EventHorizon1984 Blog Log

Google - Important Information about Your Account Display Name

Okay.  Who's Running The Store At Google Base?
EventHorizon1984
10 January 2009  (updated 12 January 2009)

If you are one of the hundred of thousands who use Google Base to advertise products, you probably got the email below.

Dear Merchant:

Thank you for your participation in Google Product Search. We noticed that your display name (Edited Out) appears to either contain errors or not conform with our Editorial Guidelines. Please go to http://www.google.com/base/settings to review your display name. Here are some tips to ensure that your display name is correctly formatted:

• Enter the name of your store without any additional text. You do not need to include \Inc.,\ \Co.,\ \GmbH,\ etc.
• Enter your website address only if you're the only store on that website. If you do this, make sure it matches your actual website domain and don't include \http://\. If you're a marketplace seller that shares a website address with other sellers, simply use your unique store name instead.
• Ensure that you've correctly spelled your store's name.
• Avoid unnecessary use of the following:
  • promotional text (e.g., phone numbers, marketing messages, sale announcements);
  • repeated and unnecessary use of punctuation, capitalization, or symbols (e.g., spelling your store name in ALL CAPS);
  • copyright and trademark symbols; and
  • offensive or inappropriate language.

Finally, note that Product Search truncates display names longer than 20 characters.

Please note that if you do not update your display name, we may update it to comply with the above guidelines. For more information on how to format your display name for Google Product Search, or if you believe you've received this message in error, please visit http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=106840

Sincerely,

The Google Product Search Team

It appears a significant number of Google Base users, received this email perhaps in error.

We would be VERY interested in knowing why this happened, and what new measures Google is trying to enforce. 

If you have received the above email, consider sending a response to Google via the link below.

http://base.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=displayname

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P.S.  Event Horizon (Hawaii), aka "Event Horizon 1984" aka "EventHorizon1984" aka "Event Horizon Hawaii" celebrates it's 25th business anniversary this month.  As our company name and service marks pre-date Google's existence, where did we go wrong Google? 

P.P.S.  Yes, we also pre-date the film.

P.P.P.S.  Yes, most of us enjoyed the movie.

"I created the Event Horizon to reach the stars, but she's gone much, much farther than that. She tore a hole in our universe, a gateway to another dimension. A dimension of pure chaos. Pure... evil. When she crossed over, she was just a ship. But when she came back... she was alive! Look at her, Miller. Isn't she beautiful?"
Dr. William Weir, Event Horizon (1997)

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//  Google Responds 12 January 2009
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Jena
Google Employee
9:07 AM
 Jena (Google Employee) says this answers the question:

Hello Google Base Users,

As you've all been made aware, we've incorrectly sent an email regarding Google Base account display names to a number of content providers. At this time, you may feel free to ignore this notification. We're currently investigating the cause of this error. Once the issue has been resolved, we will resend any notifications only to those accounts that do need to make changes to their display names.

To ensure your display name adheres to our guidelines, please review http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?&answer=106840

We apologize for any confusion.

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http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/base/thread?tid=3e3d8e4fe99bbd6c&hl=en

Google Help > Google Base > Discussions > Submitting Your Content > not conform with our Editorial Guidelines

Question: not conform with our Editorial Guidelines

gcr
Level 1
3:20 PM
What is with the e-mail I got from Google Base? it says that my company name "Geisha Coffee Roaster" doesn't conform with their Editorial Guidelines. That is the name of the company. The name came from the most expensive coffee in the world "Geisha Coffee" produced in Panama, and yes we sell it and roast it!

What is up with Google? Then there is no-reply in the e-mail, so go figure...

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

-pat

All answers

ktb6915
Level 1
3:26 PM
I got a similar email (subject: "Important Information about Your Account Display Name")

"....We noticed that your display name (____________________) appears to either contain errors or not conform with our Editorial Guidelines...."

The company name used in this case is also legitimate. It seems to be a mistake. I followed the link on one of their support pages to apply for something like a display name exemption??.   

mygarter
Level 1
3:47 PM
I got the same notice this evening.  I submitted the form from the guidelines page telling them I belive it was in error.  Meanwhile, when I logged into my settings, I tried to make a change to my Description and upon hitting "Save" I was shown an error that states the URL I entered is already in use with another Google Base account.   How do we go about getting further support from Google?

ChippiesAvalanche
Level 1
3:52 PM
i too got one of those guideline emails.

my display name is

ChippiesAvalanche

my companies name is ChippiesAvalanche.

i dont have any llcs, any gmbhs etc, i dont have any punctuation or any thing else in the display name, just ChippiesAvalanche.

im confused...

help!

michael   

Celebird
Top Contributor
3:52 PM
1 person says this answers the question:

the url already in use error is most probably a separate issue --
please use the separate contact-us form link found on this page:
http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=25191   

Celebird
Top Contributor
4:01 PM
1 person says this answers the question:
the display-name used can be legitimate and still violate google-base guidelines --
e.g. names sounding like advertisements or approaching trademark infringement.

if you believe your display-name meets all google-base guidelines
and haven't received direct email from google-base you can use the
'contact-us' link at the bottom of this page to contact google directly:
http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=106840

   

Oman
Level 1
4:02 PM
We got the same notification regarding our base account information.  At first I thought it was some kind of phish email. 

The business name that we registered with our secretary of state is Myfootshop.com.  Myfootshop.com is the name used on business cards, stationary and customer receipts.  We use the .com to denote that we have no brick and mortar side to our store. 

Is the use of .com in a business name confusing to Google?  We replied as requested on the contact form, but after review of our account information, that little ditty is the only bit of information that may seem unique in our account.
References:
[1]   
Myfootshop.com(Web)
www.myfootshop.com

   

mygarter
Level 1
4:11 PM
I too have "dot com" in my name for the same reason.  Our name is trademarked with the US Trademark office in this manner.  I have submitted the form suggested.  Has anyone else run into the "URL already registered" problem too?  I only notice it when trying to save my account information.  My URL has been in use with my Google account for some time now. I've submitted that form as well.

M

   

brightpenguin
Level 1
4:32 PM
It's disgusting that they choose to send these notices out to my sites on the weekend when I am trying to enjoy some time off.  In return, they waste my additional weekend time searching around for contact information.  They cast stones and then hide behind the wall, very disappointing.

   

Celebird
Top Contributor
5:13 PM
i received the notification also; so it might do well
to wait and see if someone at google replies here.

that's not to suggest i'm not in violation.

   

rrras420
Level 1
5:16 PM
Does google have anything better to do with their time. I have had my same name Reneesatticcollectibles for many years on Ebay and over 1 year on ioffer. What is their problem? I do not see anything wrong with it. They need to get a life.

   

ChippiesAvalanche
Level 1
5:19 PM
Greetings!

i wondered about the trademark stuff myself, but i have been using ChippiesAvalanche since 1998, and every time i google my company name, the ONLY thing that comes up is MY stuff,

today, i googled and got...

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,010 for ChippiesAvalanche. (0.25 seconds)

all of these links lead to me.  there is no other ChippiesAvalanche.

so i am still confused.

also, i didnt get any notice about "url already in use error" or have any errors come up when i save my info. and the url i have is my data feed for ebay, (just like 30,000+ other ebay members)

http://esssl.ebay.com/GetListings/chippiesavalanche?fmt=g

in fact, the url was set up specifically by ebay FOR google to use for the store connector and the active feeds.

:)

so still confused about my display name.

michael

   

ChippiesAvalanche
Level 1
5:21 PM
Greetings!

celebird - "i received the notification also; so it might do well
to wait and see if someone at google replies here.

that's not to suggest i'm not in violation"

you got one too?

whoops...ehehehe

im guessing someone at google changed something in their algorithms and didnt check to see what the results would be...

:)

michael

   

mombulldog
Level 1
5:23 PM
I got a notice this evening saying there might be a problem with my name, Funkarelics. I've been connected to the Googlebase store connecter for almost two years with this name and not had any issues. I can't understand why the name would set off any alarms now. As far as I can tell, it's within the guidelines. I sent an email to the Google contact provided, and hope to recieve an answer soon.

