eBay has not been able to find ITs way out of a brown paper bag lately.
According to Scott Wingo of ChannelAdvisor this may be about to change. In a post yesterday on his eBay Strategies blog he gives absolutely the clearest explanation of what Finding 2.0 is expected to do that I have read to date. Thoughtfully, Scott has translated the normal alphabet soup in his post so non-SEO geeks can understand. Go check it out.
The theory actually makes sense the way Scott describes it. As always, how it will work on eBays teetering and obsolescent platform is the main question.
As I was writing this I was slapped 'upside the head' (as we say here) with another thought. Maybe eBay can't find anything because what I am looking for is simply not there any more.
What do you think?
Y'all come back 
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
The New New New eBay Search
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I think it's a combination of both. I know a lot of sellers who used to offer the kinds of things I collect are no longer around. My automated searches used to return hundreds of listings. Nowadays, though, I'm lucky to get 2 or 3. I even broadened my search parameters and tried different searches (other than Best Match) and still had no luck.
I've spent less than $200 this year, when in the past (2004), I've spent as much as $30K on eBay. I don't know where those sellers have gone, but they aren't selling on eBay anymore. I haven't sold anything myself since December. I'm focusing my efforts elsewhere, for now.
"My automated searches used to return hundreds of listings. Nowadays, though, I'm lucky to get 2 or 3."
This sounds like you got opted into the totally flawed "test search". People searching for desk top computers could only find two to four results in the entire United States. They were not told they were opted into this rubbish, although there was an opt out at the bottom of the page, if you know to look for it, and this was done to people who were active on the commercial Ebay site. The faulty search should never have been put into use, let alone using active buyers to test it without their knowledge or consent - Ebay fails to understand how this stuff affects commerce, and the impact it can have on everybody's bottom line.
"how it will work on eBays teetering and obsolescent platform is the main question."
Obsolescence is not the problem with Ebay, if they just let the site run with obsolete but working software that would be fine. The problem is that so many individual aspects of programming get tacked onto each other simply because an employee wants to justify their employment, or leave their personal mark on the site, that too much is incompatible with each other. Search is shocking at the moment, but examples can also be found with the complex multitude of user agreements and terms of service, that can contradict each other in both Ebay and PayPal. The whole thing is almost unworkable already, let alone the threats of increased changes still coming.
Kind Regards, Kevin
Post a Comment