Will eBay ever fix its listing View counter?

[1avid_collector]

...or is that too much to ask???

Absurd level of incompetence IMHO!!!

[duncanvr]

Quote 'Would you mind sharing the logic behind why you use views to determine pricing and title changes?'

Well simply if the item hardly got any views after 30 days then it needs to be edited. Maybe the title needs changing or the price reduced a couple of dollars.

I've been told that you need to edit listing titles and prices at least once a week these days to get it a short boost in search results.

So if the view count is wrong I cannot see if an item may need to be changed, because if an item was getting a lot of views I would not change it.

All my items on eBay UK are unique. The Visit Shop is broken for me on eBay USA because they no longer have site visibility in stamps category on eBay UK. Another bad thing on eBay these days. If your item isn't seen on other eBay platforms your sales drop! Someone at eBay told me international site visibility is being phased out.

[gkyn29]

Views and watchers mean nothing. The only things that matter are Bids and how many click the "buy it now" button.

If they completely removed views and watchers, it wouldn't affect me one bit and I would care less if they did.

[1avid_collector]

Then why did you stick you nose into this thread??? This thread is primarily for those who are concerned about the view-counter issues. Making irrelevant posts just to aggravate the OP is troll-like behavior. Enough valid reasons have been given for eBay properly maintaining the view counter; saying you don't care about it is not helpful in the slightest.

[futuretomorrow]

And what's the conversion you've seen on items that have had that number of views and watchers? I'm curious because there is a new type of consumer behavior I started noticing a few years ago and then something else I saw on another site.

There were a few specialty items I was selling that it was clear the watchers were only other sellers trying to get my items for super cheap. It never translated to a sale. Some of these were listed up to 10 times and guess what? Always the same suspicous count of 5 watchers. What are the odds you list an item 10 times and every time it ends you have exactly 5 people that were watching it?

I've also given the example above of the Grand Canyon like void between views and actual sales.

One item has close to 35,000 views but I've sold less than 1,500 of them. That's extremely poor conversion so can you help me understand what value you're getting out of views and watchers? I'm guessing it's because watchers past a certain amount guaranteed a sale in the past but do you feel that's still the case on eBay today?

[futuretomorrow]

Thanks for the explanation but wouldn't consistently changing the title also effect any organic SEO or robots that have crawled the previous link? When I made some edits to my items on my own site that let's me sell them as Pins on Pinterest, it broke a few things and the links couldn't resolve.

This is why that platform offers a user the ability to generate an automatic redirect of the old link to the new one because this has long been understood to affect sales. eBay doesn't offer this option and I'm guessing a new URL is generated but then it needs to be crawled and indexed again. Which again, would hurt sales and findability in external search.

[gkyn29]

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@1avid_collector wrote:

Then why did you stick you nose into this thread??? This thread is primarily for those who are concerned about the view-counter issues. Making irrelevant posts just to aggravate the OP is troll-like behavior. Enough valid reasons have been given for eBay properly maintaining the view counter; saying you don't care about it is not helpful in the slightest.

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How is that irrelevant. I'm a top rated seller that doesn't give squat about views because they don't mean anything and shouldn't be stressed over.

Very relevant.

[futuretomorrow]

Would you mind pointing me to the valid reasons you've mentioned? I don't think the person meant to troll or be rude, they were simply stating more directly what others have stated and their own experience.

Given my line of work, I'm inclined to go with their statement until someone shows me hard conversion numbers. What isn't helpful actually is unverified claims without seeing the sales conversion rates because maybe people are focusing on the wrong thing? Just a thought.

When I click on many of the sellers profiles or read when they've mentioned how long they've been here, I'm curious without insult if they simply haven't moved on from a time when views and watchers here held more value? It's commonly known change is sometimes hard for several reasons.

Looking forwward to seeing your data. Thanks!

