Impressions broken again??

[swiss_expert_uk]

Can you please check if there is another problem with impressions? Another counting glitch? These stats can not be correct. Organic impressions promoted views down to under 3000 views today at time of writing. This time last week almost 73000 views. Please help.  dave@ebay kat@ebay 

[wearenowclosedthankyou]

Definitely not a worry about your designs they are beautiful and should be flying out.

[goingfishing]

My orangics are down from 176,000 now to 37,000 since the 4th July and falling.  Sales are likewise.  Had my worst day on eBay since I can remember yesterday and I've had some stinkers due to other eBay issues.

Hopefully this can be fixed ASAP.

[swiss_expert_uk]

dave@ebay  figures creeping upwards today on my ad dashboard, too soon to say if it's fixed but I read a post from an eBay rep on the eBay.com tech board that a fix has been applied and figures will be 'accurate' from the 13th July! (?!?)

It remains to be seen if sales return to normal levels, today's weekly payout is down £1000 from last week's average so this is impact this issue has had for me. 

[darth_baggins]

I don't know if it's related but when searching on Google, eBay shopping results are getting flagged by my antivirus as unsafe with in invalid security certificate

[goingfishing]

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@swiss_expert_uk wrote:

It remains to be seen if sales return to normal levels, today's weekly payout is down £1000 from last week's average so this is impact this issue has had for me. 

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Shocking ain't it.  On a Monday in July I normal get between £700 and £900 in my bank on the Tuesday morning, today was £84.  These are people's livelihoods they are messing with here.

Still worried this is linked to the new 'promoted display' advertising as I have no option to use it at the moment.  I already have three types of advertising in standard, advanced, off site so why is another needed?

[dave@ebay]

Hi @swiss_expert_uk 

Ive reached out to the Ads team to confirm this, tech have been reviewing the accounts Ive sent but it doesn't look to be a bug because the dips didn't all happen at once. If there was a technical issue everything would have happened pretty much the same time. 

I'll continue to investigate what happened and once I have an update from the Ads team I'll post back here. 

Thanks,

Dave

[swiss_expert_uk]

Hmm okay but I'll draw your attention to this thread on the .com board https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/What-s-Wrong-with-Organic-Impressions-amp...

and this post from an eBay rep, I have been affected by this issue.

I can not speak for any other sellers. Thanks. 

[swiss_expert_uk]

I'll add that since this was posted on the .com board last night my organic promoted views have started to return to normal levels and my sales have returned to what I would describe as normal. Make of that what you will. 

[fatbobfan]

My organic impression appear to be going in the right direction 

[dave@ebay]

Hi @swiss_expert_uk 

I saw that thread on .com as well so reached out to the Ads team to get more information. There could possibly have been a change made on that side that caused a discrepancy in the report.

At the moment I'm just waiting on the guys to come back to me, I'll post back as soon as I have an update.

Thanks,

Dave

[vintagewatchpart]

Same has happened to me.

If it were just a reporting innacuracy as stated on the US boards, then why did all of our sales decrease too...

[goingfishing]

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@vintagewatchpart wrote:

Same has happened to me.

If it were just a reporting innacuracy as stated on the US boards, then why did all of our sales decrease too...

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Nail hit on the head.  It's not a reporting inaccuracy.  That makes no sense.  It's another bug that has restricted 'our' listings and hence our sales.  I would hasten to add the reporting is VERY ACCURATE and working as it should.

Having to deal with eBay's bugs and finding our own workarounds on the forums is bad enough but been told 'material inaccuracies' (fibs) is just rubbing salt into the wounds.  Again these are people's livelihoods being messed about with here.  This is mega serious.  Folk's incomes are at sake here.

[wakeson]

This is quite serious for sellers, the promoted listings are getting silly, this percentages in the standard promotion are insane now, Almoast 20% !! i have jsut checked my sales and out of a total of £700.00 (which has dropped due to this) in sales ove the last 2 days the total i am left with after fees etc is £170.83, that is unexceptable....how is this justified !!

[swiss_expert_uk]

The results from yesterday, organic promoted impressions much better but still a few thousand less the the normal average of around 30,000. Overall promoted and organic impressions were still at the lowest level for the last 31 days. That said sales were good, around normal levels.

Accurate reporting has been promised by the 13th (I assume after the Thursday night/Friday morning weekly site update) So better but not quite there yet. 

[swiss_expert_uk]

Figures look on the low side again. No sales for 12 hours, feast or famine again. Loosing my patience now, not even the bare minimum of consistency being provided. 

