eBay Search

[goingfishinguk]

Morning all, hope you are all well.  Like many others we come to these boards to find solutions to our problems and/or offer insights to eBay and other users - you know the way a forum should work. 

In the last 12 months or so we have been hit as sellers with a lot of obstacles.. service metrics not been looked after as promised = huge loss of sales, new advertising system dynamic = don't pay don't play.  July's tests, EDDs etc etc.

Some of us have managed to limp through those issues and still remain in business, just in my case.  Well lost one company.

The problem is the current issue, by reading the forums seems to be the 'SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY.'  Dozens of reports with evidence show huge numbers of listings not being found so potential buyers can't find our listings, if they can't find our listings then they can't buy our products, simple enough yes?  Remember we are paying good money for these listings to be visible BUT eBay are not giving us value for money.  We are NOT getting what we are paying for.

So my question is to anita@ebay    marco@ebay    or whoever has the power to honestly answer is the current search system here to stay or is it broken and being fixed?  

I personally retired from my 25 year career to do something I love due to mental health reasons and that is selling fishing tackle.  Until this time last year it was a breeze and I was looking forward to enjoying my formative years.  All I did was tweak a few listings now and again and leave my standard promoted listings at say 2% to 5%.  I sold loads, I had loads of suppliers and loads of loyal customers.  Obviously on top of this I was giving eBay many tens of 1000s of £££ in revenue.  It's all but gone.

All the above reasons since this time last year have put a huge strain on my family financially and a huge strain on my mental health.  Sales are down 80 to 90%  My account seems capped at the exact number of sales per day - 25.  I've heard rumours if you are vocal on these boards you get capped.  Is this true anita@ebay?  All I want to do is my job.  All I want to do is have as little stress as possible and interact here with some great characters, post my orders, buy my stock, list my new stuff (which I loved doing) and generally enjoy the eBay experience.  So all I want to know is will this ever be possible or am I wasting my time?  Remember as I've mentioned, I jumped through all the hoops, watched all the videos, hiked up % promotions etc etc, but if my account is crippled or the Search is forever against me those are things I can't change.  So instead of lying awake at night wondering how 'I' can change things I just want to know truthfully without the 'clear your cache, spin round three times, drink a pint of glitter' or whatever else if I'm wasting my time, money and efforts.

So please tell me and the countless others here who have proved beyond doubt the search facility is hiding in some cases in the high 90% of listings is the search working as eBay want it or is it broken and going to be fixed?  (Oh please can you remove the cap on my account, thanks.  I know it's there..)

Kindest regards.

[dwtrading2015]

My reverse engineering is of course speculative rather than actual definitive answers.  And the algorithim can be changed at any time.  From what I know about meta tags, these are included to help search engines identify the detail in the web page content and can be held on a quick look up database.  When Ooogle returns 1000 matches in 0.001s it did not search the entire web content.  It looked up it's own look up database first.  Ocassionally, you will see a bad link appear in the top five results because the website was taken down but the webcrawler list hasn't been updated.

Impossible to say how meta tags are indexed by any search engines, or how terms are weighted. Frequent visits to sites give them a higher weighting.  Some crooked traders used to run scripts that kept searching for and then visiting their own website to falsify visit numbers.

From what I can tell, the eBay title search is read left to right, whereas it used to be read in all directions with all permutations to construct 'context' and a stronger matrix to return a wider list of potential hits.  The products were very similar in the search, but the title fields were very different and even in the wrong catagories.  That has definately gone now, and the first word in the title seems to be used to set the search tree.  However, search for a 'cofe cup' rather than 'coffee cup' and the search can still assume what you meant.  But spelling adjustments are about the only thing I can recognise from a few years ago and if the search doesn't have context then the results become increasingly irrlevant.

The search is currently busted.  Someone needs to take hold of the issue in IT, roll back 3 years to when it worked and rebuild the index.

[goingfishinguk]

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@dwtrading2015 wrote:

The search is currently busted.  Someone needs to take hold of the issue in IT, roll back 3 years to when it worked and rebuild the index.

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Thank you, and yes it is completely busted.  However is it busted on purpose?  Is it actually now working as eBay want it to for whatever reason.  I just wish they would come out and tell us the truth.