   

Sharon B
Level 1
5:24 PM
I got the same notice, and it looks like I have 23 characters in my display name instead of 20 as the guidelines want to see.  (And I noticed the originator of this thread has the same problem.)   It says they will truncate the name (which they already appear to be doing) when it is displayed.  But I have submitted my feed and used this name for 3 years now ...

So I'm wondering if this will cause a problem in SEO or if I can just leave it.

   

mygarter
Level 1
6:26 PM
I'm thinking that they made some updates, changes, etc. and somehow a bunch of notices could have been sent in error.  We'll just have to see what they say when they repond to the help requests posted.  Searching the Forum, I don't see any other topics on this issue posted in the past and it's a bit odd that there are so many questioning it just tonight.  I'm going to hang tight. It could be just a glitch.

M

   

Thoughts
Level 1
6:47 PM
I also received the notice, read the rules, counted my characters-- Thoughts of Home, checked everything, however, I have a trademark/servicemark on my name Thoughts of Home. Perhaps that is the reason, but I am the owner of the mark so it should be fine to use it. My URL for the website is different than the display name   Tohomeshop.com so I wonder if that is the problem.

They say that they will truncate names longer than 20 characters so I imagine it will affect your SEO.

   

bluepennylady
Level 1
6:52 PM
Hi, all,

I received the same email.  IN fact over half the sellers using google base on the Bonanzle discussion board received the notification.  I have had a google base account since almost day one using my display name as it is right now, never an issue.  I am at a loss as to why my display name would be incorrect now.

I am beginning to think google may have had a glitch in their email system perhaps sending out hundreds of emails in error....

Judy
bluepennylady

   

Zane's Closet
Level 1
8:10 PM
Yup, got one too, under the name you see here.  I figured it was the apostrope, but, hey, that's the name of the store.  It would be a pretty sad fact to learn that Google couldn't handle apostrope or punctuation in their system....

   

Jen Hintz Yarn Arts
Level 1
8:23 PM
I got the message too.  I use the same name for that as I am using here, and it's 19 characters so that can't be the problem; It's also my own business name, so I can't see that being a problem.

I tried to use the "if you believe you've received this message in error" link at the end of the email, but it does not work, which made my stomach turn because I was afraid I'd fallen for a phishing scam.  Is there really no other way to contact Google about this?

   
rebekahsbowtique
Level 1
1/11/09
I got the same email. Mine stated that my display name Rebekahs Bowtique appears to either contain errors or does not conform with our Editorial Guidelines. I clicked the links in the email to find they were wrong links...nothing came up. I then went into a different page to sign into google and checked everything on the list and nothing seems out of place or wrong. I will just wait. Not sure what it is talking about ~

   
SimplySmitten
Level 1
1/11/09
We too received the same email from Google. Display name is SimplySmitten.com and have been using since day one with no changes or updates being made to it. Will be happy to change if do not comply, but unable to determine what it is we need to change. Our store name is SimplySmitten.com and in reviewing the guidelines, it appears to meet all listed. Can only imagine this email was sent in error or at least we hope so. I wouldn't worry too much about it at the moment, something seems to be off.

   
MaxMuhlin
Level 1
1/11/09
I received 10 of the email notifications after uploading my monthly feed for my 10 CafePress shops yesterday!  Following the email link, I did respond with my "justification".  Now we wait.  Upon learning that so many of you have received the same notification, I am somewhat relieved.  My sales show a definite dearth when I foolishly allow my Google Base feed to lapse without a new upload, so I am hopeful that this situation will be resolved.

   
cjbeez
Level 1
1/11/09
same email here... waiting for answers....

   
adele57
Level 1
1/11/09
I also received the email, but when I checked on my items which are on automatic upload, they are no longer there.  They were due for another upload on the 14th but are not on my base at all.  I googled my number one item and it never showed in the listing, my name still does though.  I have used Del's Delights since I started on Froogle before they even became Google base and never had a problem before.  I am hoping they get this straightened out and things work right again.  I keep wondering how many sales I lost because this just cam e to light and I have no idea how long my items have not been listed.  Base said they were uploaded 12/14/08 so they should have still been good, we will see.

   
adele57
Level 1
1/11/09
Well the manual upload failed.   Just checked and it said failed, bit I noticed the expiration date was last year so I changed it and tried again.  Will keep you updated

   
adele57
Level 1
1/11/09
Ok, changing the date worked for me, my items are listed again.  Still not sure about the email, but others might have the same problem with the expiration date that I did.

   
mjlarkin
Level 1
1:41 AM
1 person says this answers the question:

We run a Google Base Syncing site (http://synctobase.com) and received an email for each of our clients (over 300).  Clearly something is wrong on Google's end, because some of our clients have been with us for over a year with no problems.

I'm guessing some unlucky coder made a mistake!

   
al14
Level 1
1:50 AM
The comment about getting the "URL I entered is already in use" when saving the profile got me thinking. I had a lot of trouble uploading a few years ago when Google started integrating all its logins and more or less tried to drive everyone to gmail. As a result of fooling around trying to fix the problem I end up with two google base accounts, one under my gmail name and one under my business domain email account. Luckily I still know both passwords. I just logged into the inactive account, changed the display name to something irrelevant and erased the URL. After doing that, I could save the active profile without getting the "URL I entered is already in use" message -- and without changing my display name. Anybody else have duplicate inactive accounts out there?

   
rivertonstudios
Level 1
4:00 AM
I just wanted to throw in that this happened to me this morning too.  My display name is Riverton Studios.  Google must have changed something, because we all are experiencing the same problem.

   
andrea313
Level 1
7:05 AM
I got the same email. I had an apostrophe in my name, so removed it & got the error about the url already in use. So I removed the URL & tried editing my name again, and it worked. My name is still too long (>20 chars), but it shows up in the searches, so I'll leave it & let them truncate it...

   
RobL
Level 1
8:10 AM
I also received an email noting that my "display name (The StreamStone Shop) appears to either contain errors or not conform with our Editorial Guidelines," but "The StreamStone Shop" has 20 characters and nothing that seems out of conformance with guidelines. Mysterious. I've used the Help page's form to request clarification. Reassuring, in a way, to see so many of us were hit by this today....

Do you think this answers the question? Sign in to vote. Report abuse
   
taogem
Level 1
1/11/09
I also received the same. Previously my display name was TaoGem Gemstones. After reading through the editorial guidelines the only things I could think of was to get rid of the capital G in TaoGem and loose the word "Gemstones" as perhaps they looked at it as a promotional type text/word.

So I changed the display name to a simple Taogem.  Then today I received the exact same email suggesting still in violation somehow.

I did use the contact link, so hopefully will hear back with some more specific reason as to why the word Taogem is a problem.
   
sddevelope
Level 1
1/11/09
I have received this mystery email also. Why are so many suddenly getting this? My company name is osha4less.com. When I first began using google base a couple of months ago, I naturally entered osha4less.com as the display name. Google had no problem with this until now.
Admittedly the display name conflicts with Editorial Guidelines (it contains '.com'). I removed the '.com'. I then received a further email from Google within hours claiming that the store name still does not conform with guidelines.
I see no reason why I should be having this issue. I also contacted Google regarding this, and urge everyone else to do the same.
   
Radwinters
Level 1
3:12 AM
I have received the same bloody email. I changed the name of my store and received the same email AGAIN. This is starting to seem pretty freaking ridiculous.
   
lahunter
Level 1
5:51 AM
Me too, got the email. I had the business name Hunter's Romantic Secrets, then I changed it to the web site address www.Romantic-Secrets.com and still got the email. Not sure what to do.
   
maggied45
Level 1
6:47 AM
I also changed the name to comply with the 20 character requirement and got another email saying the same thing.  This has got to be some kind of error, right???
   
jnall3
Level 1
8:18 AM
I have two accounts at googlebase one is Fancy Frames Boutique and the other is Better Than New Designer Boutique.  Both accounts received this same message.  I went in where they said to dispute this email and I did.  Haven't heard anything back.  Does anyone from google every get on here to answer or do we just all sit and moan and they ignore us.
   
Jena
Google Employee
9:07 AM
 Jena (Google Employee) says this answers the question:

Hello Google Base Users,

As you've all been made aware, we've incorrectly sent an email regarding Google Base account display names to a number of content providers. At this time, you may feel free to ignore this notification. We're currently investigating the cause of this error. Once the issue has been resolved, we will resend any notifications only to those accounts that do need to make changes to their display names.

