eBay Review Ratings… they’re a good thing yes? If you have a ton of great eBay Review Ratings it instills confidence in buyers and gives you a great chance of winning a sale?
Well not if they display incorrectly they don’t. Mark of Dangleberry Music pointed to me to search result where eBay display just 2 Review Ratings both Five Stars for one of his products.
It all looks pretty good until you visit the actual listing and discover that this particular product has received not just two, but 27 Five Star ratings.
Where have the missing 25 ratings gone to one wonders? Could this be an isolated case? It would appear that it’s most certainly not a one off incident as we looked further down the list of search results and found this listing with 5 Review Ratings but sadly only Four Stars.
Now if this is your listing (User ID effects_pedal_power_supplies), we will totally excuse you for hitting the roof and going ballistic. You see when we click through to your product listing we discover that not only do you have 12 Review Ratings but they average out to a Five Star rating! Yes eBay are telling buyers that you are selling a Four Star product but your buyers have given you a Five Star rating.
What’s going on with eBay Review Ratings in search results?
This could of course be a plain and simple SNAFU or there could be some desperately complicated way that eBay decide which ratings to show on the search results page. Either way we don’t think it’s very good – if a product has a Five Star Review Rating then it should display as Five Stars in search results. If a product has 27 Review Ratings then it should display 27 and not just 2.
Have you checked your products – are you seeing misleading displays of eBay Review Ratings in search results?
11 Responses
This isn’t a new problem. Reviews have been consistently glitchy from day one but the most recent issue of reflecting only a handful of reviews in search (if indeed it is reflecting related reviews at all) has been happening for at least 5 weeks. That’s how long ago I wasted 20 minutes on the phone to CS anyway…. nice to see It being treat as an issue now. When I brought it up on the powerseller board there wasn’t much interest… hopefully now tamebay have brought it to light it might be taken seriously..
I noticed the same thing a couple of months ago on hundreds of listings. It’s not just this seller. Here’s a rather appropriate listing displaying just 1 review but click on it & see 364.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Renova-3Ply-Rose-Macadamia-Lotion-Skincare-Pink-Toilet-Tissue-Roll-60-Rolls-/201936524746?epid=1042409514&hash=item2f045ad5ca:g:D~sAAOSwAQBZtqvW
I have an open ticket with concierge, the data team, reviews team and I have even messaged David Wenig (and have received responses from his team) on his Facebook team.
From what I can gather this has happened. Google didn’t like eBay having multiple results in shopping for the same item so they asked eBay to make 1 page per product identifier (grouped search). eBay have asked all sellers to get product identifiers to keep their good till cancelled listings live but they have copied other sellers instead of getting their own.
Personally I have lost nearly 1000 reviews on 50 listings and lost £15k of sales.
From what I can gather the reviews are directly liked to an epid (eBay product identifier). This is an umbrella identifier and affected by EAN, MPN, brand and maybe image and other item specifics.
When sellers are copying your above elements for other incorrect listings the structured data seems to have been corrupted.
I have many videos on this on YouTube (search eBay missing reviews on LUPOSTORE).
I implore everyone to contact eBay concierge and normal support and informing them you have this issue and that it is the same issue as lupo-store
As a result of this the search algorithm has reverted back to how it was 18 months ago (pre reviews) and the cheapest is at the top with a monopoly.
This is not good for eBay as only few winners and lots of losers but my guess is they had to rush in the grouped search to stay in Google’s good books, something has gone massively wrong and we are all collateral damage in this.
yep i love some of the reviews i see…..
‘ was blue but didnt go as well as expected with my existing blue’ – 2 stars
‘wouldn’t work on 240v’ – 1 star ( item clearly stated 120v only in several places)
‘courier was a day late delivering so missed my deadline, – 1 star
I see loads like this all the time, people just dont understand any kind of feedback request. late delivery, didnt read the description and the fact it didnt colour match like you expected are not product reviews!!!
I made a long reply from my phone but not sure it went through but I will try again and if the other one re-appears sorry for the duplication.
My guess is Google do not like eBay having multiple results in Google Shopping so they asked eBay to make grouped listings ‘or else’. eBay have complied but because lots of people are using product identifiers to pass off inferior items as superior ones its caused confusion.
I have a support ticket with Concierge since Sept 3 on this. I have lost 1000 reviews on 50 listings. Most are visible on the product but not in search but about 300 have been lost altogether. The structured data and reviews teams are working on this but have not found a resolution in weeks.
My guess is they have rushed this in and it’s caused mayhem. As you say SNAFU.
It’s lost me £15k in sales to date and I have even taken to corresponding with David Wenig on his Facebook page.
This will only be resolved when enough sellers complain to eBay
There are loads of glitches across the site at the minute. Listing won’t open in messages either on email or ebay messages and you have to go search for the listing in active listing when a buyer sends you a question. Often buyers feedback shows as 0 in till you click on it and they have loads of feedback. Recently had a problem with guest buyers on Shuttle as it was not always printing labels.
No doubt there are countless other glitches across the site.
Always say get the little things right to make the big things happen. Brilliant basics.
Concierge have been trying to get this resolved. They have replied this morning stating the Structured Data Team are giving this issue priority to be resolved. Thanks to this article I have managed to push this to top brass in Dublin and hopefully it will be resolved swiftly.