[sheba-knows-best]

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@goingfishinguk wrote:

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@performance_suspension_uk wrote:

One thing that doesn't account for is sellers who's monthly fee's are a lot with eBay, I'd say on an average "pre-searching issue" month we'd be invoiced for selling fee's & shop subscription around £6-8k a month, during the first lockdown we were crazy busy so we could've been paying £10k a month for a few months, our avage sale is probably around £100 so although they'd get more fee's as a one off selling higher value items, over the course of a month they'd get more from cheaper items selling a lot

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Agreed, before all this trouble over the last 12 months I was giving eBay on average £90k a year. 

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What!? You used to have ebay fees of £90,000 a year??? For a one man band selling low priced items? And you sell elsewhere? Did you sleep?  Am I allowed to ask what your fees are 12-mths rolling YTD? I agree I don't see how such a huge business can crash in one year.

[mrq-private]

"I don't see how such a huge business can crash in one year."

Hardly that...  the EU don't even consider your busness to be small until its turnover exceeds two million Euro and the last time I checked the UK government was in sync with this.   - A turnover of circa £4K-£5k a week on average is not unreasonable for a small full time business.     

As for crashing... businesses frequently tumble in much shorter timescales than that!  Particularly if their eggs are in the wrong basket!

[sheba-knows-best]

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@mrq-private wrote:

"I don't see how such a huge business can crash in one year."

Hardly that...  the EU don't even consider your busness to be small until its turnover exceeds two million Euro and the last time I checked the UK government was in sync with this.   - A turnover of circa £4K-£5k a week on average is not unreasonable for a small full time business.     

As for crashing... businesses frequently tumble in much shorter timescales than that!  Particularly if their eggs are in the wrong basket!

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😁Sorry - I agree I was unclear - I will remind myself to finish my morning coffee after a late night before commenting on these boards. 

I was actually surprised that a business selling fishing tackle - from what I understand selling on various platforms - able to pay 90k in fees to ebay - so presumably with a turnover of at least 450k on ebay alone could be run by one man and suffer such a catastrophic loss in one year without him shifting entirely from ebay, or taking other drastic action.  

But I see now that when gofishing said he gave ebay 90k he meant he had sales of 90k. I will wander off again....

[mrq-private]

"My reverse engineering is of course speculative rather than actual definitive answers..."

It won't be far off the mark though.  The question that springs to my mind is why they went down that route? And I'm caused to speculate that this has more to do with working to rote (monkey see monkey do) than to any relevant purpose...  So-called 'search engines' such as Google have had their purpose and function pretty perverted; they're consequently really not that good at actually finding things. 

They are therefore a bad model to base the likes of eBay search upon!  - Unless of course their actual intentions are something other than they claim them to be!

I recall when in the early-mid 70s the Glasgow Libraries introduced computers... I was a child at the time and utterly fascinated.  Our 'search engine' was the stern, rotund lady who ran the Barmulloch Library.  Specially trained (and very skilled) she would receive your 'search string', parse it and use her intelligence and skill to interrogate the database...   

Boiled down to its essence  it's a 'simple' job. Bearing in mind that we're now the sharp end of fifty years (would half-a-century be more dramatic a statement?) since the days of the lady in the public library one does have to wonder why eBay's (and others) systems fail to do to that one simple thing in this day and age!

[mrq-private]

"However is it busted on purpose? Is it actually now working as eBay want it to for whatever reason"

The evidence - by dint of its consistency and repeatability - tends to suggest yes; this is quite deliberate and therefore flagrant.  - Consider the corporate bluster too in all this; the focus is now on how this particular boat floats on the money markets...  as I've said before  Managed Monetised Decline.   

I just wish they would come out and tell us the truth.

It's in the nature of shell games that the 'mark' is persuaded they are involved in a legitimate game of skill in which they stand a chance.  - Soapy Smith is alive and well it seems!

[the-nutwood-collection]

Back in the day, research databases charged for every result returned.  Interrogators had to be thoroughly trained, and had to have an inate ability to understand which were the keywords.  Failure to do this led to a huge bill at the end of the month.  Your Barmulloch lady must have saved Glasgow ratepayers a fortune - and I bet her skills weren't appreciated.

