eBay Skeptical Over Google Intentions in Merchant Crack Down

by: Ric

Interesting to note Mr Wenig's vocal disapproval of Google's actions when eBay essentially does the exact same thing to their own merchants.

Google seems to be using a similar process of ranking sellers to determine search visibility in much the same way eBay ranks their own sellers.

I fail to understand Mr Wenigs righteous indignation given eBay does much the same thing.

by: Nolle

nobody cares what google does any more.  a tiny tiny fraction of merchants have signed on to the new paid shopping.  

have you tried google shopping lately?  totally worthless garbage.

i've had to resort to regular search to find anything - or even better - just go straight to amazon.

google is nothing now to ecommerce - and they are losing ground in search too.  google could easily become just-another-yahoo...

by: AgendaSwallowsAll

@nolle

Then there is more identical direction for both than @Ric has properly stated re: search.

Good Info

AgendaSwallowsAll

by: Rexford

Ric says "Interesting to note Mr Wenig's vocal disapproval of Google's actions when eBay essentially does the exact same thing to their own merchants."

Isn't that the truth? What goes around comes around.  Hypocrisy at its best.

by: Anonymous Annie

Nolle observes: ''nobody cares what google does any more.  a tiny tiny fraction of merchants have signed on to the new paid shopping.''

You may include me in the group of sellers who chooses not to pay for Google shopping ads.

I do, however buy Amazon ads... and the results have been splendid! It's just anecdotal, I have no scientific studies... but it seems that the Google shopper is about as fickle as an eBay shopper. (And this is based only on my experience when Google shopping ads were free.)

In contrast the Amazon shopper (or the ones who click on my ads) is someone that's READY to buy. And most of the time they DO!! Totally worth the cost-per-click!

by: Patricia

Remember the good old days when Google was just a search engine and ebay was just a venue and sellers were worth something?  The older i get the less i want to jump thru their hoops just to make a couple of extra bucks :-(. It all seems so sleazy.

by: Bloggo

You'd think that by now Devin Wenig would know how merchants/sellers on ebay are evaluated and ranked. It's doubtful that Google would do it any worse.

by: Rexford

Patricia says "Remember the good old days when Google was just a search engine and ebay was just a venue and sellers were worth something?"

Yes, that was before they got REALLY, REALLY greedy.

by: Rexford

One more thought...did eBay not learn anything back in Boston back in 2007?  Why would eBay continue to poke a stick at the most powerful search engine in the world.  Not really smart in my opinion.

And eBay do what eBay want to do in their sandbox, why would they think Google would do any different?

Any presence that eBay have left on Google will likely dissipate.

by: elpereles

eBay doesn't have morale to said nothing against Google.

About Froogle/Google Shopping, I don't see any improvement in sales in all this years. Some of my items appears in the list because the owner of eCrater decide to post items, but I will not enroll.

Let see if Google has the guts to finally create a marketplace and not just be a bidding shopping engine because many of the results are just a piece of garbage not related to your search only to how much somebody pay to be display.  

by: Eagle

Don't know what's going on at Google? Our site has posted on first page (normally 1-5 in list on 1st page) for our 3 main search terms since 2008. Now we're bouncing around at times 3 pages back, then recheck next day and back on 1st page? It's definitely affected our sales and total visitors. We are getting half the visits per day than usual and sales are down even worse. With the constant irregular posting, a person doesn't even know what SEO changes, if any, will work? At the moment, we're just letting the site bounce around without any new SEO tactics and see what happens?

by: Marie

@Ric

This has got to be my FAVORITE post by you EVER !!!  It is just so darn good.  I just have to repeat part of it again here.  As it deserves to be read again and again.

"I fail to understand Mr Wenigs righteous indignation given eBay does much the same thing."
Explain that one Ebay !!!!!!

It's like that OLD saying "Do as I say, not as I do"!

by: ebay refugee camp

I quit paying google in November 2012 when my clicks spiked 4 times as many in one month with less conversions. Google refused to prove the clicks were valid citing it would endanger the integrity and security of their system. Google rating sellers just like ebay so what is ebay complaining about. Google shopping is absolutely not what it is. Google should crack down on SEO's who are using others website addresses and business names in their ads and meta tags. Google turns the other cheek when sites like ripoffreport.com hold honest businesses hostage until the business caves and pays ripoffreport to remove the complaint. There are businesses that have one complaint out of tens of thousands of transactions and google allows this it is just like ebay's one sided feedback. I just do not get businesses are not going to please everyone and these giants are completely overstepping. In the end Google is going to favor those merchants paying them for clicks no matter how bad their service or products are. This all favors big business that has been on a major push to eliminate small business in ecommerce just like they did in towns across America. It is all about money.

by: Moonwishes

I knew Google Shopping was pointless when I did a search for "Simplicity Sewing Pattern XXXX" and only got a few patterns returns, the rest were all something so unrelated to sewing it was laughable. How can a search engine display mechanical parts when it has such specific words in the seach string? I tried several times using free coupons Google sent me to do Adwords and I never had a single sale that I could attribute to them.

@Annie I'm curious about what you mentioned about Amazon ads and will look into it. You always seem to have a clue what is going on :) unlike the headless exes at ebay and google.  

by: Will

As others have stated, I also stopped paying for Google advertising. Why pay for something, when the best case scenario is only a slight possibility of ROI? Same for eBay. Hardly list items there anymore. More trouble than it's worth. I'll pay higher fees at Amazon, but at least my items have somewhat of a fighting chance to sell.

And yes, how ironic it is with eBay's stance on this search engine problem.

by: iheartjacksparrow

@Annie - How much do you pay per click for an Amazon ad?  

by: Anonymous Annie

@Iheartjacksparrow: It varies per category. Amazon has set minimum bids for each category and each advertiser can bid higher for greater exposure. In some categories I bid the minimum. In other categories I bit about 10% over minimum.

My average cost-per-click is 35-cents.

by: monkey

When I shop for anything online, I too have noticed that google returns more unrelated links every time.

Now I go to Bizrate or some other shopping platform first -- which bypasses google, filters for price and other attributes, and generally doesn't waste my time.

by: PowerSeller2007

Here's how Google works best.
If you want a bike light and you prefer buying them on ebay... search "ebay bike light".  If you prefer to buy them from Amazon... search "Amazon bike light".  If your prefer seller is KINGLY, search "KINGLY bike light" If you simply search "bike light"... then the results would be varied. So it is truly futile for ebay to expect special treatment.  ebay should not expect Google to purposely mistreat small sellers like ebay does on its site.  

by: comet

"Me thinks the Lady (ie Mr Wenig) doth protest too much"