eBay

zamo-zuan · ‎07-08-2022

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:

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:

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…

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:

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:

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:

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!

joseh1445 · ‎07-08-2022

You got me thinking. Thanks for sharing your research.

crazystuff4sale · ‎07-08-2022

I just did a few searches and see the same thing on several: every single result is sponsored but hidden in white text. Very strange.

zamo-zuan · ‎07-08-2022

@crazystuff4sale wrote:
I just did a few searches and see the same thing on several: every single result is sponsored but hidden in white text. Very strange.

Out of curiosity, were there any listings that said "Sponsored" before you did the search for the sponsored text?

I had full pages with 0 sponsored. Most of my friends had a few sponsored appear, but not many. Also just heard of just two appearing normally but they appeared at the bottom rather than the top?

crazystuff4sale · ‎07-08-2022

None were showing as sponsored until I did the control F search for text.

my-cottage-books-and-antiques · ‎07-08-2022

@zamo-zuan

Too tired tonight to try to review all the issues you bring up here, and I'm no techie, but is it possible that the text "sponsored" shows up in "Find" because it is basically present in all search results, but doesn't actually show as black/gray text unless turned "on" (that is, the listing actually IS sponsored)

In other words, all listings will show the word "sponsored" if you do a Find search, but only actual promoted listings will show the word "sponsored" in regular visible text.

(Hope that makes sense, been a long day, and I'm pretty well beat....)

partfinds · ‎07-08-2022

The legent for graphs shows that dark blue is extenal and light blue is organic

the-hook-and-the-loop · ‎07-08-2022

Everyone promotes their listings, almost everyone. The listings that are promoted do not get promoted 24 hours a day in all locations. When you promote a listing at 2%, it may show up at the top/bottom/side/or on another's listing page at the bottom or side for 2 minutes in certain regions. If you promote at 5%, maybe 5 minute placements every three hours in other regions. This is just an experienced guess from watching my own results. You need to remember the difference between promoting at 1% and say 40%. All promoted listings are not equal.

I don't watch cartoons or ebay graphs. I do watch my "AD FEE STANDARD" charges and how they have been applied to almost every sale.

partfinds · ‎07-08-2022

I don’t have desktop at hand now. But I saw at some time one of my listings not sponsored in ebay search while it was sponsored/promoted.

what was always making me wonder was that when I look at „active listings traffic report” (not downloaded, displayed below graphs) and I jump to couple of last pages listings are missing data. Those are promoted items so there should be some change and record but there is none - there are dashes in colums change in top 20 and change in non serach. I don’t know why.

wastingtime101 · ‎07-08-2022

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.

GLORIOUS!

siamjane8 · ‎07-09-2022

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.

zamo-zuan · ‎07-09-2022

@partfinds wrote:
The legent for graphs shows that dark blue is extenal and light blue is organic

Yup. And it's the organic one that is sized incorrectly!

zamo-zuan · ‎07-09-2022

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
@zamo-zuan
Too tired tonight to try to review all the issues you bring up here, and I'm no techie, but is it possible that the text "sponsored" shows up in "Find" because it is basically present in all search results, but doesn't actually show as black/gray text unless turned "on" (that is, the listing actually IS sponsored)

In other words, all listings will show the word "sponsored" if you do a Find search, but only actual promoted listings will show the word "sponsored" in regular visible text.

(Hope that makes sense, been a long day, and I'm pretty well beat....)

That makes sense, which is why I looked in to the other things mentioned. 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.

For the record, one way (at least on our category) that you could test if an item is sponsored is after viewing the page, check the "recently reviewed" results. If it's not sponsored, it won't show up there.

This is in addition to the top sponsored/organic sellers in our category weren't showing up on top at all. Which in itself is strange.

With that said, results are showing up "normal" today (top 4 are now sponsored), results seem to be what is expected. The expected sellers, prices, etc. And not matching a ton of results (88 rather than 250).

zamo-zuan · ‎07-09-2022

@the-hook-and-the-loop wrote:
Everyone promotes their listings, almost everyone. The listings that are promoted do not get promoted 24 hours a day in all locations. When you promote a listing at 2%, it may show up at the top/bottom/side/or on another's listing page at the bottom or side for 2 minutes in certain regions. If you promote at 5%, maybe 5 minute placements every three hours in other regions. This is just an experienced guess from watching my own results. You need to remember the difference between promoting at 1% and say 40%. All promoted listings are not equal.
I don't watch cartoons or ebay graphs. I do watch my "AD FEE STANDARD" charges and how they have been applied to almost every sale.

Neither do organic (review the organic results from the Ad page above).

Ours are higher than 2% and we monitor these weekly in our category. We know the biggest investors. As an example, ourselves, protier, and autobuffy are the highest investors in Motor Mounts category, hence typically at least one of us showing in the top ads at all times.

And as mentioned above, there's an easy way to check which are and aren't sponsored.

zamo-zuan · ‎07-09-2022

@partfinds wrote:
I don’t have desktop at hand now. But I saw at some time one of my listings not sponsored in ebay search while it was sponsored/promoted.

what was always making me wonder was that when I look at „active listings traffic report” (not downloaded, displayed below graphs) and I jump to couple of last pages listings are missing data. Those are promoted items so there should be some change and record but there is none - there are dashes in colums change in top 20 and change in non serach. I don’t know why.

This might be normal. Your items don't show up as promoted every single time. But if you record the data you typically see, you could begin to figure out who you are and aren't investing more than in your category. And of course, it's good to tweak prices/rates to see what works best for you.

That said, part of the odd results yesterday was that none of the top investors were appearing, and top ranked organic sellers weren't either. In addition to it claiming no items were promoted (with the hidden promo text on all) and the traffic page weirdness. A lot of unusual things going on at once!