Interesting article in the press yesterday - the market for luxury goods is softening and analysts believe that it's set for a downturn.  Maybe eBay will find that they're barking up the wrong tree.

[bravergrace]

The speculation about lowest-price searches sometimes hiding items under a certain amount, is interesting.  

If it is being done on purpose, it could be to:

- raise the average sale price in certain categories, even at the expense of total sales (perhaps just to be able to advertise "average eBay price achieved for item X in September was £26").

- discourage the separate sale of matching items, parts and accessories - eBay would rather have one sale for "double duvet + sheets + pillows + curtains + double duvet cover + pillow slips", rather than 6 separate sales - and so would most sellers.  This makes sense for large sellers with large amounts of stock, but not for small sellers who have a limited supply of stock, and if they've only got 2 pairs of curtains left, will need to decide whether to bundle them with the single bedding or the king size bedding, or buy huge amounts of curtains in every conceivable size.

- drive sellers of cheap items away from the site.

- drive buyers of cheap items away from the site.

It's not a bad strategy, if it results in more affluent buyers and higher-value sales for most sellers.  Most sellers would like to raise their average sale price.

But it obviously has risks, which I'm sure eBay have looked at.  

Even affluent buyers may be angry that they can buy a wedding dress but not choose a garter, or buy a morning suit but not be allowed to choose their own socks or pocket handkerchief to go with it.  They want to to to one place and buy the complete outfit, without being told "These are the only accessories available with this garment.  eBay discourages the sale of accessories under £40 nowadays, so it's Hobson's choice, and you'll find yourself wearing exactly the same cufflinks as everyone else".  It's the worst kind of off-the-peg experience, and they won't find it enjoyable.  They'll regard eBay as too downmarket and "not for people like me".

Some buyers will see they can't buy wooden spoons or tea-towels under £40, and won't bother to look for saucepans or cookers, because they now see eBay as too upmarket and "not for people like me".

Of course, some sellers - like haberdashers or stationers - may be driven off the site, because if eBay hides all items under £30, they'll be unable to function.  One buyer might spend £30 on 3 different colour button threads, a 7-inch blue skirt zip, a pair of left-handed embroidery scissors, a small thimble and 2.5 metres of ribbon - but the seller can't reasonably bundle this sort of stuff up into "packages" in advance.

I hope eBay won't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

[traviata29]

This may only provide a little residual help and again from a buyers POV, just my take. With decades of technical experience in all the relevant matters I can say that the results clearly speak for themselves sadly. They also clarify policies regardless of any 'Statements'. I have been closely involved with many one man or small businesses that started very successfully on ebay and until the last few years kept a presence even after we 'launched' them in their own right. Without exception they now plough all their money time and effort into other solutions. Ebay could reverse the trend but keep choosing not to. It reminds me (a bit) of a local pub.. you know the story... it's just not the approach of this era, short sighted as it may be, the main thing is to get the 'right' financial result at the right time. If ebay U turned I would happily persuade businesses back.

As a buyer of many random things through several accounts.

- All my searches became useless several years ago. Occasionally I work the system to find something (stupid categories, no cat., stupid filters, trawling etc.) ... maybe. I don't have the time and often never get the result I want so don't buy and often just no longer use ebay at all.

- The ridiculous policy towards non UK flooding of searches (regardless of the UK option) is a massive issue. You know the score 'UK STOCK', it isn't. 'UK SELLER', they aren't. The fact that ebay could easily address this and don't clarifies more policy. (Piles of stock nonsense answers to this issue of course.)

- On various accounts over the years I have wasted the time complaining about several technical matters from fundamental functional bugs to aesthetic preferences. Never any sensible response, never any change. Numerous friends, colleagues etc. have the same complaints, but of course don't bother, they just no longer use.

I've know I've avoided many technicalities here but they're irrelevant. I can search for an item that I know exists and not find it without significant effort. So it's clear where that leaves a new product or interest area. As the platform spirals into narrower use there are less products to find (assuming a perfect search) so less reason to visit.

I have seen independent businesses pointlessly extend their growth curve by over 40 percent due to the ignorant positions of staff or board members. They're still clueless years later as to what, why etc. Having some measure of success they're brilliant of course but everyone around them just leaves and sometimes the inevitable occurs.

