100's of FAKE "views" added daily to items I have listed for sale.

[mykelmont]

Items (pot plants) which normally sell or reach the end of their selling period with perhaps only 25 - 40 "Views" at most are suddenly receiving , starting on the second day of listing 100 exactly  "views",  and always at the same time of day. The next day, another 100 or maybe 110, and the next day another 100, and so on until at the end of the selling period of 7 days there are 700 plus of these "views.

They are most certainly FAKE. No doubt about it. They could not possibly be genuine arriving in the listings always at the same time and the same round number.

Is anyone experiencing this sabotage or knows where it comes from?  It has been occurring daily for 2 months and of course it is impossible to know exactly the correct number of genuine "views"

[jellybirddesigns]

Try logging in on a different browser. 

Ebay has regular glitches, so this seems like another in a long list. Calling it sabotage seems somewhat extreme, but I can certainly see that you find it unusual.

I think Ebay sometimes takes the mickey out of sellers. In other words, it could well be that they are bumping up views, even though it's really a bot that's increasing the number. For most sellers who do not track views, they would see it as a positive thing - they think there is a high level of interest, so they list more items, and therefore continue to stay within the Ebay ecosystem.

But I don't think that the majority of sellers care about views at the end of the day, as they are irrelevant to sales. I can have an item with 100 views and 10 sales and another with 5000 views and 2 sales.

It's meaningless - either they buyer wants what you have, or they don't.

[oddsandendsoz]

I agree it is very strange. I have only ever experienced once when for some reason one of my listings suddenly got hundreds of views, never found out why but assumed it was a glitch. But I agree with the OP; an accurate indication of views and watchers is valuable feedback. After all those numbers are provided by eBay for a reason, so they also see the value in those stats, but they only have any real value if they are accurate. 

[mykelmont]

Thanks for that.
I have another reply which suggests trying another browser, but also comes close to suggesting exactly what I think the main cause is: eBay increasing the number of views to give encouragement to the seller who might be receiving few - or no - views for their item(s).

If that is so, they've been a bit heavy-handed, as the items are listed as "local pick up" even having that pointed out in the heading for the items, so possible viewers don't find that out only after they are "in" the listing rather than discovering the fact only after they have become viewers, all of which means viewers will only become so after they know they will come here to pick up the item, and therefore will be living in a certain no very wide radius.

It's so heavy-handed because the numbers suggest I'm in a crowded Indian city rather than a quiet leafy outer western suburb of Melbourne!

Thanks for your interest.

[mykelmont]

This is absolutely preposterous.

More advertising (which the public won't see) to get more sales on what? 4 pot plants! Really, now - if you're genuine in your rudeness I am genuinely sorry for you.

I am not trying to tell eBay anything. I have already tried to do that in a "Chat" with an eBay agent  at their Help call centre and a "we'll phone you back" offer accepted. So those facts rather fortunately kill off those loony ideas. All completely useless.

I have been an eBay member for about 11 years with a small amount of purchases and sales during that time, and this is the first time I have had to take the desperate step of appealing to this forum for some genuine help, not what you have come up with.

It is it hard to know what pot plants are worth at any particular time of the year. Sometimes the same kind of item will sell at a much higher or lower price than previously. Prospective buyers, knowing that the plants are on local pick-up situation before they even have to enter the listing, would be a genuine indicator of interest which might be influenced by the knowledge of how far they must travel to pick up their purchase, a factor to take into situation as well as the price.

In my experience, buyers of items such as these have all come from within a radius  of 50 kilometres.

If I was running a business rather than tidying up my back patio now and again your comments might have had some value rather than a nasty edge .

100 views per day for a week = 775 on close of listing? For 4 pot plants around the $40 mark? Someone out there thinks I live in a crowded Indian city, rather than a quiet outer western suburb of Melbourne.

And finally - my main theory is not sabotage, which eBay agents were the first to use in this situation, not me - but what about if eBay wanted to boost the morale of the seller regarding the many future items he might otherwise decide to cease selling when discouraged from selling, then the fees, which might therefore be lost to eBay.

Why not falsely boost the number of views of items  for an otherwise discouraged seller who receives a large number of views rather than no or few views,  watchers or sales. It's happened before, I promise you, but not on this scale.

