eBay have acquired Cargigi a of online advertising and marketing services for the automotive industry. eBay will use Cargigi’s technology to help onboard auto dealers’ inventory onto eBay.com.
Cargigi has an inventory tool as well as classified ads posting capability to many major classified listing sites and has evolved into a support platform for major automotive classified websites globally. There’s no news in the announcement as to whether support of non-eBay classified website support will continue.
Cargigi will replace eBay’s Dealer Center aiming to provide sellers with the tools needed to streamline and enhance the vehicle selling process. The addition of Cargigi will also enable eBay to build out its structured data capabilities for the vehicles industry.
The structured data is the key to the eBay announcement, eBay’s SEO efforts have suffered in recent years and the marketplace is aiming to reinvent itself with catalogue information which is search engine friendly, hence their huge push for sellers to compete Item Specifics and Product Identifiers.
Another indication that eBay is getting serious about their SEO is their recent resurrection of product reviews after ditching them 10 years ago.
Motors are one of the areas eBay wins over their chief rival Amazon, while you can buy car parts on Amazon you can’t buy cars. That makes it a key differentiator and attracts a set of motorhead buyers to eBay that won’t shop on Amazon.
Jay Hanson, VP of merchandising of hard goods at eBay said “With Cargigi’s state-of-the-art technology, our eBay Motors dealers will be able to easily grow and manage their business, and, importantly, create the best shopping experience for buyers”.