It all affects real people and real incomes. I've been involved in many such frustrating business cycles and had to make some really hard decisions to push forward onto new paths.

I hope that ebay have a rethink and that you can find a positive solution here.

[goingfishinguk]

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@sheba-knows-best wrote:

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What!? You used to have ebay fees of £90,000 a year??? For a one man band selling low priced items? And you sell elsewhere? Did you sleep?  Am I allowed to ask what your fees are 12-mths rolling YTD? I agree I don't see how such a huge business can crash in one year.

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Some of my items then were maybe £300 or so, not many but I sold a fair few £50 to £60 as well.  From this time last year to Christmas I lost in excess of £30k in sales on eBay because they promised to protect us against the INR cases and erm, forgot.  That was the start of the decline.  I was ordering about £2k of stock a week and selling on average £900 a day.  Came to Christmas week it was down to £30 a day.. hence the pattern I'm seeing now I know all to well, but cant find an answer this time from eBay as they keep lying to me.

Then as you know as I believe you found the 'solution' the dynamic adverts rolled out, that lost me another £10k easy and then the July 'test' which finished my initial business off.  The new account picked up but without the sales I could not restock and here we are.  I would guess and it is just a guess at the moment my eBay fees for the last six month would be in the £1000 mark and falling.

[mrq-private]

"Your Barmulloch lady must have saved Glasgow ratepayers a fortune - and I bet her skills weren't appreciated."

I believe the city owned the system... with the mainframe installed at the Mitchell Library  just beyond the City Centre.  And yes, absolutely - the people who operated those early public-facing systems were highly skilled.  Of course; what better or more adept a group to train first than Librarians? ...What's quite amusing/interesting about all this is that even those from that group who were quite mature, seemed to take to the new system like ducks to water.  

Back in the 60s and 70s Glasgow was a surprisingly technologically advanced place; what with its own Educational Television Service, computerised libraries and rent collection and all!   - Of course all that educational stuff was kicked into touch when they realised the Scheemies were actually learning things! 😁

"Interesting article in the press yesterday - the market for luxury goods is softening and analysts believe that it's set for a downturn. Maybe eBay will find that they're barking up the wrong tree."

Younger people seem to be catching on to the fact that a lot of 'luxury' stuff isn't what it used to be... and being on a 'hamster wheel' where all you're doing is feeding the fatcats, isn't a great place to be.  - High quality vintage seems to be where it's at.  - My Daughter happend to be a graduate in Costume Design (film/theatre).  We just had quite an interesting chat about how eBay is frustrating her seach for vintage jewellery items

"I hope eBay won't throw out the baby with the bathwater."

I suspect the baby is long gone...   The speculation is now clearly evidenced; as is the fact they now seem to be interfering with the workarounds.  ...It's the equivalent of 'gentrifying' a flea market; complete demise is inevitable. But that's not the concern or the problem of the Profiteers and Spivs behind the move.   

eBay want's to be a retail Google...  Much as YouTube wants to be Netflix.  ...Just as is happening in places like Glasgow's Barras, they're making life as difficult and pointless as possible for the grass-roots traders who built the place and gave it its character in the first  place.   - The 'land' is the asset they're after! And among the first steps is driving off the Proles!

[goingfishinguk]

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@bravergrace wrote:

- drive sellers of cheap items away from the site.

- drive buyers of cheap items away from the site.

It's not a bad strategy, if it results in more affluent buyers and higher-value sales for most sellers.  Most sellers would like to raise their average sale price.

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But what about all the cheap Chinese Tat sellers your honour?

[bravergrace]

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@goingfishinguk wrote:

But what about all the cheap Chinese Tat sellers your honour?

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I would speculate that this is beyond the control of eBay UK.  I think it is probably part of some general rules imposed centrally covering interaction between the various international sites.

I very much doubt that eBay UK benefits much from the cheap Chinese products - but whatever branch of eBay is concerned with the Far East, probably does.

After all, if £1.99 with free postage is the average price for a Chinese seller, eBay aren't going to be aiming to raise that to £40.  Doubling it would be a good start.  Losing all the Chinese manufacturers won't be a serious option.

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

Ebay say  there is no problem and search works as designed.

Well the current design has me 38% down on sales from last month.

[tackshackuk]

Ebay say  there is no problem and search works as designed.

