Is there something wrong with eBay UK search today?

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We’ve received several emails today at Tamebay about eBay search. All the emails describe slightly different problems but a sudden flurry of incoming mail on the same topic is usually evidence that something is awry.

The most notable problem reported was that the filter on search that gives UK based items prominence isn’t working, meaning that items from overseas were getting an equal chance of eyeballs on eBay.co.uk. Now, I’ve not been able to replicate that

Search is vital to sellers: it’s how you’re found. So if something is wrong it’s big news.

Have you noticed anything odd with Search these past few days?

48 Responses

  1. eBay seem to have introduced collections to the home page today (for me at least), it seems every time they introduce a new feature it knocks onto adversely affect something else, so my money is on that as the culprit. i’ll also place a side bet on eBay denying all knowledge of anything whatsoever, if its still going on tomorrow they will stop denying and acknowledge awareness, and by friday “an engineer” will have been looking into it since before the problem even existed.

  2. Hi Dan,

    My money is on enabling ‘collections’ as well.

    Collections originated on .com and so the majority of currently live items involve .com items.

    For these to show eBay will have had to overide site search filters.

    If you want to check this further here is a link to ‘trending collections’.

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/cln

    If you start there, browse a couple of collections and then re-check your filters you may see this in action.

    Whatever the cause of the issue it is totally disruptive

  3. We’ve had a horrendously slow week; particularly today…….only 2 sales from UK buyers which is VERY unusual. I too think that every time eBay tweaks something they worsen the chances of us having sales. I have been complaining for MONTHS that many of my customers say THE SHOPPING BASKET DOES NOT WORK……reported it more times than I care to say………………nothing is fixed, eBay gets more and more broken. If this continues, even after building up a business on eBay for 13+ years I might have to rethink the rest of my working life! eBay I am certain thinks we will put up with all their trivial nonsense BUT one day we’ll all of had more than we can take!

  4. Follow these simple rules to get to the top of ebay search –

    1) Be a Chinese seller with lots of pictures of UK flags and other misleading info in your listing.

    2) Totally ignore any recommendations re: Ebay picture standards.

    3) Do not pay any taxes or register for VAT even when turning over 100,000’s

  5. Is there something wrong with eBay UK search today?

    Was ebay search ever right?

  6. same goes for me, ebay sales have been awful. time to think if all the messing around for ebay is actually worth it, as always ebay ,,the company that fails to listen,,unless your a buyer.

  7. Our eBay sales have been more than slow since last week. We have been selling on eBay for 3 years, and now on Amazon for only 3 weeks. Sales on eBay have gone from 20 – 30 a day to 1 or 2 a day, Amazon sales have been 4 time this amount. Just seems when I search for our products on eBay ( Ladies Clothing ) I get clocks, and all other stuff, and the Hong Kong seller are always at the top of any search.

    We also noticed that using 2 computer running the same OS and Browser, We are seeing not just different items in search, but different looking item listing pages. On my computer it looks like the US eBay listing page, on my partner computer it shows the normal looking UK eBay page. On my computer it shows “Save sellers to favorites, on my partner computer it shows “Follow this seller” Really odd.

  8. Location filters are having an effect this morning. But I think that eBay are currently fiddling with the filters. I will check the same searches again later.

    A large search gave the following results:

    on eBay UK: 650,451
    UK only: 643,867
    EU: 2,787,427
    WW: 1,901,598

    Something is clearly botched if there are more items from EU than are listed WW! From historical data, I would have expected ‘on eBay UK’ to be around 1,250,000.

  9. There’s something wrong with using ‘worldwide’ that’s for sure – I search for something and select worldwide and get around 10 results, switch back to UK only and get 244 results

  10. The last few days have been very slow for me too both on UK Sales but also on Global Sales which is generally my biggest selling area.
    February was a great month, close to revenues from December but I can also confirm that March is extremely slow

  11. Things have progressively worsened over the last 12 months, I have a quarter of the page views I had before, less bids and poorer end prices. Now that can’t be right and it all stems from the new Cassini search being installed.

  12. For us, the mid to end of February was extremely poor.
    Though, it did pick up when people had been paid.
    This month does seem slow.

    eBay do seem to be messing around with changes and what not at the minute.

  13. Yes, noticed it yesterday. Items in US appearing top of search results even when ‘UK only’ turned on. Seems fixed now.

  14. YES, there is an issue and this type of problem is becoming more frequent.

    I did a search yesterday and selected the “Items located in UK only” filter but still got 100’s of results from China.

    Last week for two consecutive days I received ZERO search result emails. This has happened several times before. I notice technical issues with the site pretty much every week (mostly they are very minor but still something is not functioning correctly) and these issues are always following some type of change which is nearly always valueless. Eventually it gets fixed but I am not an eBay Beta tester and I resent being used as one. I expect the site to work correctly and given the amount of fees I pay eBay (eBay have increased my charges by over 20% in this past year) I believe I have a right to expect a high standard of service.

