eBay is manipulating your exposure!

stanislav · #1 11-18-2012

Okay people I found something very interesting ... It just goes to prove once again that eBay is without a doubt is trying to control how much exposure your item(s) get. I have had my suspicion for a while now but I couldn't prove it. But as with any science you must use scientific method to prove your theory.

Well I just did (at least to myself). I guess I should not go into the exact details of how I did what I did but my observation must be at least taken into consideration. Interestingly enough even when using proxies to find my items from different locations around the world I was still able to find them. I thought this was going to prove once and for all if my items are being seen (or not) by other potential buyers from around the world who search on eBay.

Well apparently it's not necessary a good measuring tool since when I have searched for my items using different ip locations around the world I was still able to find my items. Here is the thing, there is a way to manipulate your listings so that eBay supposedly wont consider any your listings duplicates, well just because eBay wont show you a warning and just because you can still find your listings on eBay search engine, it does not negate the fact that you are either not getting full exposure or any at all. For example when I list 10 identical items and everything goes smoothly I immediately get over 10 watchers within a few hours, usually.

But today when I tried to manipulate my duplicate listings and all 10 showed up on eBay search I had almost no watchers. Think about it carefully. Supposedly if you find your listing(s) on eBay search engine then thousands of you sellers assume immediately that it was indexed and that everyone else can see your listings.

Well dear friends it is not necessary true. AS SOON AS I BID ON ALL OF MY LISTINGS using another account, I immediately got extra watchers and bids. Either this was a co incidence or or I just proved that eBay is definitely manipulating exposure and this has nothing to do with Sandy or slow economy.

jeffweico · #2 11-18-2012

Duplicate listings are no longer allowed, are they?

Am I missing something?

stanislav · #3 11-18-2012

Yes you are missing my point. I guess I wasn't clear enough in my previous post or you didn't read it carefully. Yes it is true that duplicate listings are not allowed but think about the repercussions. If supposedly eBay does not show duplicate listings on eBay but when you search for your listings and are able to find them. What does it tell you then? It means only a small amount of people are able to see your listing if at all. Most people rely on search for their listed items just to make sure they are being view by millions but just because you found your items using ebay search engine does not mean necessary that your item is actually being view by the rest of the word. It's a huge deal as it goes to prove that eBay is definitely controlling what is being viewed and it's going to be difficult to prove unless you conduct an experiment like I just did.

jeffweico · #4 11-18-2012

I get that, but do you think that eBay is detecting the duplicate listings and manipulating because of that?

stanislav · #5 11-18-2012

So now I need to find some way to try and view listing using private proxies as I believe public proxies has been already flagged by ebay and thus when you are using them it will show you your item as if it is posted on ebay. They are getting clever. Does anyone knows where I can buy a bunch of good non public reliable proxies so I could conduct a few more experiments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffweico

I get that, but do you think that eBay is detecting the duplicate listings and manipulating because of that?

Well there is no doubt that eBay bots detect duplicate listings. They usually do not defect it right away since there are thousands of them but a few hours later ,if you have selling manager pro, you will see that your listing was defected and it will not be shown on eBay. But even if it is not shown on eBay there are still a few exploits that can manage to overcome this problem. I can still make them appear on eBay. But it only seems this way. Like I said most of us use ebay search in order to find our own items. You will find your item but it is obvious to me that because there are no bids or just a few and almost no watchers that it does not get enough exposure. Basically it's very minimal. But how can this be I ask myself when you can find it on ebay? So I decided to bid on all of my items and all of the sudden I got more watchers and bids. I am sure it's not just a co incidence.

So when people say their items get no views and wonder why it is, now I have no doubt it has nothing whatsoever with economy at all. There are two options here. Either eBay system has specific filters in place aside from duplicate listings that simply can switch on and off which part of the world is going to be able to view your item or maybe they are assigning percentage of how many. Let's say your item is going to be viewed by only 10 percent of all total potential buyer who searched for your specific item or there is something utterly wrong with eBay search engine. I suspect it could be both but mainly and is probably the first cause. If this is true then what eBay doing is illegal since we are paying fees for our products to be listed on eBay.

**SaiJin** · #6 11-19-2012

So you are saying that even if the listings do show up, it doesn't mean that it'll show up for other people?

stanislav · #7 11-19-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaiJin

So you are saying that even if the listings do show up, it doesn't mean that it'll show up for other people?

Exactly SaiJin! I think this is a significant discovery. So when you don't have any sales and especially very little views you should know that your item is not showing up on ebay or is getting minimal exposure.