To ensure your display name adheres to our guidelines, please review http://base.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?&answer=106840

We apologize for any confusion.
   
bmesc
Level 1
9:33 AM
Jena:

I was not "made aware" of this situation. I wasted time on this e-mail trying to figure it out or find an answer, but I did not get an e-mail from your company informing me there was an error.

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Google - HALLMARK CHANNEL AND GOOGLE TO FORM STRATEGIC TV ADVERTISING AGREEMENT

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20081203_hallmarkchannel.html

HALLMARK CHANNEL AND GOOGLE TO FORM STRATEGIC TV ADVERTISING AGREEMENT

Agreement Gives Advertisers Access to Hallmark Channel Family-Friendly Programming

NEW YORK & MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF., December 3, 2008 – Hallmark Channel and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today a strategic agreement to offer advertisers access to high-quality family-friendly programming through the Google TV Ads program. Advertisers will now be able to reach even more viewers by using Google TV Ads platform to place ads on both Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel. 

In November, Hallmark Channel was seen in 86 million homes across the U.S. and over the past year has consistently ranked in the top ten prime time ratings. The network will air in 2009 more than 30 original movies – its largest-ever slate.  Hallmark Movie Channel broadcasts a mix of classic theatrical films, presentations from the acclaimed Hallmark Hall of Fame library, Hallmark Channel original movies and special events.  Using the Google TV Ads platform, advertisers, starting in early 2009, will be able to access both networks' national audiences and receive viewership data at an unprecedented scale. Google TV Ads advertisers – many of them new to the television medium – can then better understand what consumers are responding to and make real-time adjustments to their campaigns to maximize return-on-investment.

“Partnering with Google is a milestone for Hallmark Channel’s continued advertising success,” said Bill Abbott, Executive Vice President, Ad Sales, Hallmark Channel.  “The Google TV Ads platform will allow more advertisers to access the network’s acclaimed roster of family-friendly programming – entertainment that audiences cherish during the holidays.”

Google TV Ads offers greater accountability and relevancy in advertising. With Google’s innovative targeting tools and auction-based pricing system, advertisers can find the right context and audience for their advertising message, only pay for impressions delivered to their ads, and receive digital reporting within 24 hours. Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel join Google TV Ads’ growing list of inventory partners, which also includes six networks from the NBC Universal family—Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth, and Chiller—along with Bloomberg Television and 96 networks through DISH Network.

“Hallmark Channel’s strong family-friendly brand and programming attracts an important viewer demographic that Google TV Ads’ advertisers can now access,” said John Saroff, Manager of Strategic Partner Development for Google TV Ads. “Combined with our platform’s measurement technology, this collaboration signifies an important step towards making television advertising more accountable for advertisers and more relevant for viewers.”

About Google Inc.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

About Hallmark Channel

Hallmark Channel, owned and operated by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., is a 24-hour basic cable network that provides a diverse slate of high-quality entertainment programming to a national audience of 86 million subscribers.  The top tier program service is distributed through more than 5,450 cable systems and communities as well as direct-to-home satellite services across the country.  Hallmark Channel consistently ranks among the top 10 ad-supported cable networks in Prime Time and Total Day household ratings and is the nation’s leading network in providing quality family programming.  Crown Media also operates a second 24-hour linear channel which plays the greatest family movies of all time, Hallmark Movie Channel, and launched Hallmark Movie Channel HD in April, 2008. For more information, visit http://www.hallmarkchannelpress.com.

Google and Google TV Ads are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.

Source: Nielsen Media Research estimates that from October 27 through November 30, 2008, Hallmark Channel was available in over 85 million homes across the U.S. and during the period from December 31, 2007 to November 23, 2008, ranked in the top ten prime time household coverage area ratings.

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Channel Register - eBay: don't come on our US site without protection

Original article:
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/09/23/ebay_payment_policy_change_us/

eBay: don't come on our US site without protection

By Austin Modine 

23 Sep 2008 22:16

Customers need to pack PayPal, credit/debit cards

Just when you think eBay is done infuriating longtime users across the world, the auction site keeps cranking out the hits.

You almost have to admire the steadfast dedication – that ability to bear 'mid now and ice, a banner with the strange device; Excelsior!

Or something to that Longfellowian effect. Point is, the bitter tears of eBay users must taste like candy to the company's board members.

This July, eBay Australia was forced to ditch its massively unpopular attempt to force virtually all payments through its subsidiary, PayPal. Not only did the policy change fuel outrage in its most established users, it even prompted Australian regulators to begin an anti-competition investigation.

Not a huge success, in other words. But eBay dutifully learned its lesson and will attempt to create a more open environ...

Just kidding. eBay now plans to ban checks and money orders as payment methods in the US. The news comes out of an FAQ update listing the change under "a more consistent buyer experience to drive more sales."

Beginning "late October 2008," checks and money orders will no longer be allowed as payment methods on eBay.com. Items can only be paid for using PayPal, Credit or debit, ProPay, or Payment upon pickup. The only exceptions to the policy change are vehicles, enterprise equipment, real estate, and "mature audiences" items.

ebay says the change will benefit sellers by providing a "consistent, more secure checkout experience." It reasons such a thing will increase buyer confidence, which will result in more sales.

The company is also now rather blunt about its policy towards third-party payment services. "Is eBay planning to eliminate third-party checkout?" the company asks itself. "Yes," it answers. "Ultimately it's eBay's goal to have buyers always pay for their purchases within the secure confines of eBay."

As for Google Checkout and Checkout by Amazon specifically:

"Google's and Amazon's products and services compete with eBay on a number of levels, so we are not going to allow them on eBay."

Although killing cash and check payments may eliminate some cases of fraud as eBay claims, it's undoubtedly no coincidence that thrusting PayPal upon users is good for the site's margins.

Not that it's a crime to make a buck – but restricting payment options is certainly an unusual way to improve a company's image. Or maybe it doesn't care.

For eBay's next act, it will drown cats. ®

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eBay News - 20 August 2008

Busy news day as eBay steamrolls out changes.

20 August 2008

Article excerpts. Follow links for full article.

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http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/newsanalysis/technet/10434072.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

eBay's Fee Change May Flummox Buyers

Pia Sarkar

08/20/08 - 02:59 PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO -- eBay(EBAY - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) has cut fixed-price listing fees by 70% in an effort to entice more sellers to the site -- but there's no guarantee that the move will attract buyers.

Sellers will now be charged a flat rate of 35 cents to list an item on the site for 30 days instead of seven days. They will also be allowed to list multiple quantities of the same item for a one-time listing fee of 35 cents. Listing fees in media categories such as movies, music, games and books will be lowered to 15 cents.

...

eBay is also jiggering the commission it charges sellers when they close a sale. Most product categories -- like computers and electronics -- will see the fee go down, however, items like books and DVDs will see an increase.

...

"Without changes to the searching technology at all, a fee change of this sort could be disastrous by flooding the site," says Brown, who has a sell rating on eBay.

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http://www.cnbc.com//id/26314989?__source=yahoo|headline|quote|text|&par=yahoo

Will eBay Users Buy the New Strategy Now?

Posted By:Jim Goldman

...

eBay

EBAY INC EBAY 24.96  -0.43  -1.69%  NASDAQ

Quote  |  Chart  |  News  |  Profile

[EBAY  24.96    -0.43  (-1.69%)   ]

announced new fee changes today, lowering the listing fee for the "Buy It Now" feature by a whopping 70 percent. Sellers can list an item for 30 days under the new plan, and it will cost them only 35 cents. The move is widely seen as a way eBay can encourage those sellers to use Buy It Now, with the hope that they'll engage in fixed-price selling instead of eBay's traditional auction method.

While the move might make it simpler for shoppers to conduct their transactions on eBay, it's yet another change for eBay listers, along with changes to the company's fee structure, feedback and search results in recent months.  Already frustrated sellers are once again subject to more changes at eBay that the company is convinced are good for the broader community at large, but some members of that community might think differently. Listings are down, and some sellers are on the wires today saying fewer of their items are selling, and those that are are selling for lower average prices.  And in fact, while eBay is dramatically lowering the listing fee for Buy It Now, it's increasing the final cut of the transaction it'll take to offset the listing fee reduction.  You can imagine how well that's going over with sellers.

