What has happened to the Traffic on Ebay?

[darre3808-jzkif]

Is it just me or has the traffic on Ebay taken a massive dive?

I have just come back to start selling saddles again after some years and have

noticed that traffic on Ebay is nowhere near where it used to be.

I have listed a saddle: LeTek DRESSAGE SADDLE

There is only 2 of them in total on the site and mine is cheaper so I would assume

that the lack of competition should see my item getting plenty of views but I am

not seeing very much traffic at all.

In fact I listed the same saddle on a new Aussie selling site and was really surprised that

the new site had more traffic to my item than Ebay had, the items were listed on both

sites on the same day.

As I write this the traffic is;

Ebay: 30 Views

Swapmeet: 53 Views

Thats quite a large difference!

Is anyone else seeing that the traffic on Ebay has taken a huge dive?

[saarzi]

Ebays traffic has taken a massive dive, and there are a few reasons - some direct, and some economy driven, some others seem to be a part of a larger long term business plan.

If youre interested in what and why with ebay, much of it can be found on online forums and releases to its shareholders via NASDAQ. Particularly the traffic drives from reasons such as the Google Panda / Payday update rollout and subsequent search penalties agsint Ebay. You can actually see quite accurate reports about the before / after effect.this is the most accurate, reliable stuff to read, I guess, because its a legal requirement for them to release anything that affects shareholder, therefore anything that is affecting sales.

There are also some articles in terms of changing online shopping habits, that are hitting Ebay (not opinions peices, but articles with  numbers).

Then you have the whole throttling, rolling black outs, invisible listings etc that seem to be a larger plan to squeeze out smaller sellers, as Ebay contracts large brands/companies, in an effort to meet these new sales contracts/ targets (essentially, funnelling traffic, hence sales, from smaller sellers through to these large contracts). Ex employees have come out to talk about these things, as well as the CEO inadvertantly admitting to throttling (not the other things). Theres also reports, with figures, from multiple geeks  who claim to have evidence of the throttling through the use of scripts (which is illegal, so they will never fully indentify themselves and itll never really be validated unless court ordered).

[saarzi]

I search the same way as you. Not everyone knows their target market or the correct wording for what their selling.  There was another thread with myself and Joe - he was looking for computer back plates for some reason. He only found a few, I found over 200. Thats because searching for the "correct" word, or within the correct category, wont give you all the listings available. And vice versa - listing them with the correct wording doesnt always get you the most traffic.  Because not everyones a rocket scientist.

But if someone, for some odd reason, didnt want to find those items, then, I guess youd be pedantic about something thats rather irrelevant. Makes people feel like an authority, while making them look like a fool.

[lyndal1838]

Dylan, when you put "Saddle" into the search bar you get 47000+ results.

When you put "Horse Saddle" in you get just 4000+ results.

If you further narrow it down with a specific type of saddle such as "Dressage saddle" you get 1000+ results but "Dressage horse saddle" gives just 600 results.

In this case the use of the word "Horse" is completely counter productive.

[dylan11235813]

---

@lyndal1838 wrote:

Dylan, when you put "Saddle" into the search bar you get 47000+ results.

When you put "Horse Saddle" in you get just 4000+ results.

If you further narrow it down with a specific type of saddle such as "Dressage saddle" you get 1000+ results but "Dressage horse saddle" gives just 600 results.

In this case the use of the word "Horse" is completely counter productive.

---

Because someone didn't need to go through thousands of listings, are you joking? That just proves my point. The problem with the OP's lisitngs is they didn't have enough keywords. Don't go overboard though.

[lane-ends]

To answer yiour original question, there is reported massive downturn across the catagories for many sellers. This downturn is sudden,. hence the many theories advanced. Which are the overriding factors is not known for sure. It is too sudden to be general economic or market forces. Tinkering with your listings are not enough to fix it.

Last quater of last year was reportedly down for Ebay. I believe this resulted first in generous free listings to boost choice for buyers, this didn't work so MBG was brought in to attempt to restore buyer confidence. This caused seller mistrust, this discontent has spread to buyers, an dthe spiral continiues.

One issue is compounding on top of the other it is difficult to point to a single cause, or possible fix. Ebay is in desperate fiddle mode.

One thing is for sure it is a very unstable environment and the future is uncertain.

[lyndal1838]

But it also means that the buyer does not have the option of seeing all the listings that are available either.

Many people would be using further criteria such as Pick Up.  There are plenty of ways of narrowing your choices down without cutting them out completely by putting in an unnecessary word.

I still maintain the OP does have enough keywords for the market she is looking at.....which she obviously knows well.

[digital*ghost]

---

@lyndal1838 wrote:

But it also means that the buyer does not have the option of seeing all the listings that are available either.

Many people would be using further criteria such as Pick Up.  There are plenty of ways of narrowing your choices down without cutting them out completely by putting in an unnecessary word.

I still maintain the OP does have enough keywords for the market she is looking at.....which she obviously knows well.

---

To be fair, the seller doesn't lose anything by including the word 'horse' in their title, it would only be the buyer that misses seeing a few thousand other seller's listings if they used it when they searched (since if horse was in the title, it would still come up in the search for 'dressage saddle' anyway). 

Not saying it should (or shouldn't) be included, but I will say I know pretty much nothing about horses etc, and that if I had that kind of cash, and someone I was willing to spend that kind of money on who was into horses, I might type 'horse saddle' - without explicit instructions from someone in the know, anyway, mostly because I'd be trying to exclude results like saddle bags n such and 'horse' would be the first word I'd think of, but that kind of market (i.e. the know-nothing gift buyer) would be pretty minimal, in all reality. 

[lyndal1838]

Sorry digi, but a "know nothing gift buyer" would not be buying a dressage saddle or any saddle for that matter.

Any serious buyer of a saddle (and you need to be serious to spend that amount of money) would be using any number of search terms but NOT horse.   They would be searching by size, whether it is leather or synthetic, mounted or bare, with or without a girth......I could go on but the OP does have those facts in the body of the listing.

[digital*ghost]

---

@lyndal1838 wrote:

Sorry digi, but a "know nothing gift buyer" would not be buying a dressage saddle or any saddle for that matter.

---

Can't see why not, some of my favourite gifts (as a giver and as a receiver) have been those where the gift-giver bought something related to the gift-receiver's interests, but had no clue about said interest themselves - though speaking as a know-nothing, it's true that if I was spending that kind of money, I'd arm myself with significantly more about what I was supposed to be buying other than it's a saddle, for a horse. 😄

I'm not arguing with you, of course, mostly just wanted to point out having the word in the title wouldn't actually cause the seller to be in less search results (unless the searcher specifically excluded the word 'horse' from their search, but I can't see that happening), it could only cause them to be in more, in that it would catch anyone who did actually use said keyword. Only the sellers who do have horse in the title could say how effective it is, if at all (while the stats are still accessable, which isn't for long, they'd see if anyone had used that word to find them). Could be it improves their chance of being found on google if someone searches for 'horse accessories' or similar. If that's a thing people who are in the know would look for, that is. 

[lyndal1838]

Digi, have a look at post #13.

The use of the word "Horse" with  saddle or dressage saddle gives a lot less results than the stand alone words.

Oh it would have been lovely to have a know nothing gift giver when we were into horses.  Between dressage saddles, jumping saddles, all purpose saddles, saddles for hacks, saddles for ponies....all costing hundreds of dollars each at a minimum and varying in size from 13" to 18".  The occasional gift would have been very well received.