrote:
@inhawaii wrote:
@knifeaholic wrote:
Just to be clear, the term GroupD is a search term that I put in the description only for my own use in truing up my store listings - actual vs what I think I have. No buyer is going to search for that.
I understand.
I think if you put that in the TITLE it will work.
I see other sellers doing it from time to time.
@inhawaii, when you do a search for active listings, there's a checkbox that allows you to search both the title and the description. That's what @allthingssurplus is doing, and it works just fine.

Of course, since the last few years, it also searches the category, item specifics and who knows what else. There's no way to stop it from searching those.

I haven't seen that checkbox in years.

I thought they did away with it and just defaulted to searching title AND description on all searches.

I see now that they just moved it to the right a little.

Thanks for the info!

Zero To Sixty In Five - Pablo Cruise

lacemaker3 · ‎07-17-2022

@inhawaii

How strange that you couldn't see it? It doesn't seem to have changed for me. Different browsers maybe.

The default search seems to include everything except descriptions, from what I can see. And the kitchen sink. It doesn't search the kitchen sink.

coolections · ‎07-17-2022

I recommend you stop adding words that would not be searched by buyers. That is a hinderance to the keyword search. KISS is the best way to write a title.