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http://seekingalpha.com/article/91812-ebay-the-doldrum-years?source=yahoo

EBay: The Doldrum Years
Erick Schonfeld
August 20, 2008

Can anything put the wind back in eBay’s sails? The once-iconic auction site is making cosmetic changes to its fee structure and moving away from the auction model to emphasize more fixed-price listings. But it’s hard to get excited these days about eBay. It seems that the Web has moved on and eBay (EBAY) is stuck in still waters.

...

But now people are comfortable trawling the Net for the best bargains, and eBay is no longer the first place they go. Partly that is because eBay has done such a good job creating a semi-professional class of online sellers, that it is harder and harder to actually find bargains there. So online shoppers are going elsewhere.

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http://seekingalpha.com/article/91831-ebay-s-new-fixed-price-move-amazon-envy?source=yahoo

EBay's New Fixed-Price Move: Amazon Envy?
Larry Dignan
August 20, 2008

...

Let’s face it. This move by eBay is all about Amazon (AMZN). Amazon's fixed price structure is easier. And to be honest I have always viewed eBay as the shop of last resort (like when you can’t get your kid a hot toy because you procrastinated). I don’t have the time or inclination to monitor some auction. Give me a price and I’ll pay it or walk.

...

EBay in its statement noted that the fee reductions will set it up nicely for the holiday shopping season. The question, however, remains: Will consumers go to eBay to buy something over Amazon? Probably not.

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http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/08/20/ebays-new-changes-likely-to-irk-small-sellers/?mod=yahoo_hs

EBay’s New Changes Likely to Irk Small Sellers (Even More)
Posted by Kelly Spors
August 20, 2008, 2:18 pm

Small eBay sellers had hoped the auction site would address some of their gripes. And this morning, it did announce some changes — but they’re only likely to make some sellers angrier.

...

While the company is reducing some seller fees, it’s not addressing some of the core eBay seller gripes, as we laid out last week.

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http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/20/ebay-consumer-online-markets-equity-cx_cg_0820markets13.html?partner=yahootix

Ebay AimsTo Fix Growth
Carl Gutierrez, 08.20.08, 1:20 PM ET

Auction powerhouse Ebay is looking for growth through its fixed-price business, but it might be too late to catch up with Amazon.com.

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Ebay needs to reinvigorate growth. Ebay has been tinkering its vast Internet marketplace in hopes of turning around a troubling trend: its number of active users is barely rising. In the most recent quarter, the figure rose 1.4%, to 84.5 million.

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Wednesday's announcement wasn't well recieved by Ebay's sellers. Jonathan Garriss, executive director of the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance and head of Gotham City Online, which sells shoes on Ebay, said his group's members are seeing fewer of their listed items sell, and lower average prices for things that do sell.

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http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/ebay-cuts-deep-enough/story.aspx?guid={2857DEA9-2282-49A8-80D5-79D09719CA73}&siteid=yhoof

EBay's price cuts may not solve the problem
Commentary: Online auctioneer outgunned by Amazon's large infrastructure
By MarketWatch
Last update: 2:40 p.m. EDT Aug. 20, 2008

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But it is unclear if simply slashing listing fees will help the company overcome the advantages possessed by its main rival -- Amazon.com.

On Wednesday, eBay (EBAY 24.96, -0.43, -1.7%) initiated a hefty price cut of more than 70% on listing fees of its "Buy it Now" items, and extended the length of time the items can remain for sale on the site. This follows similar moves earlier this year as the company works to tweak its prices to what it calls a "success-based" fee structure, meaning that most of its revenue will depend on the sale of an item, not merely its listing fee

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Jim Friedland, a Cowen & Co. analyst, said that while he expects the fee changes to boost listings on eBay, the changes will not dramatically improve the company's competitive position. "Amazon offers a more compelling selling platform and buying experience," Friedland wrote. EBay is also facing competition from Google Inc. (GOOG 485.00, -5.50, -1.1%) , which allows sellers to post listings for free.

As eBay shifts more toward becoming a fixed-price site, it will become more like a standard online retailer, without the advantages. EBay's differentiator has always been its auction process and the unusual collectibles available on the site, and if that goes away, what's left to distinguish eBay from the rest of the online retailing pack?

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In fact the "demand for junk" began to wane not due to decrease in demand, but when eBay implemented IT's Best Match algorithm. Which hid collectibles and "junk".

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http://seekingalpha.com/article/91854-ebay-s-aim-at-amazon-off-target
EBay's Aim at Amazon: Off Target
by: Michael Shedlock posted on: August 20, 2008

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Demand For Junk Is Waning

It's no surprise, at least in this corner, that sales growth at eBay has slowed the most since 1998. After all, the Future Is Frugality. (And that future is Now).

Somehow eBay (EBAY) wants investors to think that it can slash fees and make up for it on the back end and/or by stealing market share from Amazon (AMZN). Is Amazon supposed to sit back and let this happen? Will lower fees even boost sales? I believe answer is no to both.

This is not the "gotta have it now" mentality of the past few years to say the least.

...

Insiders Bailing As Fast As Possible

Meg Whitman is bailing as fast as humanly possible.

 

Shareholders of eBay have lost money for three straight years, while insiders grant themselves massive amount of options, only to bail on the the second they acquire them. In one paired transaction on May 14-15 2008, Whitman made a cool $6+ million in a day.

Since January 2005, eBay has fallen from $59 to $25, a drop of 57.6%. Sadly, the stock is still massively over-priced given that it is neither a value play or a growth play. Worse yet for eBay is that consumer sentiment towards consumption has hit a secular peak. The bottom in sentiment is years, perhaps even a decade away.

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Australian Personal Computing Magazine - How eBay trashed its brand for the sake of profits

http://apcmag.com/how_ebay_trashed_its_brand_for_the_sake_of_profits.htm

How eBay trashed its brand for the sake of profits

Angus Kidman
12 June 2008, 7:17 PM (1 day ago.)

The ACCC's rejection of eBay's compulsory PayPal plans is good news for consumers, but eBay's naked grab for cash has done irrepairable damage to the entire online auction market.

As APC reported earlier today, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has decreed in a draft ruling that eBay's plans to make PayPal the only accepted payment scheme in Australia for everything except for personal pickup transactions would be a violation of competition law. eBay's argument that making PayPal the sole option would reduce fraud was given short shrift by the commission, which argued that consumers were in a better position to judge risk on individual transactions than eBay's management. While eBay can appeal the decision, with only five days until it planned to kick the plan off on June 17, its options appear somewhat limited.

eBay's scheme, first announced back in April, has always been dependent on ACCC approval, although that wasn't always apparent in its aggressive marketing of the plan. And it is that aggression which is likely to be remembered by its most loyal sellers long after the current brouhaha over its now-failed attempt dies down.

When I attended the first public meeting to promote the scheme in Melbourne last month, the thing that astonished me wasn't eBay's ridiculous description of people who rejected compulsory PayPal as akin to drug dealers. Nor was it the company's inability to acknowledge the truck-sized holes in its own security efforts. It was the fact that eBay was so willing to ignore input from loyal sellers who had invested years of effort into selling on the platform, and who knew from direct customer feedback that many people simply weren't interested in registering for PayPal, no matter how much noise was made on the topic.

eBay simply repeated its mantra that its own figures showed that PayPal was safer, no matter what individual sellers may have experienced. It's worth noting that this argument appears to have singularly failed to impress the ACCC, suggesting that the pages of data which eBay had excluded from public display in its submissions were far from convincing. Secrecy notwithstanding, its arrogance pissed people off royally, and I'm not surprised. If I was a regular eBay seller, I'd have wanted to hit somebody, fairly hard.

Almost as disturbing was eBay's unwillingness to acknowledge that if the plan went ahead, it stood to make far more money from individual transactions than is currently the case. The way eBay officials told it, this shift was a public service and money had nothing to do with it. It seems no-one believed the spin, including the ACCC.

