Power Sellers Unite

mainetique · Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 51

Can someone explain how feebay is messing with the searches?......when i type in my store items they come up in the search just fine, i'm not running any "core" and haven't for a while.

i'm selling stuff, but nowhere near where i should be this time of year. so something is wrong somewhere......but what?

AlterEgo · Joined: 26 Sep 2006 Posts: 560

Hi Maintique,

Some (maybe even a lot) of this is historical. Part of the problems (complaints) people have had (especially in the last year) include:

Ebay allowed Stores to be on par in searching with Core for a few months. Then Ebay took this away (which messed up a lot of peoples business strategies/plans). A lot of people were doing good with stores especially since it was more cost effective (especially for harder to sell, items that take numerous weeks to find the right buyer). But when ebay made it so stores took lowest priority in search, often enough buyers could no longer find sellers store items. Or if you had a store item that there were a lot of similar Core Items, your store item would not show up unless there were less than 30 core items. Unless someone did a search for keywords that only came up with your store item (then and only then would your Store item show up like a Core item with a gallery picture), the Core items would be displayed first with Gallery Pictures where as the store item would just show up way at the bottom of the page with no gallery picture displayed (although there is a gallery picture, ebay will not show it, just the generic small camera icon). Most of the time when a buyer does not see a gallery picture they will not bother looking at your listing (i.e., if you have a gallery picture, you probably have about a 3x to 5x better chance someone would look at your listing, and not pass it by). There are a few exception categories that you don’t need a gallery picture to do well but Most you do.

There is a problem with Keyword Search Indexing, in which it has taken eBay a day or two before they have updated your listings keywords to the search database. During this time your item is virtually invisible (unless some one found your item by not doing a direct keyword search, like from looking at your Other Items for Sale, category type search, etc.).

There have been sometimes when they have combined some keywords together that have caused sellers loss of sales. I cannot think off the top of my head a perfect example but it goes something like this. Lets say ebay search that have combined the words Sheet and Sheets. So whether you search in ebay the keywords doll or dolls, ebay will return you all items that have doll AND all items that have dolls. This is good most of the time BUT lets say there is a Brand Name that is called ‘Porcelain Dolls’. If your potential buyers typed in ‘porcelain dolls’. The items returned to your potential buyer could be flooded with too many items returned (this could easily lead to a loss of a sale).

These are only some of the problem with Searching Tweaks that eBay have made that have seriously damages peoples eBay businesses (maybe others will give you more examples). Ebay often just makes these changes either instantaneously without notice or maybe give you at most a months notice. This often does not allow Sellers [time] to adjust quick enough and have even seriously damaged their Sell Through Rates. Tens of thousands of store sellers have left ebay. Springerling on her site have classified maybe 1/10 to 1/30 of some of these sellers (tip of the iceberg).

Springlering's Ebay Store Closing Page
http://www.springlering.citymax.com/page/page/3849929.htm

Hope this Helps,

Cheers,

AlterEgo

knappschiles · Joined: 25 May 2005 Posts: 4035 Location: Wi

One other thing -- about 2 months ago, an eBay exec admitted that not ALL of the servers are up and functional ALL the time.

So there are times when you may be on a server that is "down" and therefore your items are virtually invisable.

That is something that a lot of sellers think is unacceptable. For all the money that eBay is making off us, the LEAST they could do is have up-to-date equipment that works.

Carol

mainetique · Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 51

Thanks ego, that makes sense.....kinda figured that was the skinny.....i guees it helps that i carry mostly odd stuff and use as many well thought out keywords as possible.

Carol......no 'bout a doubt it....tens of thousands of dollars have come from mainetique.

I even got a bumper sticker once : )

grrrrrrrrrr

mainetique · Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 51

Plus there are less buyers on feebay now, cuz some are loyal to sellers and followed them elsewhere......others just won't use them anymore.

Another added incentive to stay on the mother ship....lol