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eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…

I thought I would let others know of my recent findings. I noticed some strange volatility and patterns in eBay’s traffic for the last few days, so I thought I would research a little further to see if I could figure out what is going on, and I believe I’ve stumbled upon some major issues.

 

The first thing I was trying to look in to was my odd observation that all of the top sellers in our category , all who have consistently been ranked on top of eBay’s organic search for years, in addition to being the biggest investors in Promoted Listings, seem to be all ranking far down in search results. 

 

I was curious as to what may be causing this. As it seems to imply that both organic search rankings as well as PL are not actually being factored right now.

 

I began researching how Promoted Listings are showing up. Prior to this, in our category, the first 2 results were pretty consistently marked “Sponsored”. In the morning, I’d noticed just 1 “Sponsored” rather than two. So I thought I’d check again and research a bit further…

 

I was surprised by what I’d seen:

 

no_sponsor.png

 

None of them sponsored…? I scrolled down a bit, it seemed that NOTHING was marked as sponsored?

 

So then I tried a search, as I usually do, to try to count how many sponsored (if any) might be on the page. Hit Cntl + F, and searched for “Sponsored”. My results:

 

sponsor_appear.png

 

Literally EVERY single search result is secretly marked as sponsored!! But the text is in a white font that’s not visible unless you search for it or highlight the text in the listing!

 

Considering nothing was showing as promoted, while at the same time everything has a secret ‘hidden’ promotion mark, that seems like quite clear evidence to me that something is indeed broken in their search/promotions system.

 

I had asked some friends about this, and none of them had it where ZERO promoted items appeared on the page like mine did, although they did mention the results had very few promoted items. But doing Cntl + F, they all did have every item secretly marked as promoted!

 

Now I thought I’d take a look at the traffic comparisons to see if there’s anything showing for promotional/organic views…

 

trafficComparison.png

 

Okay now the numbers say there’s been a drop of 10.6%... But the graph looks like an increase and not a drop? What’s going on here?!

 

Taking a look even closer, so the organic numbers are 747, promoted 595, external 668… So if organic traffic is supposed to be 40%... Why does the dark blue bar (organic) look so much larger than the other bars…?

 

If we take a look into the Inspect tool (by right clicking > Inspect on the bar) it brings up the data that’s being ‘fed’ in to the graphs and this is what is shown:

 

non-promo-views.png

 

1237 non-promoted page views?  These are different numbers than the statistics say! Where is this 1237 coming from?!?! And why is eBay sending data to this page that claims there’s 1237 non-promoted views when there’s actually 747???

 

We know these numbers are used in the eBay search algorithms. It’s needless to say that if the numbers are not correct in the algorithms, that will mean the algorithms will not be working correctly

 

So I thought I’d then look over at the Advertising page to compare how the numbers there might look:

 

promoClicks.png

 

Now clicks = views.  This page is claiming 1156 organic, and 668 promoted!!

 

So traffic page vs promo page:

 

Promoted:                        668 - 668

Non-Promo:                     747 - 1156

Non-Promo (graph)      1237 - 1156

 

The Promoted numbers are matching, but NONE of the non-promoted are matching up! There’s 3 different numbers ranging between 747 and 1237! The graph doesn’t match the information on the graph which doesn’t match the ad page!


I don’t know what exactly is going on, but the one thing that seems clear is that search/traffic/promotions are having major issues right now.

 

This is in addition to the other issues that I’ve observed with promotions that have been discussed lately. For those who had not seen the discussion, in my testing it has shown that PL rates are actually weighing on not just your promoted traffic but your organic traffic as well! I first noticed this mid last year:

 

image (2).png

 

I thought it may be an error, as the definition of “organic” means “free/unpaid” impressions. In hopes they might fix it. But then the next time I had tested it:

 

image (3).png

 

It seems they had only made it weigh EVEN MORE on organic impressions!

 

Is this an error, or intended? Considering it’s been nearly a year, it’s almost certainly intended at this point. If it’s an error, it’s even more alarming that such a major problem could still exist a year later without being repaired. 

 

I don’t know what’s going on over at eBay, all I could do is hope to bring some awareness to these issues, and gather as much information as I could, in hopes that it will help eBay address the problems!

 

I don’t want everyone to just take my word for it. I would like to ask other sellers, please share your own results! 

