This Is a Disaster: eBay Just Made HUGE Changes To Search
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ธ.ค. 2023
- eBay just changed how the search algorithm works and is now showing buyers irrelevant results, making it harder for buyers to find what they need and for sellers to reach their buyers. Why did they do this and who is going to benefit?
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I have been complaining about this for quite some time now. The responses I get are: you aren't selling good items, you need to source better, use better keywords etc. What has happened is: they are rolling it out little by little to the sellers. Apparently, I was one of the first. The search has been super messed up since March/April. There are just some sellers who haven't had it hit yet. Not that I want sellers to go through what I have been going through, however don't be so quick to judge when seasoned sellers are telling you there is something wrong!
I was doing great until two weeks. Watched my 90 day slide down 2k in that time...Wondering if they finally pushed it out on me.
I've noticed it bigtime as a buyer. Also far better matches populating under Shopping Cart purchases AFTER the sale. In short: several hundred if not thousands of irrelevant hits shown with many relevant ones omitted. WTF?
Ebay seems to continually make every function worse and worse with every change they make to it. 🙄
What is bad in search is when you are searching for something totally unrelated items come up. It's one of the reasons also that you can no longer trust ebay to get the sell through rate. I tend to work more on ebay in the late late evening, search is really messed up then. There isn't anything we can do except move our items to a different platform. Is it really that ebay doesn't have more than two of your postcards? Or, are they hiding the other options due, to not being promoted?
Won't fix the problem. The appeal of a Mercari is they do not dog you or require all the item specifics and 24 photos. The shipping is a no brainer. But they too run AI search schemes.
I entered Ted baker black shirt and not one was a shirt nor were they black. It was a bunch of dresses. Why are they destroying their business.
This has been driving me crazy when attempting to comp things as well!! I am trying to get a comp for an exact item, not 100 other things eBay thinks are similar.
Thank you for bringing this up! I started getting so frustrated when I was checking comps the other day. It seemed like such a drastic change.
This has been terribly bad especially the last couple weeks. I sell a lot of lego and look up by the set number and get so many other sets that are not of that set.
Ive noticed this as well. Getting accurate comps in the field is a nightmare now. Can never trust the first check and have to be very detailed in descriptions
Ebay feels like it's becoming irrelevant for me. I've been selling full time for 8 years on Ebay and it's never been this slow and erratic. In the freakin 4th quarter especially! I'm actively working to develop some of my own products for Amazon. Ebay feels like a dinosaur in comparison to Amazon and I believe their user base shrank by 12% over the last 2 or 3 years. The company is not being managed well for growth.
As a shopper I feel the exact opposite with Amazon. They have become way too much distraction when I try to shop there. My account there is a business one and it is near IMPOSSIBLE for them to provide even remotely consumer returns for me. If I search fo shampoo I get returns selling BULK gallon or higher sized products. No amount of focusing the search query matter for beans...their default is I am business and buying for a company so...WHY would they show me a $2 bottle of soap?
I used to have a personal account and the same issues there. I would search for bubble wrap and get returns of 75ft Rolls for $14.99. Not 300ft for 19.99 Or if I searched for 8x8x3 boxes they would show me everything but what I wanted. So I switched as that is what am shopping for on AMZ> business related merch.
So distill what is happening here and ask yourself....who is seeing my listings? If you are selling lots of 12 unit shampoo vs a dude selling singles, odds are high the 1 bottle shopper is ever going to see your listing again. Same goes for if the buyer never buys from sellers 200 miles away and you are 220. Or buys from sellers without free shipping. No matter how great your shampoo is over the rest.
Everyone keeps saying list, list, list. But do most people work for $0?? It's just crazy for 4th quarter.
It is frustrating for sellers & buyers. I was searching for certain fabric and it brought up thousands, even though I was specific. Our sales are down 27 to 30 percent in the last month!! It is getting very discouraging. Another friend of ours that sells is about ready to quit because of the change. Last year was so much better for sellers. Thank you for the great video.
There was a lot more money floating around last year. My mom owns a brick and mortar store and sales are down by about half from this time last year. It's everywhere. People don't have the money to spend.
Unless you get the lady who spends all her money on fabric, consider a mere 30pct drop less than it could have been. This is why when one shops in a Thrift the items which move, no matter the sku, are snapped up in seconds once they hit the floor. There is a very good reason nobody is in the linen section. Great stuff but the crowd ain't buying many face towels normally. XBox games? different story.
