View counter - bots vs "real people"

[sakic92710]

I would love for someone to explain, when my view count was much higher due to "bots", why were my sales much better?  Since the elimination of said bots regarding active viewers, why do my sales compare to a computer code? - 000100001100000100001011000.   lol  Does not seem like a coincidence that they coincide.  

[mam98031]

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@hartungcards wrote:

Because when view counts included the bots, you were selling Lions Club banners.

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The post above yours from @fashunu4eeuh offers good information on this.

How machine or bot traffic is removed from your listings

eBay strives to filter as much bot traffic as possible from page view data, but there’s a chance that a small amount of bot traffic is included.

Bot filtering is done in two stages:

• Bot traffic is identified and removed from your page view count in near real-time
• A secondary filtering process performs a deeper analysis on a daily basis and removes bot traffic that may not have been caught by the initial filtering. (This can cause your page views to decrease)

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/listing-tips/page-views?id=4165

[sakic92710]

The replies this seller makes to me are just nonsense because EVERY TIME, it is just a smarta$$ mention of Lions Club banners.

[mam98031]

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@sakic92710 wrote:

The replies this seller makes to me are just nonsense because EVERY TIME, it is just a smarta$$ mention of Lions Club banners.

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Some people are just strange.  There may not be any explanation for their behavior.  Block them and/or ignore them.

[rosszonebricks]

"Correlation does not imply causation."

High temperatures have steadily increased where I live every summer since they stopped bot views from showing up in our view counts.

However, that is just as unrelated as sales dropping in the last few years for nearly every seller.  Covid? Supply chain issues? Various political and social issues?  High grocery prices, high rent/home prices?  Yeah, I'd say those are affecting our sales as 'cause' more than view counts by bots.

[powell-collectibles]

People have listened, and have given great advice over your several years of complaining.  You don’t seem to want to improve.  

Your take that your drop in sales has nothing to do with you is the biggest problem.  You are so invested in that position that trying anything really different isn’t something that you will entertain- that would be an admission that you are a part of the problem.

But, hey, if you think that looking for someone else to blame and shaking your fist at the sky will get you somewhere in life, good luck. 

[powell-collectibles]

You want real advice - deep dive into why you have so few followers.  With what you sell, you should have a much better ratio of sold items to followers than 80:1.  That poor ratio tells you that people found one item of interest, and nothing else, or buyers were unhappy with your seller performance.  

maybe you should take the critiques from your one-and-done buyers, like me, seriously.  Don’t just go to your usual defensive stance.

[kensgiftshop]

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@sakic92710 wrote:

If you are not even going to listen to what I say, why reply?  I was selling 8-20 items a week, on average.  Yes - there were lulls & sometimes sales were very slow for a longer period & I did not like it. Sue me!  Then sales dropped to less than 10 per month & it NEVER recovered.  It had nothing to do with me.  JC!  Suddenly, not everyone in the world decided that they did not want to buy what I was posting.  This is not a "lull" for 3-4 months.  It's 3 1/2 years.  

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I think 3 1/2 years ago, some people had more money left over to buy things they didn't need.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@sakic92710 I don't think removing the bots has had anything to do with a decline in sales. ebay has made other changes since the bots were removed that have impacted sales. More importantly, the stuff you sell --- mostly vintage/used/collectible/long tail if I'm not mistaken ---Well, at one time, ebay was THE place people went to find such stuff. Today, there are many places people go for such stuff. ebay frittered away its real dominance and so it is now just one of many venues for such things. It is still a big dog in the space, but it is far from the only one.  

Removing the bots is irrelevant. 

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I agree with you, but I personally think it has a lot to do with external forces as well.  Such as a great deal of competition.  Some of us who have been around from the beginning know that there was NO competition back in the day.  There were a couple of early websites in certain areas of interest.  I remember using one for music, but there was no Amazon, there was no Posh, there was really no other serious competition.   

To me, what's happened was bound to happen due to the maturation of the online marketplace, the competition that came b/c of it & of course the uncertainty of the economy, which we have faced several times in the last 10 years or so.   Removal of the Bot counts has nothing to do with it.  If anything, it showed us the reality of what was happening.  Which was a bit of gut punch.  But the 'bon ton roulet' could not last forever unfortunately.   Granted, there were always external forces, but when you're the only game in town, they don't affect you as much.  

[chapeau-noir]

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@kensgiftshop wrote:

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@sakic92710 wrote:

If you are not even going to listen to what I say, why reply?  I was selling 8-20 items a week, on average.  Yes - there were lulls & sometimes sales were very slow for a longer period & I did not like it. Sue me!  Then sales dropped to less than 10 per month & it NEVER recovered.  It had nothing to do with me.  JC!  Suddenly, not everyone in the world decided that they did not want to buy what I was posting.  This is not a "lull" for 3-4 months.  It's 3 1/2 years.  