How can the search work if you just alter from best match to lowest price to highest price and get different results, the number of listings should be the same!  This has nothing to do with key words or £40 listings.

[goingfishinguk]

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@tackshackuk wrote:

Ebay say  there is no problem and search works as designed.

How can the search work if you just alter from best match to lowest price to highest price and get different results, the number of listings should be the same!  This has nothing to do with key words or £40 listings.

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In short it does not, it's been proved to be hiding at least 95% of listings on the most common search parameters.  Some in depth experiments done here by @mrq-private  have shown how the search function is another way to put it 4% to 5% efficient...

[dwtrading2015]

"I just wish they would come out and tell us the truth."

Oh, my, lol... just recovering from a hysterical fit of laughter at that idea.  eBay, telling the truth.  Don't, please, don't start me off again.

Many have now noticed sales being capped by a formula based on sales (£), volume and moving average.  This came about post lockdown.  Displacement behaviour started a few months before lockdown, sales rocketed and then were mental for 6 months or so.  As lockdowns ended and the world conceeded to live with the virus (bar China), the online market slowly reverted back to pre-lockdown.  Except now there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of new sellers who had been making enough to do the basic shop subscription.

In order to keep all those subscriptions, eBay started to fiddle listings to try and spread sales amongst those operating as low volume shops.  If the shop wasn't making enough to cover the fee and return a bit of profit, then the shop would drop the fee and revert back to a private account.

I noticed this and was posting this back in 2021.  It was blatent and obvious, listng impressions droping over a few days from a steady 160000 to 120000 september, then the forced managed payment 20% sales drop Novemeber reported by loads of shops, then the January drop to 80000 impressions.  The numbers may have been slightly different (old age memory) but there was a clear definite and deliberate cull of my impressions.  No activity was happening and the cut was always from one steady level to another.  Each time, the probability of listing high enough to get the sale reduces, meaning sales would be spread out amongst different sellers with more equal probabilities, nothing to do with market forces.

eBay still seem to be trying to maintain this system.  But markets can not be managed.  Any attempt to manage a market will eventually collapse because you can't force buys.  It also means that no matter what the seller does in marketing and promotion, they can not compete as sales are being managed.

The policy failed with me.  I ended the shop subscription in May and allow a trickle of sales on a vastly reduced inventory until the stock is gone.  I seem to have all the same facilities I had when paying the subscription.  I can not think of one single advantage of a shop subscription.  I terminated it and carried on exactly the same but with 16 listings instead of 65.

Multiply the managed market with a knackered search and raise to the power very high fees and ebay practically facilitating online shoplifting, and you have a business in terminal decline.

[goingfishinguk]

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@dwtrading2015 wrote:

Multiply the managed market with a knackered search and raise to the power very high fees and ebay practically facilitating online shoplifting, and you have a business in terminal decline.

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That is my point however, if they came out and told us that these things were happening I'd be fine with it.  It's the fact they deny them and keep telling us to use the same 10 year old rules to play the new game that annoys me.

[mrq-private]

"That is my point however, if they came out and told us that these things were happening I'd be fine with it. It's the fact they deny them and keep telling us to use the same 10 year old rules to play the new game that annoys me."

As I said; it's a shell game...    The company's entire purpose and objective now is to produce metrics which can be spouted a C-suite level towards the markets.  The share price is all that matters and ultimately that it might be bought over.   - The 'value' in eBay is in the virtual real estate it occupies; and both the nature and direction its being taken in is that they want to be a retail search engine.  

They no longer want to be an online auction site nor provide entrey-level e-commerce facilities.  - They want to be 'Google for shopping'.    ...But they dare not admit that publicly.   - By 'driving off' the unwanted buyers and sellers they create the 'legend' (a term actually used in those circles) that the 'pivot' is necessary due to a naturally-declining marketplace. 

In the meantime... the rules of Managed Monetised Decline do mean 'milking' those that cling-on as the controls are set for the heart of the sun.   ...This further feeds vacuous and disingenuous rhetoric about the changes being 'popular' and 'progressive' which further nourishes the legend.

Parallels are to be found on many other 'founder' platforms; the 'blue chip' world isn't about creating and maintaining services or meeting needs or trading fairly... it's about extracting resource.