Views and Bots and Traffic and Bots

[qualityrelics]

Dear eBay,  first off I want to say ‘I love you, but I’m not IN love with you’

I SO SO miss the days when I would list an item and I’d get an IMMEDIATE view.
Was it an eBay associate quality check? Was it an eBay algorithm bot check?

Or was it a 3rd Party bot from the great beyond??!?

Franky, I DO NOT CARE.
All I know was this…..prior to these view and bot changes I was getting traffic and sales. 

Is it a rough time if the year to sell?  Sure, but going from multiple daily sales to barely scraping by is NOT working.  

And I am listing my BUTT off with no noticeable returns on my efforts and this is unlike 5 years of full time selling history. 
eBay, listen, you have done something on the technical side that has hurt sales.  Period.  It’s painfully obvious to me and thousands of other sellers. 
Please reverse these recent changes to your algorithms so my partnership with eBay can continue.

I don’t know Bots.  I don’t dislike or like bots. All I know is bots brought views and views increased my visibly and that brought sales.  
None of that is happening now.  
If you allow sellers to use 3rd party listing services then why in the HECK does a 3rd party bot view matter!!!!  It doesn’t matter. 
I DO NOT CARE if my views are “organic” or a bot.  
I want to sell things to make make money for me and for you.   Please fix this. 

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@zamo-zuan wrote:

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

As others have said, the bots are still there, doing what they've always done.  The only difference is that those views are not counted anymore, since they were not ever potential real customers.  

What else has changed?  Well, it's now the middle of the Summer doldrums & prices have gone up astronomically for gas, rent, food, etc.  

I get that the bot views made you feel warm & fuzzy, but it was a false sense of security.  

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EBay can't even get their organic counts right with 3 different counts on the SAME traffic page.

Do you really trust them to properly count which views are bots or not?

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I know some people feel view counts have never been accurate.  I have never experienced anything that would lead me to believe they aren't, other than a few occasional glitchy times where they were obviously wrong (views in the thousands when they were normally in the teens), but those were YEARS ago.  

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@agun2355 wrote:

I don't think this new way of counting views is at all accurate. I had a week old item with 1 view and 4 watchers. How does that happen? In general I have too many items where almost every view is a watcher. I suspect the new view count is less accurate than the old one.

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Very simple.  One doesn't have to enter the listing to watch it.  I often watch without going into the listing. 

[stainlessenginecovers]

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@qualityrelics wrote:

This is called a pattern.....A pattern based on 5 years, 60 months, 1,825 days of selling.

Based on this pattern the current version of ebay is behaving very differently than than is has previously.

Plus, I'm not the only seller who has concerns about these changes.

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Patterns are simply math equations. Because the equation has changed ie. 9% inflation, Gasoline up 50%, rents up 25-75% (depending on where you live) would have to be now INPUTTED INTO THE MATH EQUATION of said Pattern.

This would change everything. 

As far as 'others' having concerns; it's just the boogie man theory. Something changed (A) while something changed (B) so it's easy to just blame change A- but far from reality. 

Buyers don't give 2 toots about 'views'. Not 1 in 1,000,000,000 buyers would EVER care. If they like your thing, have the money for the thing, they will buy the thing. 

To get the 'real count' of views is much, much! better than getting fake views, which is EXACTLY what sellers were getting prior to the change. 

For a fairly rare one time, eBay made a change that is 1000% better than ever, yet people still find a way to make THAT CHANGE the fault of their sales. 

Lastly, btw- there have been 'my sales dove' 'my sales are terrible' 'this xx change is effecting my sales' this yy change is effecting my sales' on this forum since the turn of the century. Can't possibly be all these things, because if it were, online selling would not have grown like it has. 

In reality, it's simply called 'change'. Change in the demographic age group that are buyers. The 19 to 49 demographic that most companies advertise to, are now 39-69 and that 19-49 age group has changed what they buy, how they buy etc. 

[herbaearth]

This has been an ongoing conversation by veteran sellers since 2019.  It’s a pattern of questioning decisions made by corporate bankers that can not comprehend basic income concerns.

The new eBay algorithm uses a “product forward” method, which means the traffic flow is being systemically tunneled to target rare and/or high ticket items.

It’s very clear image scraping utilities(bots) on search engines are now redirected away from eBay sellers, which made up the majority of sales for most veteran sellers, which definitely gave a warm feeling with all the bots scanning listings and then having a searcher buy something. Just reading the community results about how these actions have decreased sales is readily available to all the public.

Apparently robots can not view human concerns either.

[cre8tiv--1]

I have been unable to get any "real" explanation from Ebay on what's going on with this.  Been selling on Ebay for 21 years.  When ebay started this new algorithm several years ago, item exposure dropped dramaticlly. My sales dropped 75%.  Decades with steady sales amounts on eBay just fell off the cliff and have stayed there.  With several years now doing a fraction of what we used to sell, I would love to know the method to the madness!!  All attempts, refreshing, relisting, deleting, listing again, paying % ad $$ to ebay have failed to accomplish anything.

[selsa84]

Absolutely not. I downlaod traffic view counts often and when I cross check them with items that supposedly had say 10 views in a day the item view on the listing page will say different. My views have ALWAYS been inflated. 

[meme6253]

Nothing Has Changed since your original post!, Nothing has been fixed!, & I Agree with you totally!

[meme6253]

You still don't really know that now!

[meme6253]

Or is ebay just trying to Encourage the use of PL's??