That's good news for the many small sellers who didn't want to force their customers to use a single payment method. But it's bad news for eBay shareholders, and not just because they've lost out on a potential effort-free revenue stream from forcing people to use an eBay-owned payment method.

It's bad news because it provides a permanent and irrevocable confirmation that eBay really doesn't give a damn about any of its sellers. Long-term eBay users have long suspected this to be the case, but the PayPal push provided an absolute bucketload of evidence to demonstrate that in the word of eBay, the company comes first, second, and third. Buyers rate a passing mention, and sellers are just a conduit for cash.

That doesn't mean that sellers are going to race off to use alternatives such as the Trading Post, if only because eBay still has the bulk of the eyeballs in this market. But it has delivered a solid kick in the goolies to the concept that eBay sellers will remain loyal to the platform. Given eBay's behaviour, why on earth would they bother?

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Australian Personal Computer Magazine - eBay fails in bid to force users to use PayPal

http://apcmag.com/ebay_fails_in_bid_to_force_users_to_use_paypal.htm

eBay fails in bid to force users to use PayPal

Dan Warne
12 June 2008, 5:01 PM (22 hours 44 minutes ago.)

eBay faces prosecution under Australian competition law if it pushes ahead with plans to force users to use PayPal for online auction payments, the ACCC said today.

The competition regulator today notified eBay that it planned to reject eBay's application for immunity from competition law. eBay had applied for the exemption, arguing that by forcing users to use PayPal, it would be able to significantly cut fraud in online auctions.

However, the Australian community expressed outrage to the ACCC, with over 700 individuals lodging submissions arguing that eBay was simply trying to ramp up revenues by 'double-dipping' with both eBay auction fees and PayPal transaction fees.

Indeed, the ACCC noted a submission made by BPAY which showed eBay stood to raise its fees by 45.7% under the scheme:

"BPAY notes that the average eBay price for items in popular categories is $148.82. Using this figure as a representative sample, BPAY calculates that as a result of the notified conduct, costs for the average transaction on eBay will rise to $12.34 or 8.3% of the transaction value, as compared with a minimum of $8.47 or 5.69% of transaction value at present. This represents a 45.7% increase over current transaction costs where direct deposit is used to fund a purchase," the ACCC's report stated.

It also noted a submission from the Australian Payments Clearing Association which used eBay's own statistics to show that far from reducing fraud, PayPal is simply passing the cost of fraud on to sellers.

"APCA notes that eBay provides no evidence to suggest that the relative frequency of online fraud for PayPal online transactions is any less than found in general online transactions. According to 2007 APCA statistics, card fraud in Australia is 0.0167% of transactions. APCA contrasts this with a statement made by Daniel Feiler, media spokesperson for eBay, quoted in the on-line publication ‘The Sheet’ on 15 April 2008 saying that the incidence of fraud through PayPal now stands at 0.30% of all transactions. APCA also notes that PayPal’s buyer protection is not reducing fraud but instead is reallocating the cost of fraud from buyers to sellers."

eBay initially announced the plan on 10th April, giving users two months' notice that they would be forced to make and receive payments for eBay auctions through its subsidiary company PayPal.

In a public meeting the following month, eBay Vice President Simon Smith said users could not be trusted to select safe methods of payment for themselves. "We're not allowing people to offer unsafe choices, just like in this democracy you can't go out and buy heroin on the streets."

The ACCC addressed this point directly. "The ACCC is of the view that consumers are in the best position to determine whether, for their particular transaction, PayPal offers the best features in terms of security, fraud protection, dispute resolution and insurance, at the price offered."

The final conclusion: "The ACCC considers that the notified conduct has, or is likely to have, the effect of substantially lessening competition in the market in which PayPal operates. The ACCC also considers that the notified conduct is likely to result in reduced choice for consumers, higher transactions costs and reduced innovation in online payment systems. Therefore, the ACCC concludes that the substantial anti-competitive detriments outweigh any public benefits resulting from the notified conduct. Accordingly, the ACCC proposes to issue a notice to revoke notification N93365 lodged by eBay International A.G. on 11 April 2008."

Translation: assuming eBay doesn't produce any miraculous evidence exonerating itself before the final deadline of 26th June, it has no immunity to competition laws and if it pushes ahead with forcing its customers to use PayPal only by its announced June 17th deadline, it will most likely be prosecuted for anticompetitive conduct.

eBay's Australian spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.

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From eBay Stores Forum - ebay's Paranoia over Google Checkout gets Physical

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

FYI clact is a well known eBay Award winning seller and fervent support of eBay who provides rather sound eBay selling advice. However, only very very very rarely does he let his enthusiasm run to overflowing and unfettered.

FYI mark-your-word is a Troll.

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From eBay Stores Forum
ebay's Paranoia over Google Checkout gets Physical
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000514497&tstart=0&mod=1182373373174

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gone2deriver  (0 )        Jun-20-07 01:02 PDT
You know you have an inferior product when your Senior Vice President Chief Marketing Officer along with ebay Security thugs resort to manhandling two kid's at an ebay Live dance because one was wearing a Google sweatshirt.


You think ebay executives like Gary Briggs could spend their time trying to fix the mess that Paypal is and try to compete instead of trying to root out the Google "spies" infiltrating the performance of "Kool and the Gang".

So those of you who accept Google Checkout make sure your doors are locked tonight.... Gary may send his Thugs after you ; )

Here is the blog of the two guys booted telling their story:

http://mystorespace.blogspot.com/2007/06/mystorespace-launches-at-ebay-live-but.html

And Ina's story:

http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl.

gone2deriver  (0 ) Jun-20-07 01:28 PDT     1 of
            The Blogger's have the story.... You think a Chief Marketing Officer would know better:

http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/06/attention_mr_br.html

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chopsueysisters  (2068 ) Jun-20-07 01:50 PDT     2 of
            Let's get physical, physical!
I want to get physical
Let's get into physical!!

I'm going to sing that song all week!


I think ebay emps should search for their paycheck
See if they can find a best match that's appropriate

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wayoutwestusa2  (77 ) Jun-20-07 02:58 PDT     3 of
What woulda been hilarious - if Google woulda stood at airport and outside of convention area and given out bags like the ones Alibaba gave out last year. Thousands of ebayers carrying bags with Google logo plastered on them, wandering the halls of eBay Live

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minnymalse  (679 ) Jun-20-07 03:19 PDT     4 of
            Their storefront sounds pretty cool...

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clact  (3590 ) Jun-20-07 04:00 PDT     5 of
You would think the Google wouldnt need to send such backpack toting dudes since they are so great and the be all and end all of the world. These days a backpack heading into an event protesting can get you held up as a terrorist, no questions asked! (hey I didnt make the rules).

Its funny how Ebay never had to do this kind of stuff at other peoples parties.

Interestingly, while I am always posting about how I think Google's success is overated here I was enlightened with some recent news from a friend..

-Google is moving servers to China (not all of them but some of them.

-Google is ranked LAST in privacy. Getting the only BLACK mark by the watchdog group, while EBay,wikiepedia and the BBC were the only players deemed "privacy aware"

-Google is petitioning the US Govt to allow more foreigners in on work visas so they can hire them. Anyone in tech knows this is how you get high level help on the cheap

-Rumors have it the checkout party wasnt even approved by the top people and resulted in million in lost revenue, there will probably be a little less of a party atmosphere in the toy room at Google.

My point is that it is always easy to knock a company like Ebay by looking at one side of the story.

While I believe Google gets more credit than they deserve business-wise, they do have a strong sense of the environment, did their IPO in a way that allowed retail investors (the small guy)to get in more as opposed to the big boys and I can name many other good things.

So the point is, be the best, do the best you can and the people will come, they dont need people to pass the message by ruining someone elses party..

Marty

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melrose_stamp  (13709 ) Jun-20-07 04:05 PDT     6 of
            That blog post was a great read.  Perfect guerrila marketing, this kind of thing could make those two superstars.

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wayoutwestusa2  (77 ) Jun-20-07 04:29 PDT     7 of
Google is moving servers to China (not all of them but some of them.

From my understanding, theyre not moving servers, but rather simply building more datacenters all over the world. 