 

Please check:

 

  • Your search results and if any promoted listings appear in the search results.
  • If you cntl + f and search “sponsored”, how many sponsored listings are hidden in the search results?
  • If the data on your traffic graph matches the bar sizes
  • If any bar sizes show incorrectly, in chrome r click the bar > inspect, and see what the system is claiming your impressions are.
  • Compare your Advertising page impressions to your Traffic page impressions.
  • If your PL rates had resulted with changes on your organic impressions.

 

The more information we could give eBay regarding this, the better. Hopefully we could find a common denominator and figure things out!

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@wastingtime101 wrote:

If I've unpacked this all (and sorry if I'm missing any major points - it's been a long week and my brain is fried) then there are 3 main discussion points here.

 

1. The word sponsored appearing in white/invisible font on every listing on search. I can confirm this has been the case for as long as I can remember. I discovered it years ago. I believe it's what Cottage Books described above: the text exists but it doesn't show in visible font unless the listing is actually counted as sponsored in that search result.

 

2. No sponsored listings are appearing in your search. So yeah, this issue has been going on for a while with a connection to ad blockers. If you do use ad blockers then you can read in depth about the issue here. If you don't use ad blockers, then what you're describing is something new.

 

3. Traffic counts aren't matching across different pages in the Hub. Yep, I can confirm that. The numbers never match. Different pages are updated on different timelines.

 

Having said all that: I do believe there are some serious issues with views, stats, etc. This isn't about them changing the view counter to remove bot views. All traffic stats are seriously messed up. I've seen so many results that don't add up. I won't get into all the nitty gritty except to say that I've seen some big problems in that area and never feel like I can rely on the traffic data eBay provides.

 

I remember times in the past where traffic data was on a week long delay (as stated by eBay) but then they worked to improve on that. I do think they constantly tweak this area and traffic info feeds into different pages on the Hub based on different sets of programming that result in inconsistent data. The only thing that remains consistent is the inconsistency.


1) This isn't accurate, as in the past I would use the same methods for counting sponsored appearances. I don't know any exact date for when it happened, but I do know it didn't happen in the past.

 

2) I don't use an ad blocker (you can see ad's in the screenshot lol).

 

3) The pages updating on different timelines doesn't apply for past days, though, as they were already tallied. I have some statistics from the end of last year/beginning of this year that indicate something has changed, particularly on the traffic page calculations for organic.

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@siamjane8 wrote:

I see the same "hidden spons" text 

    Whether this is actually just a "place holder" for every listing or not- there obviously has been some programming changes that have adversely affected sales and visibility for may if not all sellers since May.

    Organic things never turn on and off like a switch- sales turned off for many sellers overnight. it has to be something ebay did ( i dont think it was intentionally but results to the sellers and buyers are the same)

    Historically sales always take a sharp decline after big updates on ebay.

 


It does take the algorithm some time to "settle" after updates. But these search results were unlike any I'd ever encountered in 8 years.

 

And as mentioned, things do seem like they're back to "normal" now, for the most part. I can't say if the algorithm made changes itself, or if something was fixed.

 

But I'll give the statistics a few day to settle and then next week take a look and compare Friday to today/the rest of the weekend and see if I can find anything that stands out!

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…

No need to figure any of that out. Waste of time on something you have no control over. Sponsored has always and always will only show a couple of sponsored listings per page.

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@zamo-zuan wrote:

@wastingtime101 wrote:

1. The word sponsored appearing in white/invisible font on every listing on search. I can confirm this has been the case for as long as I can remember. I discovered it years ago. I believe it's what Cottage Books described above: the text exists but it doesn't show in visible font unless the listing is actually counted as sponsored in that search result.


1) This isn't accurate, as in the past I would use the same methods for counting sponsored appearances. I don't know any exact date for when it happened, but I do know it didn't happen in the past.


OK, man. May not be consistent with your experience, but it's something I've seen for quite a while. I have e-mails from 2 years ago where a friend sent me screenshots and we discussed it. I'm not going to post someone else's screenshots here. If you don't want to believe me that's within your right.

 

Re: ad blocker - I use an ad blocker but I allow non-invasive ads. An ad displaying in your screenshot is not an indicator of whether or not you use an ad blocker. I was offering one bit if info that I said may help and it may not. Since you don't use an ad blocker it doesn't help you and that's fine.

GLORIOUS!

March shipping tip: Size matters. Enter accurate package dimensions on the listing form and the shipping label.
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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…

@zamo-zuan  You say:" That makes sense.... Considering inconsistency all over the site in regards to sponsored or not, and the fact that it's claiming NONE of the ones I see are sponsored, it's doubtful."

 

 

I think you are conflating two different issues.