**SaiJin** · #8 11-19-2012

HOnestly I have been wondering about this myself, but from what I see... all of my listings have had hits. Aside from a couple 0 hits on 2 accounts that's newer actually.

stanislav · #9 11-19-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaiJin

HOnestly I have been wondering about this myself, but from what I see... all of my listings have had hits. Aside from a couple 0 hits on 2 accounts that's newer actually.

Yes you will have just a FEW views on your listings and you could still find them on ebay but the fact is somehow and I don't know how your listings get only a very very small percentage of people who can view them. In fact and I am just speculating if you only have some views it can be generated by ebay or simply viewed by their bots.

stanislav · #10 11-19-2012

Yesterday I could view my duplicated listings and have literally no or one watcher and maybe one or two bid on all 12 listings. It's been like that for at least 8 hours. Then I realized that something was wrong. This is not the first time it happened to me. So I decided to use my other account and bid on each one of my listings. Well almost right away I got bids and watchers. Today in about 30 minutes my first listing is going to end. I have 14 watchers and price is above average! Second listing has a whopping 26 watchers. It's the most I have ever seen for this item. So you get my point? eBay without a doubt is somehow manipulating (it's all automated) how much exposure your listing will have even though you seemingly find it on ebay search engine.

**SaiJin** · #11 11-19-2012

I'm going to try to just list 1 Fixed price listing... see how that goes.

Seems like for auctions it won't go up the search ladder unless there's a bid

stanislav · #12 11-19-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaiJin

I'm going to try to just list 1 Fixed price listing... see how that goes.

Seems like for auctions it won't go up the search ladder unless there's a bid

Well not exactly. According to eBay's duplicate policy it will only show one of your listings and only when your first listing is going to get bids the next one in line will be shown on ebay. So fixed price or not and just because it is shown on ebay doesn't mean it gets the full exposure. It's a bit difficult to see this with fix price items because you dont get as many views , as many watchers. But with auction it is very clear, as day and night.

rayraymond1218 · #13 11-19-2012

eBay is really manipulating the exposures, I have 30 auctions ending soon and still no watchers at all, i dont really wanna change the selling format to buy it now. Why are they doing this right before Christmas...omg

stanislav · #14 11-19-2012

Why would you change it to buy it now ? Because you don't have any bidders? Why don't you try to use reserve price on an auction. Yes I know it's 2$ and if you post in 2 categories it makes it 4$.

411guru · #15 11-20-2012

I didn't read the whole thread. But from what I know, once an auction receives a bid, it goes up in search rank. The more bids, the higher it ranks. I've seen this myself. I've seen 4 hour auctions with bids, out rank 30 min auctions without bids. This change in best match was introduced this fall.

As for multiple duplicates not showing up. I think this is false. One of my competitors have 150 dup listings of the same item. They just word the title slightly differently. I see all of them. He saturates the category and covers me up as I only have 30 dups. However, his sell thru rate is 15% whereas mine is 50%.

slim jim · #16 11-20-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by 411guru

He saturates the category and covers me up as I only have 30 dups. However, his sell thru rate is 15% whereas mine is 50%.

i would have to say as a buyer this makes sense. if i see someone with tons of listings for the same product, i don't feel so comfortable

MM78 · #17 11-21-2012

Gonna stick with BIN. Auction style just makes me nervous.

dallasreed · #18 11-21-2012

I would just avoid using an auction unless you only have 1 of the product or can deal with nonpayment/relisting/buyer BS

Fixed price instant payment is the way to go.

LoopHole · #19 11-23-2012

What did i just read

stanislav · #20 11-23-2012

I use only auction. If it wasn't for my selling limits I could easily sell 100 items per day via auction.

Stigger · #21 11-25-2012

its same with multiple bin's the more you sell the higher up the rankings you go.

i think there is something in what the OP is saying, i have my suspicions about this too and my listings are bin's, no doubt in my mind there is something going on in regards to listing manipulation.

Does this kind of thing happen when you are in full swing and shipping promptly, it seems the better i look after my account the better and faster my listings appear, if i have some listings listed but don't sign in to my account for a couple of days my sales drop and that seems pretty consistent.

stanislav · #22 11-25-2012

The more you sell the more attention you attract from potential buyers who are viewing your completed listings. However eBay has a tenancy to switch exposure ion an unpredictable ways. Either it's on autopilot and is acting like a crazed dude on drugs or they deliberately enforce expressed based on varsity of criteria, such as your location. They let you have a lot of sales this week but next week someone else is going to get it, not you.