[duncanvr]

and that is the point of editing something with low views that is not moving, its re crawled and indexed again. So it wakes up Casinni and forces it to bump it in the que. I heard a listing is stale after 30 days and dead after 2 months. Once 30 days has passed and you're still having low views you can bet your listing is at the bottom of the search engine and no one is going to find it. So that is why I edit evey 30 days. Luckily I don't sell common goods. After I edit I put it back on Pinterest. I also do Facebook posts with links to my eBay shop and items in an attempt to get higher views. This has occasionally created sales.

[1avid_collector]

It's not necessarily about conversions. It may indicate a visibility issue. How can you not see that?

And yes, it is completely irrelevant to post an "I don't care" message. If you don't care about this issue, then kindly get lost!

[gkyn29]

Ah please. Take your misguided SJW complex somewhere else as it's clearly misapplied in this case.

I'm simply stating that it's not as important as the OP's level of punctuation is implying it is...

[1avid_collector]

"Not important to you" does not mean "not important to others". Take your unhelpful comments and shove them.

[futuretomorrow]

Thanks for the response. That makes perfect sense. I was more thinking of external search based on a conversation I had with an associate recently in terms of how our customers use search to find our products. But if we're talking just Cassini and bumping the listing up here on eBay then again you're 100% correct and I appreciate the answer.

[duncanvr]

Yes we're talking just Cassini and bumping the listing up. So for me the view counter does matter. Another thing I'll do with an unsold rather than relist it I'll use sell similar to re index it and reset the view count. Even changing the price a few cents up or down will force Cassini to reindex. If I don't have accurate view count I cannot see how the listing is doing. I should point out I am in a niche so for me view counts come from mostly collectors of old mail and coins so I can tell which items are more appealing to them. Common goods maybe another story.

[1avid_collector]

Perhaps the final iteration of Cassini will be an algorithm whereby eBay only presents a single result for every search -- that is, Cassini deciding the one item that it "thinks" is the one and only item that a given buyer should consider buying!

Rather like a self-driving vehicle that swerves hard right and slams into a lamp post, injuring or in some cases killing the occupant(s) in order to avoid hitting a squirrel that darts in front of the vehicle.

[futuretomorrow]

It's not that I can't see it versus more of knowing how my customers tend to find me and my products. Before being lowered in visibility some of my listings were unique enough to show up top of the list of any search here no matter what so there is/was no staleness.

They weren't competing with several 100 or more listings because only me and my vendor in China had them and they don't make theirs publicly available, meaning customers who needed those items never had a problem finding me and I was literally one of a handful of sellers on eBay with them.

A year ago I had two specific items here and on my site that held the no.1 position on any search, above eBay, Amazon et al and even when you clicked on those from those companies and others it was just wax laces but not in the length and quality I had them available.

This was an eye opener. Amazon can be beat. You just need to know what people want and they absolutely don't sell. Adidas made their laces shorter on several models because of what me and 5 other sellers around the world were doing between 2014-2016. That's how deeply some of us use data.

You know where I got the idea? From being a member of several sneaker groups/sites and noticing that this one line and comment kept coming up repeatedly about two extremely popular models so I talked to my vendor, had the custom lengths made and at one point could not keep them in stock long enough month over month.

Same with Kanye West and a product I sold based on the popularity of his shoes.

If people spent more time combing through qualitatitve data versus maybe worrying about views, they can actually get a jump on any brand. 

I have a product right now that I researched extensively including studying several things about how the only 6 sellers here to offer it were positioning their listings. Since receiving them, like they haven't even been up for 2 weeks, I've already sold way more of them than the watch count by far. It's almost a daily seller and I'm getting ready to restock some colors and then evaluate/estimate when the product may peak. If I list them where I know my customers for them are in higher concentration? I can move 5/day but I'd need a lot more inventory than I have now. That's the only reason why I haven't listed them there. Adidas is hurting so I ordered a small batch as a pilot test but apparently the laces are still in high demand.

There are smarter ways to work sales than views and watchers but I was curious how this was working for everyone else. I can see where things would be different from seller to seller depending on category and item. I tend to stay away from oversaturated categories that I can't find an in other sellers haven't used or if I'm not going to be in the top 10 sellers list or lower. Thanks again.