Also, I advertised 25 of my listings on social media. I watched the listings and there were No new views at all. Something is not working right. No sales in 4 days and counting.
You are SOOOO right. I have complained repeatedly. Their response: Inviting me to join an advisory group wasting more of my time. I search 1955 to 1957 Ford parts. I get more search results for Chevrolet parts than for Ford parts and I own a Ford, I don't own a Chevy!!! They're wasting my time. My response is to search other platforms not eBay.
Like every other big company, they are probably switching over to full AI (and AI written/tweaked algorithms) interaction via search results and now there are growing pains as the AI learns to what to do. And yes, you are right, it's always about money. What a perfect storm, can't find good help, no one wants to work and now AI is a cheap solution quickly filling those open positions.
BINGO. The current problem is that nice little man who will look at our blue dish from Holland is now being diverted away to the movie section where he has bought more DVDs than dishes. If I am ebay why wouldn't I divert him to where he likes to deposit his money? This is why so many are scratching their heads.
Henry Ford in the 30" opened a new more automated plant cutting work force down .. bragging to union leaders.. did know what to say when he was asked how many of the robots where going to buy cars.. Same crap-- different day.. People willing to work just not at price tht I guess will not feed you, house you, pay for health care??
I've typed in my actual listing title word for word and it has brought up some crap from some wholesale market that has nothing to do with what I'm looking for. Pitiful. My listing doesn't even show up. Anywhere.
I have 7600 listings and made 3 sales yesterday. I called them and they lied about anything being wrong
The real reason they did this is because of promoted listings. When you sign up for promoted listings eBay agrees to promote your listing but they do not agree to promote your listings to actual potential buyers!!! Promoted standard is more than just being closer to top of a legitimate search. It includes this cross marketing of similar items. It can work for things that are general, like Christmas decorations. A customer might be tempted by an item totally different from their actual search because it’s the same theme. This absolutely doesn’t work for searches that are very specific like searches for clothes or shoes in a specific size. It’s not a good marketing strategy in my opinion and I would love some actual statistics on how often this type of marketing equates to an actual sale.
it's been hell comping prices, you can do some things with quotes or using the item specifics. Seems sellers that aren't filling out item specifics are about to get left behind. That is if the buyers are even toggling them. I think most people will just simply type what they want and leave frustrated when they get random unrelated best matches...
I noticed this yesterday when I was listing a dept 56 Christmas village item. Only the fist 8 showed me what I was looking for and then it was showing me a bunch other things that had nothing to do what I was looking for. So annoying!
EBAY is now changing peoples spelling, limiting results for those of us who like to bundle $1-2 items searching the lowest 1st. Ebay doesn't realize I've been on since the 90's and I know how to search. I know that they are the problem and not me. Screw their shareholders because they one day will be holding worthless shares.
Great content. Instead of eBay squeezing us existing sellers dry, they should work to entice more new sellers to the platform, thus, more new money for eBay.
Very expensive proposition vs simply tailoring an existing customer.Truth is a huge number of people are sheep. It will be years before most of us are using shopping bots laser focused on what we want. So in the meantime these platforms will push the hot cakes and downgrade the 1925 postcard of Piccadilly Circus. Allowing a sheep to roam freely is not a good thing when you can simply prompt AI to herd them into what sheep usually buy, whatever others are.
eBay has not cared about sellers for the past 15 years. The Golden Age of eBay was 1998-2008. It’s been all downhill for sellers since then leading to a mass exodus of small sellers with unique, interesting “stuff from Grandma’s attic” collectibles.
As a buyer of unique auto parts (since 1999)...the ebay search has turned into a nightmare
I have been endlessley frustrated by the slownessssssss..... I search and then I scroll to the sold check box and I check it and .... nothing.... nothing.... nothing..... nothing... I have to WAIT for Ebay to finish loading ALL the listings that are IRRELEVANT and then , and only then, can I tick the box and get a response. Sooooo frustrating.
I was looking up a number of dvds the other day on my computer and I ended up with 100s to 1000s of sold items and none were the right items and I even looked them up by bar codes and got similar results. They weren't even close to the right results I was expecting to see either the right items. I understand what you're saying there completely. I agree with you on the greediness too.
