Interesting - Active items not showing in search results

[jfmgray]

Just spent the last hour trying to identify a small percentage of my listed items that were not appearing in seach results.  I discovered this by accident - I ran a "markdown" sale on 200 items and noticed that several were not actually marked down.  They were not new listings nor had a recent price change so there was no reason for the price not to be marked down.  Also they were all GTC listings (about 25% of my listings are GTC).  I also noticed when I did a "best match" sort of my active items, there were 13 fewer compared to my active total in My eBay.  So I identified the 13 - all GTC listings with at least 1 sale and all had stock left.  When I did an advanced search of the ID numbers, all 13 did not show up.  Nor did they show up in a text seach.  I have many other GTC listings that are appearing in search results so I can't identify a pattern or reason for these 13 not showing up.  I will check again tomorrow and if they are still missing I will contact eBay.

Others may want to do a quick check.  My eBay active listings gives you a total figure which includes GTC listings with no stock (if you use the out of stock option).  If you open one of your listings and then select "see other items" on the right of any listing, the total should be the same LESS GTC with no stock. This method shows your "searchable" active listings. Items listed very recently may not show up. 

[brerrabbit585]

I like to look over a friend's new listings and his numbers always vary, depending on which way I sort the listings. Your disappearing 13 is another matter. Good luck getting that sorted out! If it was me I think I'd be relisting them - if they're not getting seen anyway you haven't got much to lose. They must have been seen at some stage to get sales though!

I've heard from US sellers years ago that ebay does rolling blackouts and I've seen evidence of some listings not showing some days but being there the next day, so perhaps that's what's happening with yours.

[jfmgray]

All this listings were still invisible from search results today.  Don't think its random as all the listings have similarities - GTC with at least 1 sale and stock left. I have worked out that if I edit the listing (even if I do not change anything) and then save, the listing then apprears in search results.  So I have done that with all the listings except 2, which I have referred to eBay to see if they can work out the reasons.  If I simply relist all of them, that will fix the problem for now, but I am sure the issue would re-appear with other listings and it takes a long time to work out which listings are not visible.  So hopefully eBay can work out the glitch but my breath is not being held 🙂

[digital*ghost]

I can't really test this as many of my listings have variations, which means I have 500-odd listings but over 900 items. 

I have started the mindless chore of updating my old listing template, though. It took a while but I finally moved to no images in the description, but then that template still contains some useless javascript, so I have to update the lot. 

...which I mention because following the mobile-friendly recommendations (eg adding in the recommended codes, removing all active content stuff, regardless of whether it actually did anything), has seemed to improve my listing visibility. 

[jfmgray]

Very interesting.  My current template has pictures in the description but no javascript.  When I run the test option to see what the listing looks like when the changes commence it makes no changes (ie the pics are still there).  Which has confused me about whether pics will be prohibited or not??  And as I have about 30,000 saved listings (Auctiva) which I use as required, the thought of having to update the decsriptions each time does not fill me with glee.  New item listings will be easy - just develop a new compliant template, but saved listings will be a pain (and I like my old template)