Yo eBay, Where is the Google Juicy Juice Baby?

Written by John Comments
Last Updated September 24, 2008

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This afternoon I see on Scot Wingo’s eBay Strategies blog that reports were flying around the rumor mill that eBay was NOT indexing in Google search. Scot has 3 theories on what is going on:

Scot’s Theories on what is going on… I have a couple of quick theories on what’s going on:

Given their track record in the last couple of weeks, it’s possible that eBay has done something to mess up the crawlability of the site.

It could be that eBay has asked google to not crawl anything but fp30 dramatically reducing the number of eBay listings in the google index (this doesn’t seem very smart, but hey anything’s possible I guess)

It could be that Google is using this tough spot for eBay to kick them in the ribs and has decided that eBay listings are ‘not relevant’ and yanked them from the index.

Scot says “Personally I think the last theory is the most probable given the near overnight disappearance of eBay’s listings from the Google index.”

So he asked for some supporting evidence and I said hey sure So below you will see 5 weeks of graphs over the last few weeks. I am seeing a downward trend of over 60% reduction in Google traffic to our eBay ads! At the highest point it was 6% of add traffic and now it is down to 2%. That is a pretty significant decline in a very short span of time.

Also I see on week ending September 20th (same week as the new eBay findings and FP30) there is a separation of “eBay Classic” search and eBay Search. I am seeing that they are running 2 searches in tandem and not completely abandoning the older search. Not positive that is what we see with these 2 eBay searches being shown in the graph.

Rich

Here are my stats going back to 11/2007..

2007
11 - 17.7%
12 - 9.9%

2008
1 - 7.1%
2 - 9.9%
3 - 8.3%
4 - 6.1%
5 - 4.6%
6 - 5.9%
7 - 6.5%
8 - 11.5%
9 - 6.6%

So to me, Sept looks more "average" than August, which was this highest % since Nov 2007.

Your mileage may vary...

There are few things in this universe more mysterious than the Google Search Algorithm.

John

Hi Rich,

If you have details that you can share, that would be helpful. One view (mine or yours) is really not enough to get a clear oversight on what may possibly be taking place.

You do seem to have some unique numbers and if you can share them that would really go a long way to help us all keep and eye on traffic reporting.

I will be doing a follow up on Monday with the new numbers as well. Thanks for your insight, I am very interested to see what you are seeing.

Thanks,
John

Rich

You guys need to go back further.

September doesn't represent some strange decline - August represents a very unusual peak.

I have over 500 store items - almost no changes since January. Going back in the stats I see a lower Google % than Sept for every month EXCEPT August, which was a huge and unusual spike.

colderice

Hey ROO, thanks for the shout out!

john

roo

I like your use of video on your blog. Great post.

roo

Teckwave

Hey John, that's TecKwave... with a K, the h is someone else. :)

And your welcome, glad to help out.

-Tony

Cliff Aliperti

Will add to your numbers off my own Onmiture Report:

8/31-9/6
eBay Classic 71%
Google 19.3%

9/7-9/13
eBay Classic 67.5%
Google 23.5%

9/14-9/20
eBay 47.8%
eBay Classic 32.7%
Google 12.1%

9/21-present
eBay 66.6%
eBay Classic 15.2%
Google 13.0%

colderice

Wow, Mechelle...Ouch :-)

Thanks so much for sharing your info too. Both you and TechWave, I really appreciate the data. Lets all keep it churning and keep an eye out.

Cliff and Randy, lets keep chatting as we always do on Twitter and lets keep an eye out. We can all revist this on Monday to see if there has been improvement.

I HOPE that what you and Randy are saying is NOT true. It takes up to 90 days for Google to really get indexing SEO and natural search back. :-(

But that really could be what is going on and if so, that does kinda suck for us all. That would rank eBay ads back to normal, just about the week of CHRISTMAS!!!

john

Mechelle

My traffic reports clearly demonstrate that on September 16th eBay injected the "new search experience" into the site. Just as abruptly Google traffic began and has continued to slow. The "new search experience" is now dominating the traffic to my listings (not that there is much to speak of actually the lack of is more interesting). Yesterday the 23rd eBay classic was 1.2% of search engine paths, the new search 66.7%, Google 30.9%, Yahoo 1.2%.

Clearly, not only did eBay ruin the eBay search with their "new search experience" they also effectively killed the Google search path to eBay

I agree because I use Google Base daily my traffic is only down about 15% from Google and I use adwords.

It isn't Google's malicious attack on eBay - it is eBay's incompetent, idiotic, disaster of the "new search experience". Clearly, the prior eBay CTO ran because JD was hell bent on releasing a crappy, glitchy, and certain to fail algorithm.

Thanks again JD you loser

Randy Smythe

It looks like the trend correlates with the drop in eBay Classic Search. That would lead me to believe that Google just hasn't indexed the "New" search yet and as Cliff said you should see trends reverse.

Teckwave

Classic from 85.5% to 12.8%, new search takes 81.4% by Sept 21, google from 12.4% to 4.7%. Same timeframe as yours.

Cliff Aliperti

Well, wipe that last comment. Google Base indexed me at 1 pm today and I've got the "Published, Searchable Soon" comment by all listings. I'm assuming that means I'll be indexed in main Google site soonafter, no?

Cliff Aliperti

My guess is this is just a case of Google wiping the old expired store listings and taking some time to index the new FP30--I'd lean towards eBay possibly having done something to screw up the site's crawlability, but my best bet would be the graph trends back towards where it had been within the next couple weeks. Just a guess, but it kind of makes sense.

Though I just remembered and this is likely revelevant: I did receive an e-mail from Google Base on 9/20 stating that my upload failed. I've seen these eBay-Google glitches before, so I was taking a couple of days before even going in to try and figure what was wrong. Maybe I'll jump my own guy a little and snoop around some tonight to see if I can get my eBay listings uploaded.

Yo eBay, Where is the Google Juicy Juice Baby?

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