 

That "sponsored" shows up in "find word search" for all listings does not indicate to me that all those listings are part of a PL campaign. Nor does it indicate anything is specifically wrong , and that "sponsored" should not show up in a Find word search. I think THAT is working as it should. "Sponsored" SHOULD show up for all the listings when a Find word search is conducted, whether those listings are part of a PL campaign or  not.

 

In other words, the fact that "sponsored" shows up for all listings in a Find Word Search is NOT an error, and it is NOT a problem. It simply has nothing to do with why you did not see "sponsored" for any listings in a regular search.

 

I do not know why you didn't see the sponsored listings you expected to see, or the placement you expected in terms of top sellers.

 

THAT is an entirely different matter, in my opinion, and one that is not explained by the Find Word Search.

 

Just my opinion. Call in a blue if you think we can get some official clarification about the Find Word Search issue.  Or maybe @shipscript could help out on this issue?

 

And , as an aside, if you want to see which listings are in a PL campaign, you can do an "active" search in Terapeak. There will be a check mark in the "Promoted Listing" column over to the right on the search results page.  A few points, though:

 

I believe that terapeak is showing that the item is in an active PL campaign. Of course, that does NOT mean it will show up as "Sponsored" in EVERY actual search, because ebay can choose to show it as either Sponsored or Organic, depending on a range of factors.

 

Also, as far as I can tell, a terapeak active search uses its own search engine, and might not provide identical search results when compared to the results you see in an actual ebay search.

 

But...this should provide a good indication as to whether an item is in a PL campaign or not.

 

 

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…

@zamo-zuan   I sell long tail single quantity listings in a large variety of categories, with about 700 active listings currently. Frankly, a lot of the stats ebay provides are not really helpful for me, because with so few listings, so few "repeatables", and no definite niche, there are simply too many variables. So, for me, a lot of this is just not very important. It is interesting, but of no practical importance for me. But I DO understand that it can be important for other business models, and it appears it IS important for your business model.

 

So, just a suggestion,  but you might want to look at Zik Analytics. I know some ebay sellers really feel it provides some valuable insights for their businesses. You might find it helpful (of course, maybe you use it already, I don't know).

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…

 

@zamo-zuan  I think the suggestion from @my-cottage-books-and-antiques   that we call velvet@ebay might be the best direction here.

 

But I will add this: last year I was looking at search positions and discovered that organic listings add up to the page size and promoted listings can run up to 12 items longer than page size. So if your search is set to display 200 items per page, the promoted listings will be tacked on and can increase your page to perhaps 212. I haven't checked recently, but this may be a way to cross-check whether promoteds are there or not.

 

For a period of time, a seller's organic item could appear on the same page as the promoted item, but this should now be fixed so that only the promoted or the organic version appears (whichever is ranking higher in the particular search).  I suspect the on/off switch for the invisible "sponsored" label is how the same listing can rank highest as either promoted or organic, and thus appear only once in the page.

 

As we all know, best match is based on the visitor's own search and viewing history. So if a seller searches for their own listings, those will rise higher in their own best match search.

 

Searching in incognito mode (with no cookies) will display results not linked to the seller's own browsing history.

 

ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@shipscript wrote:

For a period of time, a seller's organic item could appear on the same page as the promoted item, but this should now be fixed so that only the promoted or the organic version appears (whichever is ranking higher in the particular search).  I suspect the on/off switch for the invisible "sponsored" label is how the same listing can rank highest as either promoted or organic, and thus appear only once in the page.


It depends what browser you're using @shipscript. There's at least one browser that still displays a listing twice between organic and promoted, as recently as yesterday.

GLORIOUS!

March shipping tip: Size matters. Enter accurate package dimensions on the listing form and the shipping label.
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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@coolections wrote:

No need to figure any of that out. Waste of time on something you have no control over. Sponsored has always and always will only show a couple of sponsored listings per page.


I find it odd that you're clarifying something different than what this post is about. Have you actually read what was posted? The first part of what I had posted had mentioned that the entire search results was claiming NOTHING was sponsored, yet 250 results showed up on a 200 result search. 

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@wastingtime101 wrote:

@zamo-zuan wrote:

@wastingtime101 wrote:

1. The word sponsored appearing in white/invisible font on every listing on search. I can confirm this has been the case for as long as I can remember. I discovered it years ago. I believe it's what Cottage Books described above: the text exists but it doesn't show in visible font unless the listing is actually counted as sponsored in that search result.


