ITEMS NOT SHOWING IN SEARCHES

[vchatawa]

My sales dropped dramatically in both ebay stores and somehow I noticed that my items are not appearing in searches,  I have 2 Anchor stores and have around 2700 items in each store.  We do have a sale here and there so at some point something must be appearing.  I have been contacting ebay for 2 months now and at one point was told it was a IT problem but the last 2 times I have contacted them I was told I would get a response in 24-78 hours nothing has happened I am being ignored by them.  We have been selling adult products for years now and are registered for such and use the correct ebay categories.  I have noticed when searching for one product that none actually appear even though I would think other sellers would be listing the item so it may be a wide spread problem.  Does anyone have a solution I'm at my wits end trying to get an answer from EBAY.  Items show in my store but if a buyer searches a product it will not show.

[jellybirddesigns]

Sales have become pretty poor for many sellers - there have definitely been a lot of complaints about visibility. I've had the same thing in my store - days and days without sales and zero international sales, which is completely different to how my store was in the years past.

I wouldn't even bother with customer service - they are useless. I think their stock standard answer is to blame the "IT department". In reality, there is no answer they can give you.

Actually, just wondering about it now, I think my sales have become poorer since we had to start filling in the additional item requirements. I did mine back around October last year and I can actually track my decrease in sales from November onwards. I've got a spread sheet which tells me my sales figures month on month and year on year and I can see that I am currently at 50% of what my sales were before November 2020.

I would be interested to know if others have noticed a decrease in their sales after filling in the item specifics.

[davewil1964]

My sales have decreased to pre-COVID levels since about November. Maybe something to do with COVID.

I have been filling in nugatory item specifics since last month and haven't noticed any effect on sales, which are traditionally slow in June. EOFY I imagine.

[digital*ghost]

I searched for half a dozen of the items in your store (not even gonna thing about what my home page is gunna look like for a while 🤣), your stuff came up first on 2 of 6 searches, and didn't appear in the rest. It's affecting google search, by the looks of it, too - I searched the keywords from one of your listings followed by "ebay" and got links to US stores but not yours. 😕

I'm guessing this might have something to do with the new policy introduced in the US (announced in May), where they have withdrawn the adults only category, though their new policy mirrors our current one. Maybe they have "shadow-banned" some types of adult items - the new policy is scheduled to take effect July 15, so if there is any merit to this theory at all, things might start to change in around 3 weeks (this is definitely pure speculation on my part, though, they might be planning on phasing in other policies , an "NSFW" filter or something else entirely).

How often do you edit listings? Sometimes a phantom edit can force eBay to re-index the listing, but that's about the only trick I know of. 

[jellybirddesigns]

@davewil - interesting to see you also mention a drop in sales since November.

Looking over my figures, my 2020 EOFY sales were far higher than they are this year. It's only been since November 2020 that my sales are consistently between 50-70% lower.

I wonder if something happened to the Ebay/Cassini algorithm since November, although it could just be a coincidence.

[davewil1964]

My sales were 200% over average (and I have data going back a decade) between March and October last year. Since then they have dropped to 'normal' levels, so I haven't seen any material change.

[vchatawa]

Hi, Items do not appear in searches at all, even when searching for the item number they will not show.  Do your items show when searching for item numbers.

[davewil1964]

You are showing 2336 listings.

Is that correct? Do you have many thousands more?

Do you understand the new eBay adult listing policy?

[vchatawa]

Ok thanks for your input, I can tell that it isn't only my listings that are not appearing as some of the items are sold by numerous other sellers yet nothing shows at all in some cases.  It is frustrating as we are not selling enough to cover fees at the moment.  I will give editing existing products ago but even items just added are not appearing in searches.  

[jellybirddesigns]

I'm just wondering if you still need to be paying Anchor store fees.

On the new Managed Payments system, I think that everyone gets 250,000 listings per month, so you could drop down to a basic store and save a fortune. Perhaps even combine shops.

The only things would be to check if there are any categories which are excluded from the additional benefit, for example, adult items.

Can anyone clarify about the listing volume as I cannot find it in the help section and my own listing quantity in my seller shows 600 available.