eBay Cuts Through the Clutter with New Old Product Pages

by: Troy Stiffler

Awesome.  I've been waiting for this.  I've always preferred Amazon's structured system.  I just wish they'd go head-first and clean up all of the categories.  My business' focus is Business and Industrial.  That'll probably be last category to get attention.

by: iheartjacksparrow

I see a definite improvement. There are a couple of items I regularly search for, and I previously got results that had nothing to do with what I was looking for. Tonight I just got back a notice there were zero results. This is great!

by: nsc

Too funny.  

by: FeelingFroggy

Just more ebay forked tongue speak.

by: Ric

Just great.... when eBay's faulty programming fails to find a sellers item it will now be totally invisible.

eBay management still refuses to accept the fact that Cassini has been broken from day one.

eBay's executives need to wake up and realize that the answer to their problem does not lie in further whittling down search results.

Instead, the answer is fixing the broken search engine so that it returns only items directly related to the search terms entered, you know.... the way virtually every other search engine on the planet works.

by: tradernick

My knee-jerk response is this is going to be bad.  History is a good teacher and they've stuck our hands into fires over and over again, always saying it won't hurt this time.  I don't think buyers need to be guided, I think buyers want a simple search engine that returns results based on what they search for.  Ebay pretends to know what buyers want and seems oblivious to the notion that everyone shops and thinks differently.

by: bitbybit

Now take all those graphics on the new product page and have them displayed on the new 4'' iphone. By the way, Apple stated many users prefer the smaller screen.

And Ric is right, as usual, sellers items will now be totally invisible.

Buyers will only see new and of course all items from China.  

by: fAlken

I have had decent sales the last few days, perhaps it was do to this new change.  But I do not believe for one second that was intentional, it was a side effect to this new change because my product doesn't have much competition.   There is no doubt in my mind that this is a way to guarantee higher sell thru rates to larger sellers under contract.  In order to insure a sell thru rate for popular products, you hide some and funnel the sales in the direction you want them to go.  Before the idiots from Bain ruined the site, most of us had a 100% sell thru rate!  That's not BS, sell thru rates were insanely high compared to everywhere else.  I absolutely believe that traffic is still there but we don't see it since it is directed to their contract sellers that have guaranteed sell thru rates.  This company really is decietful to the largest portion of their customers, it's a shame and there's not a thing any of us can do about it.  I hate that I depend on them to survive....

by: Will

It's not about wading through "unwanted" pages. It's about eBay not following through, and letting choice sellers (Chinese, namely) have duplicate listings. If eBay simply adhered to policies (it's funny how they pick and choose what is to be adhered to), there would be less clutter.

by: comments

I can only imagine the chaos and businesses this failure in the making trial will cause to go belly up.

We will do a search on ebay and see only the cheap china crap and the American products will be hidden in search.

Collectable searches will show cheaper low grade junk in favor of higher priced better condition ones.

Electronics will show no name crap instead of Branded products.

Oh wait didn't this already happy when they started with "best match"?

Oh yea so lets expand on an already bad idea to take the premium results out.

by: pace306

As everyone else said .....

As long as ALL sellers are shown, they can redesign listings in any fashion they choose.

However this is eBay - a company known for its sheer lack of honesty (and thats being polite about it), and its reputation for being a "PAY TO PLAY" environment.

Between eBays past dealings, and its current TOS (we can charge you but wont tell you when/how often/if at all we will show your item(s)) they both indicate that they are incapable of being forthright and above board, so ... "who gets to be shown where and when"?

Who gets shown on the top line?

Does that placement indicate (to buyers) that the people on top/first ones shown are "the best"?

Will it separate new from used?

Will it separate US based sellers from overseas ones?

Right now, there are too many unanswered questions to make a true judgement call - but this is eBay - the company with 5 billion dollars hidden offshore that they refuse to repatriate - stolen from sellers via themselves and Paypal - so I wont beholding my breathe waiting for a truthful answer.

by: JQ

I am immediately completely skeptical that this change will improve eBay.

Every time eBay says they are adding one more layer of manipulation to product searches I have learned from years of past experience they are not helping shoppers find the item that best matches their search criteria, rather they are being shown items that eBay would most prefer they buy.

Inevitably when eBay manipulates search results items in Diamond (huge accounts) seller's inventories are promoted, and items in smaller seller's inventories are demoted or completely hidden.

As a general rule of thumb, every time eBay says it is tweeking its inventory search algorithms the result in all likelihood will be bad for shoppers and small sellers.  

by: beuler

Years  of Listing promos x  multiple seller ids x years of accumulation = flooded categories of identical widgets. Categories ballooning from 1500 items to 40,000+ in just a few short years. Think of all the ebay 'fixes' since then, Cassini, cant-see-me policy updates, latest 'its what buyers ask for' adjustment to the search.. all to fix a problem created by ebay promos.  

by: NukaCola

From a buyer perspective, this would be a horrible change. In my niche I have to be able to see all items otherwise I will miss certain listings. The default search on ebay.com should be for ''US only'', not China-HongKong-Taiwan. If consumers want that kind of stuff, they should be able to find it, but make default searches ''US only''.

by: mcposty

Whats even more overwhelming is buyers searching for something but instead get 40 pages of Chinese junk.

by: beuler

Its straight up mass flooding of the categories (not china), now addition of "Shop by Brand" at the top of every page.. if your not one of those brands your done, its not china its ebay.