Please consider the offence caused by telling me I'm not fair dinkum when I just want some help in this situation. It can cause some degree of rancour which is bound to seep into any responses.

Please consider using some sensible thought before inventing the not very wise  suggestions which inevitably must fall backwards on yourself for their lack of intelligence.

[papermoon.lady]

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@twyngwyn wrote:

to throw a spanner into the works....I currently have items that have ZERO 'looks' but have 'watchers'...please explain!

Algorithms are either bogus or all over the place....makes no sense!

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I don't know for sure, but if you see items in your feed for example and just click on the image for a quick view  (without going to the actual listing), you can add those items to the watch list, and maybe because you didn't go to the actual listing it is not a "view"? You can do the same when you search for an item and then click on the + sign (bottom right) for a quick look. Just a guess though. 

Edit: Oops, Stawka had already addressed the issue.

[siddieswans]

This used to happen to me if someone added one of my items to their Pinterest feed. Overnight 100s of Views would be added to a particular item, for several nights in a row. I would end up with 800-1000 views. I don’t know how Pinterest works – were the numbers something to do with followers? Sometimes these views would translate to a slightly higher Watch rate but seldom it seemed to me to a higher Sold price (I sell old stuff). Or could it be related to PicClick in some way?

[mykelmont]

Yes, a puzzle. The latest thought emerging overnight is agreement with my theory that eBay themselves are adding the numbers deliberately to boost the morale of a seller who might be discouraged from future eBay use by lack pf response to their listings, meaning loss of possible sales = loss of fees.

Thankyou for your interest.

[rocket2retro]

One possible explanation could be that the eBay algorithms are limiting your item to 100 views per day. Once that has been achieved, buyers no longer see your item(s) in their search (or they are so 'buried' that few would search that far down). Perhaps the views upload at a certain time of the day thus explaining the data appearing at the same time. 

This 'throttling' has been discussed many times on these boards in the past. The slight anomalies could be someone re-visting recently viewed items, etc, etc, and this explains the days where the views are slightly higher.

As you mention it is unlikely you have those numbers of people of looking at your items- so maybe this is unlikely.

Just a theory on my behalf and I favour your theory of magic numbers (however I would think if eBay were making up the numbers they'd be smart enough to generate them randomly).

As others have mentioned, these numbers really mean nothing & I pay no attention to them. My sales (or lack thereof) are the metric I care about.

[paper-jack]

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@mykelmont wrote:

Yes, a puzzle. The latest thought emerging overnight is agreement with my theory that eBay themselves are adding the numbers deliberately to boost the morale of a seller who might be discouraged from future eBay use by lack pf response to their listings, meaning loss of possible sales = loss of fees.

Thankyou for your interest.

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If this is the case, be very thankful Ebay didn't choose their other 'what can we do today to help sellers sell something' idea - to either change the asking price or change to best offer accepted, without first consulting the seller.

[mykelmont]

Thanks a lot for your interest, It's a relief to receive some positivity in a reply while not immediately solving the problem....

.......comes close, though to my own theory that these fake numbers are being added by eBay themselves to boost the morale of a seller who is not showing many - or any -views in their listing. That seller might otherwise become discouraged from future listings and eBay would then miss out on the fees from any sales.

Were a few dozen fakes added over a longer period, sort of dribbled in to place rather than this heavy-handed approach of 100 at a time, it might be convincing. But someone obviously thinks (or maybe doesn't think at all) that I must live in a crowded Indian city where these sudden numbers might be regarded as possible, instead of in a quiet suburb in outer western Melbourne and a seller who only expects maybe 25 views at most selling these occasional items during a period of several years.

In my phone call with Help I actually suggested this was happening and the agent's response was "Oh no, eBay doesn't do that." I replied, "Maybe! But if they did, they wouldn't be telling you."

It's a stupid approach. I am far more likely to give up selling on eBay (after all, it's just casual and not a business, just a bit of tidying up our back patio!) if this continues

Several years ago a similar thing was happening: seconds after the new listing of an item the listing would show 3 or 4 views already. I insisted to eBay that it was just to give the seller a big positive boost for encouragement at the beginning of their listing. Sometimes there wold be no further action during a 10 day listing period.

I'll try the alternative browser suggestion. I could also try not listing anything at all for a while and see if there is any change in policy - or if it's been set into the system!