100% agree! Actually it’s been happening for years with other groups of items (clothes , jewelry etc) and it’s so frustrating for buyers and sellers. You just noticed it in your small niche of postcards that they didn’t touch in the past but now they gotcha. Sad, sad, sad 😢😢😢
I also noticed it messed up when you need to check your sell thru rate
I look forward to your videos every Sat. Do you do private mentoring?
Not officially, but I am always happy to help if you have questions about anything or want me to take a look at your store. Our Discord channel is great (information about that is in the description) or you can always email me at dmay@hey.com!
First time here.
Great vid with valuable info
Thank you 😊
Just notice same issue for books. Trying to get comp on a specific mass market book and brings up no results despite 100’s of this book sold every month. Yikes!
No search comes up with only what I want. They all give me things I don't want. It is so frustrating. This will now make it worse. Yikes.
I noticed this problem about a month ago when searching for my own items. It's similar to Amazon seach. Really stupid.
Gosh this is really going to affect sellers when they check sell-through rates
Mine are rising. Reason is I have good stuff but usually NOT as good as the exact widget the old way showed people. Now if you want a coffee mug, got them for you. It may not be that 1935 mug from that old ghost town you really want, but its really cool and is of a ghost town.
Another great video, do you think that we should change out title structure to help us to overcome this problem?
Some Postcard sellers start their Title with Postcard, some with City & State, Some with Year (if it is posted)
I haven’t seen any evidence that position of words in a title (first word vs. last) significantly affects priority in search. Getting ALL relevant words in your title is more important than ever, since eBay may be showing your listing in more results, even if only one or two words in your title is a match.
Yeah remember another postcard seller saying he attempts to get as close to 80 characters with every listing.
@@mailseum The default now is the search term is looked for in the entire listing. Before you had to opt into that sort of search.
SO guess what folks? unless you are filling in the all little boxes, or giving the AI enough photos, you are losing the search game. This lack will also degrade your AI produced description if you are using that feature. BTW, anything less than 20 pictures is hurting you in serach. The AI at ebay is geared to visual cues.
pro-tip....why would you list 20-24 photos of a BOOK? well because a shopper maybe on the contents page of the book doing a google LENS search is why. If you have said match, bingo a potential sale. If not you 0 for the home team.
It seems the search is similar to what it was before, it used to show items that matched your search terms exactly. Then they would have a space then a small title that said similar items that you may be interested in. It appears like they removed the title and space for this and just run them all together in one confusing string.
I think they’re also broadening their definition of relevant, at least for me. I’ve gotten clothes, electronics, and lingerie when searching for postcards. Also since this video was recorded, I have begun to see results that don’t match all search terms placed before results that do match all terms (I’m assuming because they are promoted at a higher rate).
I agree. It looks like the same to me. I believe showing other postcards from the same town gives buyers other postcards they may be interested in buying but didn't think to search for.
Sometimes I'll add clocktower to a city hall or other building that may have one. When buyer searches Clock Tower buyers would be presented with other building they may be interested but didn't think to search by name.
As for promoted listings, I'm with you. I promote at 2.5% on everything. Seems to help being consistent.
But as Popeye always says. "If you list, you sell"
@@mailseum I see this too, I was surprised when a few of the searches you showed had the relevant results stacked in the front, Some of the searches I have done lately have no rhyme or reason to the organization of the results.
@@mailseum It is also making comping prices a real pain in the butt having to sift through so much non relevant junk .
the default is now a complete search of your listing. Which means all these streamlined idiots with "processes" are now going to have to spend 2-3x the time or they are hurting themselves with their "constrained" listings focused too heavily on the title. Item specifics MATTER. If you have an irrelevant box? fill it in with a keywood instead of NA or blank. the additional drop down? USE IT for similar.
I took my sports cards off because I search for prices and they give players that I'm nit even searching or 1 specific card that I am looking for then 5 or 10 that is not that card...it is hard to find what I am looking for
Hey Look at the solds as it's screwed up also!
Why are these so secretive? are we still in the early 2000s? these guys need to wake up and understand that there's power in transparency.
And is it just me or when I do search since a few day I don’t see the word : sponsored in the search results 🤔 usually we would see if a listing was sponsored or not right ?
RIP Athens Georgia today.
I tried to look for 14k, 18k, and diamond.....I got about a dozen in the next 24 hours in a picture format. Not a list. Blah! I tried to use the advance search and it was no better.