1) This isn't accurate, as in the past I would use the same methods for counting sponsored appearances. I don't know any exact date for when it happened, but I do know it didn't happen in the past.


OK, man. May not be consistent with your experience, but it's something I've seen for quite a while. I have e-mails from 2 years ago where a friend sent me screenshots and we discussed it. I'm not going to post someone else's screenshots here. If you don't want to believe me that's within your right.

 

Re: ad blocker - I use an ad blocker but I allow non-invasive ads. An ad displaying in your screenshot is not an indicator of whether or not you use an ad blocker. I was offering one bit if info that I said may help and it may not. Since you don't use an ad blocker it doesn't help you and that's fine.


Of course, I'm not going to question your experiences. I don't think you have any reason to lie. No need to share any private discussions. I'm just mentioning our own experience, and in ours, at least in the category we sell in, that's not accurate. EBay does often times treat categories differently, though. It could be that these changes were in your category prior.

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@zamo-zuan  You say:" That makes sense.... Considering inconsistency all over the site in regards to sponsored or not, and the fact that it's claiming NONE of the ones I see are sponsored, it's doubtful."

 

 

I think you are conflating two different issues.

 

That "sponsored" shows up in "find word search" for all listings does not indicate to me that all those listings are part of a PL campaign. Nor does it indicate anything is specifically wrong , and that "sponsored" should not show up in a Find word search. I think THAT is working as it should. "Sponsored" SHOULD show up for all the listings when a Find word search is conducted, whether those listings are part of a PL campaign or  not.

 

In other words, the fact that "sponsored" shows up for all listings in a Find Word Search is NOT an error, and it is NOT a problem. It simply has nothing to do with why you did not see "sponsored" for any listings in a regular search.

 

I do not know why you didn't see the sponsored listings you expected to see, or the placement you expected in terms of top sellers.

 

THAT is an entirely different matter, in my opinion, and one that is not explained by the Find Word Search.

 

Just my opinion. Call in a blue if you think we can get some official clarification about the Find Word Search issue.  Or maybe @shipscript could help out on this issue?

 

And , as an aside, if you want to see which listings are in a PL campaign, you can do an "active" search in Terapeak. There will be a check mark in the "Promoted Listing" column over to the right on the search results page.  A few points, though:

 

I believe that terapeak is showing that the item is in an active PL campaign. Of course, that does NOT mean it will show up as "Sponsored" in EVERY actual search, because ebay can choose to show it as either Sponsored or Organic, depending on a range of factors.

 

Also, as far as I can tell, a terapeak active search uses its own search engine, and might not provide identical search results when compared to the results you see in an actual ebay search.

 

But...this should provide a good indication as to whether an item is in a PL campaign or not.


The "find" search was just one piece of the research as I looked in to it further. It's something that is new (at least in our category) so I shared it as part of the process of analyzing the listings, as a potential piece of data that might figure out what was going on in search.

 

But, as mentioned earlier, there's additional relevance of the "find" results. As there must be a problem if the page is showing 250 "sponsored" results in a 200 item search. More than 200 results were showing, which only makes sense if some of those are sponsored. Yet NONE of them had an actual sponsored stamp visible. 

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@shipscript wrote:

 

@zamo-zuan  I think the suggestion from @my-cottage-books-and-antiques   that we call velvet@ebay might be the best direction here.

 

But I will add this: last year I was looking at search positions and discovered that organic listings add up to the page size and promoted listings can run up to 12 items longer than page size. So if your search is set to display 200 items per page, the promoted listings will be tacked on and can increase your page to perhaps 212. I haven't checked recently, but this may be a way to cross-check whether promoteds are there or not.

 

For a period of time, a seller's organic item could appear on the same page as the promoted item, but this should now be fixed so that only the promoted or the organic version appears (whichever is ranking higher in the particular search).  I suspect the on/off switch for the invisible "sponsored" label is how the same listing can rank highest as either promoted or organic, and thus appear only once in the page.

 

As we all know, best match is based on the visitor's own search and viewing history. So if a seller searches for their own listings, those will rise higher in their own best match search.

 

Searching in incognito mode (with no cookies) will display results not linked to the seller's own browsing history.

 


Yep. In my reply yesterday I'd mentioned there was 88 results showing. I don't remember the exact number (I didn't record it) but it was a little above 100 results. 8 of those were in the "recent" section, so the rest were appearing as normal sponsored results, which was basically what we would 'normally' expect to see.