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I think 3 1/2 years ago, some people had more money left over to buy things they didn't need.

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This seems to be a go-to reason no matter what the economy is doing, when in fact that hasn't been the case. Buyer confidence may be very low right now, but it has always fluctuated.

If you have the product people want, they will buy it.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

I freely admit that there is far less interest in many of the items I offer than there was 5 years ago, 10 years ago and 20 years ago. Not on Ebay, not on the internet, not on the planet Earth.

I could if I tried, find some merchandise which more people cared about. I do not have the motivation to try.

I had depth of inventory in many of the areas which I list, and had far more regular buyers in the past. I have less depth now and would like to reduce both the depth and breath of my offerings.

So many things have reduced the interest in what I sell. The death of many collectors. The liquidation of large collections. The irrelevance of many of these items to young people. As well as a slew of economic travails.

Some of my regular buyers were close to or in the California fires, they have not been back to buy and I although I miss them, I understand why they have much higher priorities.

Over the years I have helped beginning collectors become advanced collectors, and they now buy better merchandise than I offer. It is inevitable if I do a good job.

There are waves of Ebay sellers who will sell anything they can make a buck on. Their offerings range over a wide area of interests, and much of what they sell is just another widget to them. Their pricing reflects the quickest way to a sale and if they leave money on the table, they do not know it. In the past, I and other sellers waited them out, they either sold or trashed many items. Now time is not on our side. Some of us are old, others short of space, and some are forced to join the race to the bottom.

The antiques and collectibles business has been full of cycles of interest. I do not know how many people have asked me for advice on how to sell their Royal Doulton or Hummels. I am forced to be kinder than this forum is to the people who want to sell their valuable Beanie Babies.

When I look at your inventory, I get a similar reaction to when I look at my own. There are things that should sell, but I cannot forecast when. I see things which will not sell faster if the price is dropped, unless it dropped enough for another reseller to buy it and try to flip it. I do not see anything which Ebay is the wrong venue to be selling it on.

It is hard to say that Ebay is the best venue for selling many antiques and collectibles, but no other venue is better.

I follow a lot of items I own and am not currently offering, on sites like Invaluable and LiveAuctioneers. The sell through rates on these products is SLOW. Many auctioneers with huge numbers of items for auction are relisting the same items every two or three weeks. Prices realized are 50-75% past peaks. The best and most desirable usually sell and hold their value, but not even all of them do.

I've been buying for my own collection, items which I could not afford in the past, often on 1 bid. I shouldn't be buying anything given all I own and my increased age.

[pennpicker]

My impression is some bots were aggregators for external websites while others had something to do with our items showing up in search engines like Google, both of which increased sellers' odds of being seen. Is it far-fetched to imagine eliminating the ability of these bots to crawl our listings increased the perceived need for promotion by reducing off-platform visibility?

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@pennpicker wrote:

My impression is some bots were aggregators for external websites while others had something to do with our items showing up in search engines like Google, both of which increased sellers' odds of being seen. Is it far-fetched to imagine eliminating the ability of these bots to crawl our listings increased the perceived need for promotion by reducing off-platform visibility?

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@pennpicker  They did NOT eliminate the ability of the bots to crawl the listings.  The bots still do that.  They only eliminated using those in the view counters.  

[simba6]

It's only sales that matter anyway. 

[pennpicker]

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

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They did NOT eliminate the ability of the bots to crawl the listings.  The bots still do that.  They only eliminated using those in the view counters.  

I would love to believe this is true but threads exist where users have been identified as being bots by eBay and prevented from browsing. Here's one for example:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/I-m-Not-a-Bot/td-p/34623610

A Google search for the search terms 'eBay views bots blocked browsing' will provide other examples. That is why I expressed my opinion.

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[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@pennpicker wrote:

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

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They did NOT eliminate the ability of the bots to crawl the listings.  The bots still do that.  They only eliminated using those in the view counters.  

I would love to believe this is true but threads exist where users have been identified as being bots by eBay and prevented from browsing. Here's one for example:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/I-m-Not-a-Bot/td-p/34623610

A Google search for the search terms 'eBay views bots blocked browsing' will provide other examples. That is why I expressed my opinion.

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@pennpicker   Different kind of bot.  The bots in question do not browse eBay.   They work behind the scenes.  

I too have rec'd the bot message in what you linked.  It's usually a browser vs browser support on eBay issue.  Typically remedied by switching or updating your browser.  In the case where eBay is not supporting a too-new browser version, that's a bigger problem, but I haven't had that happen on eBay in over a decade.