eBay Guides are being removed from the eBay marketplace website. They have already been prevented from being seen by Google and the other search engines but between now and the 12th April, they will be entirely erased.
If, in the past, you wrote an eBay Guide, you should have received an email from eBay advising you that you can still save your contribution and maybe even, as they suggest, publish them on a platform such as WordPress, so it’s still available to readers. Estimates say there were as many as 400k eBay Guides and over time they attracted 1 billion page views.
An eBay Guide was a text piece, written by an eBay user, that explored an area relevant to shoppers using eBay. Often related to collectables or antiques, the guides were interesting overviews related to items for sale on eBay. Here’s an example of such a guide: 10 Vintage Toys You Probably Owned That Are Now Worth A Fortune.
eBay Guides were introduced more than a decade ago for a number of reasons. In the glorious age of user generated content (UGC) and Web 2.0, it was evangelised that written copy from real people was a boon for SEO and generated valuable search engine traffic. The notion of community was cherished and people liked to do good things to help other people. And, in a less selfless positioning, eBay pushed guides as a way to give merchants prominence and drive traffic to listings.
So they suggested it was a good thing that you share your expertise and enchant readers who would then check out your sales and buy. The eBay Guides would improve trust levels and you’d clinch more sales, or that was the pitch. But that was never really never proven. And now it seems like Promoted Listings are the preferred means eBay wants to push.
And so now eBay Guides are going, not many tears will be shed. But it does beg a question about other eBay UGC contributions, such as eBay Collections. Are the days numbered for them too?
4 Responses
or in other words, self congratulating, self appointed expert smart arse know alls
Its just another example of eBay interferring in people’s lives and thinking they know best. In their eyes its just not feasible that us plebs can acually do something useful for ourselves with their say so.
“And now it seems like Promoted Listings are the preferred means eBay wants to push. ”
Yes, the ones where you give ebay even more money, are the ones ebay wants to push.
why am i not surprised?
there’s another thread on here asking “can ebay become the everything shop sellers need?”, i think that question really answers itself, without the need for ebay to stick their fingers up at the notion
In fairness to eBay(!) Those guides date back to a time when search technology wasn’t so good and there wasn’t much in the way of social networks.
These days it’s much easier to find relevant information and search the product information you need.
As for eBay pushing promoted listings it does suck. I for one hate having to pay on top of the standard fees plus the eBay shop I have that gone up in price not so long ago. Exposure will go to the highest bidder Google style, but if it’s so much so then it’s a simple case of working out if your eBay fees would be best spend on AdWords.
On a side note a lot of used tat now changes hand on Facebook as there’s always free local groups which are errrrrr local and free.