Wonder if this is a bleed over result of promoted listings? Great video, thank you sir. Lol, just watched the end it appears you have the same suspicion.
I think so, it seems to me that eBay wants to take more control over the user experience and what items they are shown. Search was one of the last avenues for buyers to control what they see; eBay has been chipping away at it by making the “best match” sort the default and now this change. Ultimately what they want to do is spark a race to the bottom with sellers needing to raise their promoted rate to get seen by buyers.
@@mailseum totally agree
eBay is dying. That or they are trying to destroy their own site.
or they are forcing you to promote
Your channel came up in my feed. Yes search is broken! 😮I sell hard goods and was researching several different dinner plates. To my shock transsexual chest plate was included in my search. 😵
I noticed this yesterday
Ebay is finished.People,most of them are fed up with their corruption,money grabbing,robbery etc.Paying fees on shipping even though the money does not belong to the seller is highway robbery.
Great topic, as I have noticed the same thing. However, I think this might actually be a positive thing. The reason is, it might introduce postcards to a larger audience. I also sell postcards and have noticed the last couple days buyers that have collections of a topic but do not seem to be the normal postcard collectors/buyers. I am hopeful that this was not just a fluke and that this will continue. Perhaps they might have searched a topic but did not say "postcard" in their search are now introduced to them as a cool addition to their collection of other things.
Good point, I like your optimistic outlook! That would be awesome.
Just build a worldwide marketplace online.. ... Or pay the people that did
makes it harder to comp
And they want us to run ads to drive traffic? Yeah, no thanks.
I live in Athens Georgia!!!!!
I’m from Athens!
After watching your video I just had a thought what if Elon Musk bought Ebay instead of Twitter and brought it back to what it was because he doesn't need the money. The whole Ebay Management Team Must GO!!!!!
An inconvenience - maybe. A disaster - no
I've (and many other yters) have been talking about search being broken all summer. I'm not sure why you are just noticing the issues we've been seeing.
I believe eBay has been rolling this change out in waves. I’ve heard from others that started having issues months ago, and some of us just started having issues recently. Regardless of when it started, I hope we can bring enough attention to the issue that they reverse course!
Yup, we were called delusional for bringing it up 6 months ago
Well, at least the really relevant results seem to be appearing at the top. eBay loves to serve up impressions, so this is just another way. The machine learning may also be in effect here. If it finds out that these superfluous results don't convert, they may stop. However, who's to say that other Evansville cards would not be enticing to a buyer? I think we'll be okay.
That's AI being prompted with a command of GET THE BUYERS money. Eventually once this is fully implemented you may not see any postcards in this sort of search. If the buyer is not 100% a postcard buyer the odds are high this will be the search result if they are logged into their account. Think about it, which approach would you be doing if you were Ebay?
Ebay is now basically another Social Media website. It is focused on selling the CUSTOMERS based on their profile. You and I are simply products sitting in their inventory which are accessed if said customer's profile matches out STUFF. Which funny enough is how most of us should be selling to begin with>people not products. Sell to your tribe.
It's their AI Search which they released at the same time as their AI Descriptions ... I noticed it a few weeks back too and super hate it ... an example of when AI is actually dumber then what came before. Couldn't agree more on eBay only caring about their shareholders .... #1 reason I think a competitor for collectibles needs to take eBay out is because ebay charges the sellers fees on the price of shipping...often eliminating much of the profit if you are selling bigger bulkier things .... it makes NOOOOOO sense when eBay knows exactly how much your purchased the shipping label and how much you charged the customer for shipping now that payments are managed within eBay .... clearly they care more about their shareholders then helping the people barely scraping by to make ends meet.
Ebay management dosnt give a crap abt anyone except their next promotion / bonus.. short term screw- buyer seller shareholder (typical wall street crap corp)..
There ya go a new nisiness
Still not as bad as Amazon the undisputed king of poor search results. They'll show you a box of panty liners if their algorhythm says there's a 10% better chance you'll buy that.
Sorry business
Is this related to AI making up things?
Unrelated - this is a change to how their search algorithm works, which they’ve had since forever but has changed significantly over the years.
You a seller what’s your eBay
Same as my username, it’s mailseum
TH-camr with 1.3k telling ebay how to grow... Now you've heard it all....
do you have a superiority complex? You only have 4 subscribers lol