 

I'd also searched not only in incognito mode, but had some friends search items to see their results at the time. Including some who don't even regularly use eBay and live across the country. Part of the strangeness was, on Friday when the issues were happening, the top items were pretty much equivalent to ours no matter who searched. Although, not everyone had the issue with zero of the items being marked as sponsored - most of the others had items properly marked as sponsored. But in their screenshots of the top results, they had similar items showing. Which was strange, as it's unusual for our own search logged in, our incognito search, and others searches to all yield similar results.

 

Just for the record, the info I shared in the OP isn't all of my research / all of the data that led me to the conclusions of eBay having a problem on Friday. I just focused on those as it's more constructive to post about things that people could test themselves.

 

I'm honestly a bit surprised that there's less alarm about eBay's traffic page listing wrong information on the same exact page (across different pages, that could be just differences in the system. But on the traffic page itself, it has two different numbers for non-promoted that are VERY different from each other... So which is correct? And which is being used in the algorithm?)

 

Of course, I'm also pretty shocked that there's less alarm about PL investment being linked to organic traffic, as well... That situation makes these inaccurate statistics much more problematic.

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…

Hey,

 

You have done some digging trying to figure out what is going on. Thank you for the detailed post with lots of screenshots for context.

 

I looked at the "Sponsored" labels in question. If you look at the element itself, it shows the attribute aria-hidden="true". This hides it from screen readers (for those who are visually impaired).

2022-07-10 17_11_12-DevTools - www.ebay.com_sch_i.html__from=R40&_trksid=p2323012.m570.l1313&_nkw=mo.png

And if you look at the style information for the element, it shows that the color is transparent and not white:

2022-07-10 17_12_59-DevTools - www.ebay.com_sch_i.html__from=R40&_trksid=p2323012.m570.l1313&_nkw=mo.png

What this tells me is that they want it to not be shown. It is a common practice when building modular applications to use the same template but show/hide things based upon some logic. By hiding it from screen readers and making the text transparent it is not meant to apply to the listing in question.

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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@hk-resale wrote:

Hey,

 

You have done some digging trying to figure out what is going on. Thank you for the detailed post with lots of screenshots for context.

 

I looked at the "Sponsored" labels in question. If you look at the element itself, it shows the attribute aria-hidden="true". This hides it from screen readers (for those who are visually impaired).

2022-07-10 17_11_12-DevTools - www.ebay.com_sch_i.html__from=R40&_trksid=p2323012.m570.l1313&_nkw=mo.png

And if you look at the style information for the element, it shows that the color is transparent and not white:

2022-07-10 17_12_59-DevTools - www.ebay.com_sch_i.html__from=R40&_trksid=p2323012.m570.l1313&_nkw=mo.png

What this tells me is that they want it to not be shown. It is a common practice when building modular applications to use the same template but show/hide things based upon some logic. By hiding it from screen readers and making the text transparent it is not meant to apply to the listing in question.


Yep. That could be the case.

 

But if this is the case, it still implies a problem in their system as the new question is:

 

"How are 250 results appearing in a search that shows a max of 200 items, with the transparent sponsored text applying to every single one of them?"

 

No actual visual sponsored text for a single one of the 250 results?

 

Related to what shipscript has mentioned, 50 sponsored results is far above what would would typically be shown. 

 

Either way we approach the issue, it doesn't add up and implies issues on Friday.

Message 29 of 65
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Re: eBay search/traffic/promotions seem to be having HUGE problems…


@hk-resale wrote:

Hey,

 

You have done some digging trying to figure out what is going on. Thank you for the detailed post with lots of screenshots for context.

 

I looked at the "Sponsored" labels in question. If you look at the element itself, it shows the attribute aria-hidden="true". This hides it from screen readers (for those who are visually impaired).

2022-07-10 17_11_12-DevTools - www.ebay.com_sch_i.html__from=R40&_trksid=p2323012.m570.l1313&_nkw=mo.png

And if you look at the style information for the element, it shows that the color is transparent and not white:

2022-07-10 17_12_59-DevTools - www.ebay.com_sch_i.html__from=R40&_trksid=p2323012.m570.l1313&_nkw=mo.png

What this tells me is that they want it to not be shown. It is a common practice when building modular applications to use the same template but show/hide things based upon some logic. By hiding it from screen readers and making the text transparent it is not meant to apply to the listing in question.


Also want to add, that it seems even on the visible sponsored text, it has aria-hidden = true;

 

And I noticed the "Items per page" on this category has been changed to now allow 60, 120, or 240 per page. I am not sure if this was the case yesterday (I didn't check) but on Friday it was still allowing 200.

 

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