Theyre building a few new datacenters in the US. They recently bought 520 acres in South Carolina, and just bought 800 acres of land in Oklahoma (in addition to recently buying land in a few other locations in the US)

With that many acres, I feel confident that theyre planning on staying long term. The scary thing is how much land they bought. The sites will start out small (200 employees each) but theyre obviously planning on future growth. And, with all that land, that's a whole lot of room for data that theyre apparently planning on maintaining on each and every one of us.
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clact  (3590 ) Jun-20-07 04:37 PDT     8 of
Yeah the bloggers have a link to another page where they say they are presenting their idea at eBay Live on June 16th.

Thats fair to all the people that paid to be exhibitors huh?

The drag n drop is fairly cool, bet they would had better luck showing it to people at eBay.

Marty

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tattered*primitives  (322 ) Jun-20-07 05:15 PDT     9 of
Has Google owned up to knowing these people? They may have been on their own campaign and Google may not affiliated with them at all.

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dorothysew  (803 ) Jun-20-07 05:42 PDT     10 of
-Rumors have it the checkout party wasnt even approved by the top people and resulted in million in lost revenue, there will probably be a little less of a party atmosphere in the toy room at Google

My PR theory abounds?  Of course, it would behoove the top people not to know about it now. 

d

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monkey*see*monkey*do  (Private ) Jun-20-07 05:45 PDT     11 of
Google is petitioning the US Govt to allow more foreigners in on work visas so they can hire them. Anyone in tech knows this is how you get high level help on the cheap

Maybe eBay should do this. eBay could use some high level help and we all know that.

Shortcuts in business will kill you every time and I was raised with the understanding that you do it right the first time or don't bother doing it at all.

Both parties in this situation were wrong. The guys for donning Google shirts and eBay for reacting in such a childish manner. I'm quite sure these weren't the only people with backpacks or bags.

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sandrarn83  (2688 ) Jun-20-07 06:00 PDT     12 of
Marty do you realize how ridiculous you come across now? The cheerleader for Ebay can no longer tolerate two kids with Google shirts at a Live function. It's becoming sublime on this boards the lengths you will go.

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monkey*see*monkey*do  (Private ) Jun-20-07 06:06 PDT     13 of
            I have to say that Google has done more for my business than ebay has in 2007. 

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rickskatie  (1669 ) Jun-20-07 06:11 PDT     14 of
Sounds like the kids need a serious civil rights attorney.

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sandrarn83  (2688 ) Jun-20-07 06:14 PDT     15 of
You can take that statement to the bank too. How many thousands of dollars has Google saved Bonniesplants this year? Following Bonnie's lead I no longer accept Paypal on my website. Don't feel the need to do so. I have Google to process payments for folks who don't want to offer their credit card info and it's FREE. I get preferential treatment on their search engine rankings too which hold 78% of the market for shoppers.

I am doing just fine with Ebay not paying Google for adwords. It's helping my off Ebay businesses quite nicely thank you. While that lame decision is definitely causing a downturn on the site. You can thank Ebay's management for negatively impacting all the sellers on this site. Besides Google hasn't asked me to make a widget either.

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owen*and*emma  (3853 ) Jun-20-07 06:48 PDT     16 of
Google is petitioning the US Govt to allow more foreigners in on work visas so they can hire them. Anyone in tech knows this is how you get high level help on the cheap

Maybe eBay should do this. eBay could use some high level help and we all know that.

Actually eBay already does this. When I went to eBay I met many wonderful from all over the entire world.

My group spoke at an employee event. There was a lovely gentleman with a turban in the crowd. I remember how striking he was.

Sadly, a day later he was on the same flight I was on from San Jose to Phoenix. He had a young wife and baby with him. Other passengers became upset and the air marshall (who was SO obvious BTW) had to come and sit behind him to calm the passengers.

I felt horrible for him and his family and wanted to jump up and scream that he worked for eBay.



~Ann~

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owen*and*emma  (3853 ) Jun-20-07 06:59 PDT     17 of
Oh, and for the record, I would say that it is a 50/50 split between eBay and google for helping me build my business.

~Ann~

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unknown-shopper  (769 ) Jun-20-07 07:13 PDT     18 of
You would think the Google wouldnt need to send such backpack toting dudes since they are so great and the be all and end all of the world.

I must have missed your proof of them being sent by Google. Would you please repost the link(s)? .

sandrarn83  (2688 ) Jun-20-07 07:57 PDT     19 of
I smell desperation in the air. Desperate and foolish moves on Ebay's part to treat two INVITED vendors this way. I am not sure what type of publicity Ebay expected when they reacted in this manner. I hope Gary got to make that long and painful walk to Meg's office for a much needed lesson in manners. When reading the blog it's obvious that Ebay was not happy with a Google presence. Probably because of the excitement they generated in their sellers. Something that Ebay themselves could not induce at this year's Live event. When you watch the Auctionbytes videos you can gauge for yourself the lackluster applause and the silence in places that Ebay speakers expected rousing cheers. Even Pierre's presence wasn't enough. I hope Ebay Live taught them some painful lessons and definitely some much overdue lessons in etiquette.

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postcardsandmore  (4309 ) Jun-20-07 08:00 PDT     20 of
When you watch the Auctionbytes videos you can gauge for yourself the lackluster applause and the silence in places that Ebay speakers expected rousing cheers. Even Pierre's presence wasn't enough.

It was very obvious they audience was not the usual cheerful crowd. You would think that would tell them something over at Ebay.

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gingersdolls  (2716 ) Jun-20-07 08:05 PDT     21 of
Well, at least these guys got some great publicity! I just checked their storebuilder site, and love the drag and drop feature. Why can't eBay do something easy like that for us?


Meg..Get outta my sandbox!

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postcardsandmore  (4309 ) Jun-20-07 08:17 PDT     22 of
I think Ebay was just jealous. What they are offering is very similar to the widget to go since you can embed it right into your own webspace. And, it appears to work great. I can't wait to learn more.

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switchplateplanet  (4121 ) Jun-20-07 08:38 PDT     23 of
Marty do you realize how ridiculous you come across now? The cheerleader for Ebay can no longer tolerate two kids with Google shirts at a Live function. It's becoming sublime on this boards the lengths you will go.

Ouch. That wasn't very nice.

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sandrarn83  (2688 ) Jun-20-07 09:14 PDT     24 of
If Marty had bothered to actually read the article before he posted he would have realized these were not uninvited gate crashers but invited guests to the event.

I find it offensive that he feels the need to plead the Ebay company line without bothering to actually read the article or check any facts. That's why I called him on the carpet. Not for his views but his one sided determination to maintain the "party line" without bothering to check the facts. Bad manners is still bad manners.

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mark-your-word  (0 ) Jun-20-07 10:09 PDT     25 of
two words

HORMONE THERAPY

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gone2deriver  (0 ) Jun-20-07 10:13 PDT     26 of
            I should have read Gary Brigg's pre-ebay Live announcement, now it all makes sense now:


http://vps298.leeware.com/bugsy.html

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sandrarn83  (2688 ) Jun-20-07 10:19 PDT     27 of
gone2deriver I LOVE IT. Nice job there. Well done. BRAVO.

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thewoodlandgirl  (Private ) Jun-20-07 10:24 PDT     28 of
Marthy

The proof is in the puddin so to speak.

Ebay stock under $35

Google stock over $500

Hum...........

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clact  (3590 ) Jun-20-07 12:03 PDT     29 of
As to the stock , run a comparitive from IPO to now..

Ebay is up 1500% from IPO til now..

Google is up 500% from IPO til now..

Ebay is further along its path and hopefully learned from its many mistakes. Google is on a great path but still is just starting to get challenged and might need to weather some storms to mature.

Marty

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sandrarn83  (2688 ) Jun-20-07 12:15 PDT     30 of
Marty but Ebay stock has hit it's high and is selling way under it's historical highs. Google is till meeting and making new historical highs. Ebay stock was recently devalued on Wall Street. Google's is not.

It's childish to play Google VS Ebay king of the mountain. It's what's works best that fits your individual selling needs. Right now Google advantages far outweigh anything that Ebay can or has offered to me. Therefore my website has Google features as well as my merchant account. They no longer have any presence on my website. Paypal and I have different views after losing a dispute as a buyer. When you don't receive anything for your money then you won't get my money again. Therefore the $25 dispute I lost has already cost Paypal five to ten times that figure in lost Pro fees. I had plans to offer both Paypal and Google. Now Paypal is eliminated from my site. TSK TSK Ebay now I control the terms not you.

