Does throttling happen to all sellers at some point and does it ever vanish once it does arrive?

[cr.love]

Just a quick question....Is it inevitable for throttling to happen to all?

If the lights are off in your store does it bounce back ever? 

Thanks in advance 🙂

[best.buys]

but how would you know if your seeing all the items fixnwear?

[fixnwear]

gav, I can't be sure, of course, but am almost sure  in my case as these are all smaller sellers.

Those with hundreds of listings one wouldn't know as easily.

It's just that I somehow imagined the whole seller site would be somehow hidden so they don't get any sales.

Didn't even think of only a handful of items being not visible - as those sellers would still have plenty other items to sell, those that can be seen and bought - therefore they wouldn't necesserily notice they are being throttled.

And, it would be very little point in hiding only some listings - if all the others are there in plin view - so seller still makes sales.

[casbit33]

Maybe ask some of those sellers how many items they have active listings. Then when you look at their items you will see if it shows the same number. It would be handy to know if all items are showing as this would be a good question to put to ebay if you have a witness that cannot find all those items.

[dazzledayz]

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@fixnwear wrote:

gav, I can't be sure, of course, but am almost sure  in my case as these are all smaller sellers.

Those with hundreds of listings one wouldn't know as easily.

It's just that I somehow imagined the whole seller site would be somehow hidden so they don't get any sales.

Didn't even think of only a handful of items being not visible - as those sellers would still have plenty other items to sell, those that can be seen and bought - therefore they wouldn't necesserily notice they are being throttled.

And, it would be very little point in hiding only some listings - if all the others are there in plin view - so seller still makes sales.

---

As has been explained earlier (and succinctly) by Chameleon, the mechanics and algorithms are unknown but can be speculated on.

In your scenario, you have saved sellers so you may be able to access their listings while others cannot.

eBay know your IP address, Router MAC and you are carrying upwards of 50 odd eBay related cookies on your machine.

When you think about how quickly a search is returned and the number of listings involved it is entirely feasible for a few extra filtering instructions to be included among the thousands required to produce the results you see on your screen.

What sellers are suggesting is that we all suffer from remarkably consistent trading volumes in dollar terms.

I was a victim myself last month where I sold a very large combined order that would have represented 30x average value for a single sale.

At the time, I knew full well that I would suffer a downturn in sales and guess what, that's exactly what happened.

Now that I'm back to "average earnings" sales are back to normal.

We don't know quite how they do it; all we can see are the results via patterns that we all recognize.

(and remarkably similar monthly invoices)

This all started with the introduction of the new Cassini search engine a few years back.

It's knickname quickly became Cantseeme.

Interestingly, the chief developer, Hugh E Williams left eBay before the engine launched which is unheard of in the software industry.

He's Australian by the way and currently lectures at Melb Business School and RMIT.

He also worked for microsoft heading the Bing project plus other silicon valley companies and hold about 30 US patents (+ 30 pending)

So, no mug by any means.

It's almost as though he was asked to do things he didn't agree with but that's sheer surmise.

All we mushrooms can point to are the features Chameleon mentioned and we've come to realise that this is just the new way of doing business on eBay.

They own the goalposts and they can do with them what they wish.

[kopenhagen5]

Many years ago a member came here saying they knew an ex employee of eBay stating throttling happens to spread the fewer buyers over a large number of sellers. Apparently they would have certain seller's listings not appear (turn off) for certain periods in searches.

True or not ? Who knows. 

[*tippy*toes*]

The listings are visible if you go via the seller, they just don't appear in the search results. Example: You have seller abcdef on your saved seller list. They sell clothing. You want a pair of blue shorts and know that seller has them, so you check their items and they have the blue shorts you wanted. I also want a pair of blue shorts, so I put blue shorts in the search box. Seller abcdef's blue shorts don't show up in the search results, so I buy from someone else.

[dazzledayz]

A reasonable explanation for what we see in the data Kopes.

We'll never know the whole story but what could we do about it even if we did?

[chameleon54]

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@kopenhagen5 wrote:

Many years ago a member came here saying they knew an ex employee of eBay stating throttling happens to spread the fewer buyers over a large number of sellers. Apparently they would have certain seller's listings not appear (turn off) for certain periods in searches.

True or not ? Who knows. 

---

I was going to mention something else here,  typed it out but have deleted it. I still want to continue to sell on ebay  !!!

Other stuff -

Ebay definately rank sellers based on their sales per catagory. This information is displayed in seller hub, so we are definately ranked on our performance within our main catagory.

A disproportionate amount of my international sales go to Portugal and the Netherlands. These countries account for around  10- 15% of my international sales. I have seen this mentioned by other Australian sellers on the power sellers forum some time ago. My items are universal and not sold based on climate, language or anything else. Now I dont know the populations of those countries compared to the rest of the ebay world, but it sure aint 10 - 15 %.

This indicates that Australia is " matched " with these countries and our items have higher visibility there than in other international regions.

Other local sellers have noticed the same phenomina in Australia at times, with all items selling in certain states or regions. I cant say I have seen this bit myself, but it is reported too often to be coincidence.

I follow a few of my main competitors. From time to time they sell items which are identical to mine for much higher prices. I have 100% feedback, 4.9 stars across the board and have had no problems with anyone. One of my oposition has fairly ordinary feedback and a fairly low care factor. There may only be four or five of this particular item on ebay at one time, so why would a buyer pay A LOT more for it from another seller if they could see mine ?  The only thing I can put it down to is visibility ( or invisibility         ) .

[twyngwyn]

yes....I get skeptical when i sell to certain states on different days....happens all the time....eg.....Qld on Mon, Vic on Tues, Tas on Wed...but that's intermittent. When our lights are ON it's countrywide

[digital*ghost]

This details a now-deleted post on the US forums by an employee of eBay:

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2014/12/1418064225.html

The crux of it was:

"There are several types of limits that sellers may experience when selling, he wrote:

- Site Wide Limits (SWL, referred to as "selling limits")
- Silent limits (limits placed on an account that can't be seen by the seller)
- URC limits (User Risk Code, limits reduced or placed on an account due to concerns)
- Category limits
- BTAC limits (Building Trust by Reducing Counterfeits, for branded items)
- Hot item limits
- Multi-Account limits
- Velocity limits
- feedback limits"