    Maybe if the eBay web team stopped fixing/playing with things that don’t need changing we would see a site that functions with greater consistency and reliability.

    I’m sure eBay would call these so called changes “improvements” but that’s not how it looks as a user. My guess is that the web development team do these continuously random and mostly pointless changes to the site (nearly every change initially causes some type of a problem) to justify the employment of their probably overstaffed (and possibly overpaid) web development team.

    Let’s face it, if they stopped messing with the site it would work better. This however would mean a load of people sitting around doing nothing which would then raise the obvious question of why shell out so much salary on a load of people doing nothing, which would doubtless lead to a few people loosing their jobs. IMO this would actually be a good thing! Instead we have a team of people creating work to justify their employment. If they did a good job I would not care but they don’t. I actually doubt senior management have any clue about this – they probably don’t know anything about web development so when it comes to anything technical management are probably totally out of their depth.

    As the old saying goes “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

  15. I’m looking for a “torque wrench” on eBay, there are 7500+ listed but if I refine the search to ‘ending soonest’ there are 0! they have DEFINITELY mucked up the search function somehow.

  16. The client I am with today has had an unusual spike in sales. Wednesday/Thursdays are normally low days but are being very good this week. Swings and roundabouts 🙂

  17. Ditto. Averaging £700 a day until yesterday. ONE sale yesterday. Nothing so far today either and now 1:15pm.

    Did a search check on ebay france and italy and found my items not showing up, then showing up, then not. I also found USA items showing up in the “UK only” filter.

    As for “collections” what marketing clown convinced ebay anyone gives a toss for such pretentious nonsense. Particularly to effectively take over the entire site layout!

    As said by numerous well informed members above, we don’t pay ebay fees to be beta test guinea pigs. We pay for exposure, promotion and access to a customer base.

    If a landlord bricked up our front door and window we would rightly sue. Ebay for some reason thinks their site is one big playground, rather than the lifeblood of thousands of businesses.

    Wanna play with your site? Buyout ebid or someone and do it, don’t take my money and stick it back up our backsides because honestly, we really really resent it.

  18. Liz, I am very pleased for your client.

    I have just repeated the search that I carried out earlier today.

    07.50
    on eBay UK: 650,451
    UK only: 643,867
    EU: 2,787,427
    WW: 1,901,598

    13.25
    on eBay UK: 23,410
    UK only: 693,238
    EU: 3,033,339
    WW: 3,358,077

    Remember ‘on eBay UK’ is the default UK search!
    Quite definitely all screwed up.

    Dan, what does eBay say?

  19. eBay have been in touch to say two things:

    – There was a search bug, but it has been fixed. (They haven’t advised when)

    – That bug was nothing to do with the roll out of Collections.

    Dan

  20. Gary – what made you choose Shopfactory?

    After 7 years on ebay i feel they are taking the mick and we need to look at selling under our own steam. we are turning over about £15k per month and do sell all over the world.

    I have started to look at shops and there is so many and so many views . thanks for any info from any one who can advise

  21. Bingo, like a plug being released have sold £700 since 7pm across 14 items last night having done zero for 2 whole days.

    But thats 2 days (weds, thurs) sales lost that will never get back. To add onto the growing list of technical issues (accidental and deliberate) they have caused in the past 12 months.

    Once again demonstrating ebay is as an informed business choice as putting your business money on black at the casino where the wheel is also rigged.

    I give up……….

  22. I know that my volumes are a lot smaller than most of the others who post on tamebay. But I have had my best week ever this week. Mind you it has been helped by a New Book being published on Monday and I had it listed and it seems that everybody else missed it. So I picked up a lot of sales that normally I would not have had. Yet even taking that out of the calculation I had a good week.

    I can only guess that its the old swings and roundabouts and just for a change they were moving in my favour. Probably this coming week will be a disaster for me.

  23. Well my listings today are showing “fast and free” badge despite being 2 day dispatch and 48hr courier.

    Other listings on ebay france and italy are not showing at all with a competitors identical item getting top billing there. Any single variation of words in the title has the item visible and then invisible in searches despite the first 2 words remaining constant.

    Once again we are paying for listings and not receiving the representation to the marketplace charged for.

    Once again, no sales.

    We are now verging on a perfect storm as a business with bills falling overdue as a result of a March collapse.

    We are maybe a few weeks away from closing our doors for good after almost a decade due to continual technical glitches, deliberate throttling and unauthorised clandestine manipulation of our listings by incompetent clowns.

    Mr Icahn, please put these incompetent ignorant muppets out of a job before they put my employees out of theirs through no fault of their own or ours.

  24. Just checked at 12:49am Saturday and agree with all of this. Fast and Free showing on listings for delivery on Thursday. Search on overseas ebay is random and not meaningful with unusual priorities given that are not helpful for buyers. Buyers will open cases and defects will result on the back of ebay’s deliberate acts of sabotage.

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