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owen*and*emma  (3853 ) Jun-20-07 12:42 PDT     31 of
Even if you offered paypal alongside google and a MA, website buyers will not use it. Paypal is an "ebay thing". In the real world of e-commerce buyers expect to pay direct by CC.

~Ann~

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sandrarn83  (2688 ) Jun-20-07 13:23 PDT     32 of
Ann Paypal Pro WAS my credit card processor for the website. It acts behind the scenes as the merchant account processing all the credit card sales. Your customers think it's just another MA but it's really Paypal. AuthorizeNet was reactivated and up running in under 24 hours. Thank goodness I still had everything in place. Starting up it would have been cheaper to allow Paypal to do it until the sales were high enough to equalize out the fees. I decided to wack Ebay financially for Paypal's failure to protect my interests as a buyer. I did just that by removing Pro as the processor and Paypal as a payment option. Right now most of my sales are coming from my regular Ebay customers. I wanted to offer Paypal until the newness wore off. Too late now.

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*fired-up*  (238 ) Jun-20-07 13:25 PDT     33 of
I emailed Alex, aka. the guy with the Google logo on his shirt, and told him he was being discussed here. I also told him I thought it was absurd that he was escorted out of Ebay Live. And by the Sr. VP of Marketing, no less.
I gave him a link to this thread, and he came here and read it. I don't know if he's going to post anything, but he thought this was a great read.

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sandrarn83  (2688 ) Jun-20-07 13:28 PDT     34 of
Hopefully it will make their blog. Or at least the link to it.

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jtrothaars  (693 ) Jun-20-07 14:02 PDT     35 of
Google is petitioning the US Govt to allow more foreigners in on work visas so they can hire them. Anyone in tech knows this is how you get high level help on the cheap


It's not that simple. There aren't enough Americans with the education to perform many high-tech jobs. You can't just take someone who doesn't even understand algebra and train them on the job to be an engineer.

I see this myself at school. The higher I get up in math and computer science courses, the fewer Americans I have as classmates. It's wall-to-wall immigrants. Nothing is stopping Americans from taking these courses. After all, they let me in. Americans are voluntarily choosing to obtain degrees outside of math and the sciences, causing a labor shortage in those areas.

Instead of pushing our children toward the sciences, Americans are instead encouraging them to disavow evolution, believe that the dinosaurs lived together with people, and further to believe that scientists are all evil, godless heathens. Not all Americans think like this, but enough of them do to have created this labor shortage.

A smaller part of the equation involves Americans who have the education but who plain refuse to move where the jobs are, such as the idiots who refuse to leave the San Francisco Bay area and move to, say, North Carolina. They'd rather stay in Cali, be broke, and spend their days whining about how unfair it all is than pack up and move their duffs to where they can obtain gainful employment and have a nice lifestyle. GOD FORBID they can't live in SFO anymore. Living there makes them IMPORTANT.
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I'm going to need to borrow your tank.
SAVE JERICHO!
We did it! Jericho's back!
See my ME page for details

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clact  (3590 )        Jun-20-07 15:20 PDT       36 of
Sandram you know I wish you luck no matter where you sell or what payment method you use, hopefully each place will work for you

JRott, I agree to an extent however, there is a history here that people have to understand. During the dot com boom there were plenty of IT people everywhere. Then none could find a job anywhere. One guy , profiled in BusinessWeek a while back had worked in the steel industry and made a great income with great benefits. That industry died when the micro steel mills took over and he retrained in IT and was make 100k plus. Then they outsourced that job to India.

The problem is, all the people making the money get outsourced and all the new people not requiring as much money get pulled in from overseas. This is why there is a shortage to a certain extent.

Its that way with accountants now also. There is a firm that advertises in our CPA bulliten that I can have accountants in India working for me for 7 dollars an hour or less (and this is the middleman figure). So why would I want anyone to work here in the US ? I do not use this service but a lot of people do and some of the bigger firms have not hired as many accounting grads.

Connecticut might not be indicative of the country as a whole but right now a heckuva lot of college grads are coming out with 100k in debt to find nothing jobs. One client that works hiring for a liquor distributor has had tons of applicatations from college grads for 25k a year jobs in sales.

Marty

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gone2deriver  (0 )        Jun-20-07 21:20 PDT       37 of
            firemeg adds his two cents:

http://www.firemeg.com/blog.html

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oldklutz  (2675 )      Jun-20-07 22:23 PDT     38 of
            So we are supposed to believe what someone says on their blog. Sounds like a good story to end up an urban legend.

So why did it take so long for the word to get out? I would think it would have made news as soon as it happened. Where are the witnesses?

My stars are doing a strip tease....I think that's sexy

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catbooks1940s  (1169 )      Jun-20-07 22:56 PDT     39 of
            i doubt ina would have written about it if she didn't trust her source.
joan


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gamerbiz  (562 )        Jun-20-07 23:39 PDT       40 of
As to the stock , run a comparitive from IPO to now..

Ebay is up 1500% from IPO til now..

Google is up 500% from IPO til now..

Yeabut, Ebay went public during the dotcom boom when all you needed was just an idea for the stock to appreciate 500% or more and Google is a more recent IPO than Ebay. If I used the same analogy as you, I could claim that a railroad stock my family purchased in 1865 is a better company than Google because it is up 16,000% since it's IPO. Nope, stock prices is all about what have ya done for me lately. Google is the post boom poster child now for success in the Web 2.0 formula. Give eBay credit for SURVIVING the dotcom crash and becoming profitable, but now lets check the reality of the current stock prices...

Wall St. analysts base their internet fortunes and trends on what they call The Big Four:

Google
Yahoo
Amazon
Ebay

Google is by far the leader. It is the most profitable, rivaling what Microsoft did in the 80's as far as a monster of a growth potential. (by the way, they probably will never split the stock. The founders and board are VERY envious of what Warren Buffet has done with Berksire Hathaway). Google has a market capitalization, what the company is worth, of 159 BILLION.

Now Amazon has been lagging until this year. The stock shot up, starting in Feb., going from $35 to $70...doubling it's price in less then six months. Wall St. LOVES what Amazon is doing. Amazon has a market cap of about 28 billion.

Yahoo...wow...what a mess Yahoo has been. The company hasn't really done anything the past three years. They missed out on social networking when they could have bought myspace. They botched getting facebook. They missed getting You Tube...the list goes on and on. Finally, after three years of the stock going nowhere, the shareholders (including finally the institutional holders) revolted, and the CEO resigned this past week. Yahoo stock has been camped in the 20's and it's market cap is 37 billion.

Ah...now we come to Ebay. Ebay is now also entering it's third year of stock depreciation/stagnation. The last year it finished higher in December than January was 2004. Wall St. is now beginning to rumble about them too. Hmmmm...maybe it won't be long before Meg and the gang are asked to step aside. I would say the next six months are VERY crucial to their existence at the helm. They are now under the microscope, so they can't come up with quick cash schemes like 10 cent listing fees. They are now the last of the Big Four that needs change to get back to being a growth stock, and the spotlight is REALLY on them now that Yahoo is changing management and Amazon and Google are growing. Ebay has a market cap of 42 billion

As you can see, Google is a monster. It is larger than Ebay, Amazon and Yahoo combined AND it's reached this level in about 6 years. THAT is why Wall St. loves 'em.

Personally, this old Wall Streeter would love to see Meg and the gang go. They had their moments in the sun, but they really have made a mess of this place, and their bandaids won't fix it. I'm bettin' on Wall Street to fix it.

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catbooks1940s  (1169 )     Jun-20-07 23:45 PDT     41 of

            hijack

hey gamer, nice to see you here again!

/hijack
joan

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Event Horizon 1984 Blog Log

From eBay Stores Forum - Pageviews Drop since Google ads vanished

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

FYI apologist post_a_note aka 20th_century_art posts spin and damage control supporting eBay ...

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From eBay Stores Forum
Pageviews Drop since Google ads vanished
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000513019&tstart=0&mod=1182111980701

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reliablecopy (2291 ) View Listings |  Jun-17-07 10:33 PDT
Pages views dropped over 85% since Ebay dropped Google ads.

