What did eBay Break Now?

[valueaddedresource]

Anyone else seeing this today?

[coffeebean832]

I saw a massive change starting July 1st. I thought it was because I changed the store subscription level- but that was an unfounded guess.

The other thought I had is that eBay's been pushing us to go with trending rates lately- even seeing full screen promos about it at sign-on-  and I don't go anywhere near those recommendations. I think they're giving priority in placement to the sellers who use higher rates.

This is on a very small (less than 500 listings) new-ish account- my main selling account appears to be more or less steady with PL impressions.

 

[valueaddedresource]

Thanks @coffeebean832  - wow, that's a pretty major drop.

[coffeebean832]

It's a real cliff dive, isn't it? That account is vastly different in all aspects from my main account.

It's been active for about a year, it's tiny (less than 500 listings) and it's in a completely different category than where I normally sell- clothing, shoes & accessories. My main category also sells new product where this tiny account selling clothing is about 80% preowned. I have no idea if any of that is relevant to this issue.

I lowered the store subscription around the same time as the drop. I've since raised the subscription again- about 2 weeks ago- but no change in PL impressions so that debunks that theory.

I looked over go-bad-chicken's screenshots. I've never seen "frequently bought together" before- that's new to me- although I doubt that's going to be showing in preowned clothing? I say that with a question mark because eBay frequently goes against logic.

I have seen similar sponsored items before- that's not new and has been appearing for at least a year or two.

The timing of my drop is also different from you guys so the reasons may not even be the same.

Around mid-August I started getting e-mails and full screen prompts at sign on regarding optimizing promoted listings and encouraging higher ad rates.

Even though that's a month and a half after my drop, I thought maybe they were messing with the search results early conducting tests- and now they're rolling it out to everybody. Of course this is all just speculation based on timing and announced changes- my issues could be unrelated to that- I really don't know. We're all just guessing based on whatever bits of info we can find.

[robert8256]

Since I have signed up for managed payments in early August I noticed immediately getting more sales.  But this week for the first time during labor weekend my sales took a nose dive.  So there is definitely a glitch on the ebay site which ebay has not informed us yet in the announcements.

[valueaddedresource]

Thanks @coffeebean832  I appreciate the info, even if it's just speculation. 👍

[this*old*attic]

Ebay is trying to be the River again.

[blacktopautoparts]

I have toyed around with my PL rates the last few weeks, and on Thursday of this week I placed them at quite a higher rate which would make some people puke as a test. I will tell you that it is not helping at all. The amount of sales that I have gotten between yesterday and today is what I typically get in 1 day if not more than that. Something else has to be going on here, but I am so tired of trying to figure it out. I am using higher rates, yet it is still not helping out.

[melmic24]

This has been happening to me for over 2 weeks, I have called ebay for 10 days requesting a supervisor they all tell me one will call me back and no one does!! I have not had a promoted listing sale in over 2 weeks. It really sucks !! They wrote a ticket for a tech to check out my account but nothing has been fixed. If anyone has had any luck please let me know, i have over 3K items and i am barely making 1-3 sales a day what a joke.

[melmic24]

Thank you so much for this explanation ! I have been experiencing the same exact drop as well and no one was able to tell me what was going on when i talked to ebay.  This has been going on since Aug 13,2020 for me and still not fixed! I am only getting 1-3 daily sales 😞 . So just be prepared guys if this happens to you, have some savings to live on! I have not made any promoted listing sales since Aug 12th .

Good luck everyone ! Please post if anyone finds out how to fix it.

[melmic24]

Please post if you get this fixed, same is happening with me since Aug 13 , nothing is fixed. No promoted listing sales at all. I have been calling everyday .

[go-bad-chicken]

FYI I just checked and made a handful of searches this morning and for me eBay has changed back to showing the two normal and to be expected Sponsored Listings advertising carousels above the fold (above the seller's listing descriptions).

[go-bad-chicken]

@valueaddedresource @blacktopautoparts @chapeau-noir @zamo-zuan @coffeebean832

I wanted to take a moment and report some new findings.

In post 56 I reported that my results earlier today had reverted back to showing "Similar Sponsored Listings" advertising carousels. But I was using Samsung tablet at that time and I was not logged into this account when I checked those listings earlier today.

Just now I logged back into this account on the same Windows based desktop PC that I made had used a couple of days ago and reported my findings.

It to me does now appear that my account or PC was selected for a test. I own a couple of late 1980's Toyota Landcruisers Model FJ 62. I just checked some newly listed listings within eBay Motors for Toyota FJ62 parts and once again what I am seeing right now instead of the to be expected "Similar Sponsored Listings" advertising carousels is the same thing that I was shown the other day which is "People who viewed this item also viewed" instead of "Similar Sponsored Listings".

So taking what other sellers have posted based on their observations when looking at listings versus what I am currently seeing when I look at listings logged into this account to me point to the possibility that eBay is currently running some sort of limited test on an unspecified number of accounts. So this once again may or may not be the reason behind the dramatic drop that some sellers are reporting here with regards to Promoted Listings traffic and impressions.

I just took these screenshots less than 15 minutes ago.

Listing #1

Listing #2

[valueaddedresource]

Thanks for the updates @go-bad-chicken . My promoted listings stats and sales seemed to start coming back up yesterday later in the afternoon and are holding steady so far today, which would also support the theory that eBay is doing some kind of rolling testing.

Maybe my category is "out" of the test now and they switched it back on?  Either way, while I'm not still seeing this issue at this time, I do still want to keep this thread going if others are still struggling with this and hopefully we can get some further clarification from brian@ebay or tyler@ebay as well.

[seadawg42]

I sell boat parts & accessories in Motors>Parts & Accessories and have been seeing the same thing since Thursday.

[coffeebean832]

@valueaddedresource- I have a feeling my account is experiencing a different issue since everybody else here is seeing a change starting last Thursday and my cliff dive was around July 1st. Either that or it's a rolling change. I'm interested to know if eBay can provide any information. For now I'm sticking to my thought process that my low ad rate and eBay's recent push for higher rates has something to do with the change on my account.