[swiss_expert_uk]

One sale all day! *bleep*!

[ojewellery]

I completely agree something looks really odd with the numbers and it appears to have happened to quite a few people, myself included.  My sales aren't dead, just down turned and considering I have lots of lovely new stock, which I'm happy is right priced and of interest to the market as its gaining traction elsewhere, I'm surprised its had almost none on eBay.

However, to play devils advocate and because this is about all of us finding our way out of the swamp, have you gone right back to basics?  This is what I'm endevouring to do.

I find when I get really frustrated with eBay (insert name of any platform here) stepping away and using the energy constructively elsewhere helps me to find new focus.  Not easy when it feels like your living is on the line but we can only control what is within our power and eBay most certainly isn't.  It feels a little like they're saying this isn't them so maybe we need to examine ourselves just to make sure we can't find our own way forwards.

Do you have a stack of unlisted stuff to try to provoke eBay algorithm to generate more traffic across your whole store, have you a usual routine of ending and relisting/ selling similar that's fallen by the wayside due to this frustration, have you revisited titles and key words recently, have you looked at promotions like multibuys - I believe we're meant to end and restart them periodically to use them to best effect, have you tweaked postage to include extra countries.  It may all be to no avail but I'm sure we all find on occasion that giving things a bit of a shake up provokes the system/ algorithm to look at us with fresh more favourable eyes and things kick start again.

[goingfishing]

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@ojewellery wrote:

Do you have a stack of unlisted stuff to try to provoke eBay algorithm to generate more traffic across your whole store, have you a usual routine of ending and relisting/ selling similar that's fallen by the wayside due to this frustration, have you revisited titles and key words recently, have you looked at promotions like multibuys - I believe we're meant to end and restart them periodically to use them to best effect, have you tweaked postage to include extra countries.  It may all be to no avail but I'm sure we all find on occasion that giving things a bit of a shake up provokes the system/ algorithm to look at us with fresh more favourable eyes and things kick start again.

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To be fair, and I love your ideas but for me there seems to be no official evidence this works.  I'm not even sure eBay knows how the algorithm works let alone tell us how it works so we can use it to our advantage.

My example has always been in the last two or three years my sales have been great.  I did not have to tweak listings, I did not have to alter photos, I did not have to mess with promotions.  All I did was alter the stock levels when something got low and hit relist.

Promotions were set at 2% and go... sales after sales after sales.  The ONLY time sales have suffered is when eBay change something (usually without telling us) and we have to play whack a mole on these boards to try and find the solution.  Last Autumn is was the 'not protected for INR cases when they promised we would be' so we all ended up on the metrics naughty step.'  Then in March it was the roll out of dynamic advertising.  If you did not pay you did not play.  So what is it now?  Please tell me so I can get on board.  Is it the new 'promoted display' advertising which I can't even get?  More than likely so currently and since the 4th July my impressions are down and more worryingly my sales are down nearly 85% that this time last year and to reiterate this is not something I have or have not done, this is something eBay has done.

I just can't fathom how the higher ups can't see their income sliding.  They will be doing all of this for a reason and it will be for more profitability but I can't for the life of me see what it is and how eBay think it's going to work in the long run.  Every time a 'glitch' like this is reported we get the it's being worked on routine but we never get the full truth and this time I'm not sure I'm/we are going to get through it.  Apparently today is the magic fix day.  Fingers crossed again.  Selling on eBay should be fun and exciting not stressful and worrying to know how you can pay next months bills.  😓  Some none corporate BS reply from eBay with the truth would be awesome...

[ojewellery]

EBay have publicly spoken about ending and selling similar for items with no sales after 90 days, that ending items with no traction and relisting/ selling similar gives them a boost.  Does that count as evidence?  I do agree its a bit of a nobody knows the knocks ons and full inner workings of the algorithm.  I'm very envious you've been able to just list and leave your listings and had good sales.

Here's my chart.  If you look at today early afternoon not even the full day - when I've done a bit of ending and relisting (that I haven't done for a few weeks) and listed some new items (that I have been doing already over the last few weeks) its got a nice upturn, highest its been in July.  May be coincidence, maybe the magic fix thats been muted has happened, but I feel I've done some thing constructive.

[the_book_seekers]

The thing about ending/sell similar that I've taken note of is customer services advise against it. If ebay prefer us to relist it would suggest to me that sell similar messes with their algorithm in some small way. Any boost that ebay doesn't charge for I'll take.