Slowest week in sales that I ever had on Ebay, Best week on our own site.

Guess ebay fees will be really low ??

I will wait another month and see if the stores receive any more exposure.

Happy Fathers Day

Regards
Reliablecopy

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25 replies     Date posted     Reply #

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chopsueysisters (2067 ) View Listings |     Jun-17-07 10:57 PDT     1 of
I got 3 sales on my dot com since ebay said bye bye to google. Ebay sales at a halt. This time last year there was a search test and I seem to recall around this time sales picked up. Oh well, call your local consumer affairs group and file a big fat complaint on ebay changing your service agreement. Ebays not putting down the same bucks they did with Google on Yahoo. I can tell because of the keyword searches I normally do. Cheaparoonies!

It's the end of the quarter this month!



It's 2 weeks & I can't find the featured upgrade section of the SYI form
Can the finding team help me find that?
I couldn't make this stuff up even if I tried! rofl

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post_a_note (0 ) View Listings | Report      Jun-17-07 11:08 PDT     2 of
Hmmm... 85%???   That's huge!   My store hasn't seen anything like that.  I guess I'm just lucky!

Here are my Omniture stats...

Page Views for Store Inventory (I don't count the store home page, feedback page, and others):



And Unique Daily Visitors, which I think is a better gage of activity anyway,(since one visitor might look at 20-30 pages):



An 85% drop would be almost off the charts.  That would be going from 100 visitors a day, to 15!  Ouch!

Disclaimer: This is a Posting ID. If you are uncomfortable with posting IDs, feel free to ignore this post. Thank you in advance.

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reliablecopy (2291 ) View Listings |  Jun-17-07 11:26 PDT     3 of
Last week on Saturday had 1200 Page views Yesterday less than 100

No traffic at all!!

Reliablecopy

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post_a_note (0 ) View Listings | Report     Jun-17-07 11:29 PDT     4 of
RSCopy are you running any core listings? I don't see any in your store... unless you do fixed price. It's tough to tell what's going on there.

Disclaimer: This is a Posting ID. If you are uncomfortable with posting IDs, feel free to ignore this post. Thank you in advance.

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chopsueysisters (2067 ) View Listings |     Jun-17-07 11:31 PDT     5 of
RC, dump something into core see if that changes anything



It's 2 weeks & I can't find the featured upgrade section of the SYI form
Can the finding team help me find that?
I couldn't make this stuff up even if I tried! rofl

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worldproducts101  (1921 ) View Listings |   Jun-17-07 11:35 PDT     6 of
do you guys think the visitors reports are correct? data provided by ebay . my traffic easily down 80%

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huckster3000 (292 ) View Listings |  Jun-17-07 11:39 PDT     7 of
if google catches wind of any of this they're gonna wanna hold a monster truck rally in the ebay corporate HQ parking lot.



huckster3000

DEAD END DRIVE-IN DVD

"It's not the kind of activity one partner normally does with another."

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chopsueysisters (2067 ) View Listings |     Jun-17-07 11:47 PDT     8 of
WP, no. I dont have much confidence in the reporting tool. Mainly because some of the google referring traffic was already being masked into ebay traffic previously

Independent 3rd party reporting would be more accurate. But in general, I dont like to look at these reports because unless you are consistent in your product offerings and listing schedule.. there's too many factors you have to eliminate to really find something to work with. Spikes in traffic across many sellers, that I can get into. Because when you have that many people with different listing/product behaviors all sharing the same dip, that can indicate a shared impact that has nothing to do with what a seller is doing. I think July/Aug we all saw the nosedive



It's 2 weeks & I can't find the featured upgrade section of the SYI form
Can the finding team help me find that?
I couldn't make this stuff up even if I tried! rofl

.

chopsueysisters (2067 ) View Listings |     Jun-17-07 11:58 PDT     9 of
but you also have to think about this in terms of sales changes, not so much the overall traffic. I know the reports are about traffic but... you can have a huge amount of traffic and very little sales. And another seller can have minuscule traffic but higher sales... that comes down to the quality of the traffic and how it converts to your sales.

Ebay is well known for garbage traffic and that is what they have been starting to increasing in our stores for some time. Delivering volumes of irrelevant gawker traffic means nothing unless you sell by being a circus act. The quality of targeted traffic is what you want and what converts into sales

Ebays web2.0 social tools and even to some degree their API, is gawker traffic. It doesn't invite a person who is interested in purchasing right now to find you. Instead, it dishes up a barge full of keywords and is more like spam than engaging a potential buyer

Ebay doesn't deliver quality traffic anymore. That's because they are tightwads. They want all the sellers to put on sandwich signs & drum up traffic for the site.

For "just a venue" they sure don't know how to put out orange cones and hand out flyers



It's 2 weeks & I can't find the featured upgrade section of the SYI form
Can the finding team help me find that?
I couldn't make this stuff up even if I tried! rofl

.

catbooks1940s (1165 ) View Listings |     Jun-17-07 12:23 PDT     10 of
Mainly because some of the google referring traffic was already being masked into ebay traffic previously

css, can you explain what you mean by masked?
joan

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chopsueysisters (2067 ) View Listings |     Jun-17-07 12:26 PDT     11 of
yeah in email. Not on this board



It's 2 weeks & I can't find the featured upgrade section of the SYI form
Can the finding team help me find that?
I couldn't make this stuff up even if I tried! rofl

.

catbooks1940s (1165 ) View Listings |      Jun-17-07 13:03 PDT     12 of
ok, i'll drop you a line in a sec.

just got back from viewing my traffic report for june. hits and visitors are significantly down from 4 weeks ago, and i don't even want to talk about how far down they are from 54 weeks ago.
joan

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chopsueysisters (2067 ) View Listings |    Jun-17-07 13:05 PDT     13 of
you and I had similar increase/decreases last year at the same time, too similar. I remember we were trying to rub each other see if we could extend our luck! LOL



It's 2 weeks & I can't find the featured upgrade section of the SYI form
Can the finding team help me find that?
I couldn't make this stuff up even if I tried! rofl

.

monkey*see*monkey*do (Private ) View Listings |   Jun-17-07 13:06 PDT     14 of
my stats are comparable to catbooks1940s.

Way down.

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post_a_note (0 ) View Listings | Report   Jun-17-07 13:15 PDT     15 of

but you also have to think about this in terms of sales changes, not so much the overall traffic.

There are a million and one indicators that can be watched to gage trends. And you're right, traffic is not an indicator of transactions, and transactions are not an indicator of avg price or total volume or profitablity. I watch at least a dozen different indicators and try to pick out which are best for my store. Because each of our stores is built on different models, different sell-thru rates, different everything. Someone running lot's of core is less likely to see much impact from the adwords campaign. Someone relying on search engines for visibility could notice a big drop-off.

As far as traffic, by that I mean daily visitors, I know that on average, I get one sale for every 264 visitors to my store. The month started a bit slow with one sale/308 visitors. But as of this morning that's looking better at one sale/276 visitors. Of course that doesn't tell you the average sales price of the items that are being bought.

But Omniture data, as far as I can tell, are no less reliable than Google analytics, or any other of the professional site trackers. There was a great editorial about the 'fuzzy' math of web site tracking that I posted in another thread. I didn't bookmark it... I'll have to go back and look for it.

Disclaimer: This is a Posting ID. If you are uncomfortable with posting IDs, feel free to ignore this post. Thank you in advance.

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catbooks1940s (1165 ) View Listings |    Jun-17-07 13:23 PDT     16 of
you and I had similar increase/decreases last year at the same time, too similar. I remember we were trying to rub each other see if we could extend our luck! LOL

lol, yeah, i remember that, too!

are your current stats similar to mine? was may great for you and june not so much?
joan

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dc*squared*wearhouse (1220 ) View Listings |    Jun-17-07 13:25 PDT     17 of
I have seen a signficant drop as well.

Today:

Referring Domain Instances %
1. ebay.com 1,250 80.2%
2. google.com 125 8.0%

Last week google was 23%. I took a major hit on page views between June 13 and 14.
.
~ Cindy ~

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catbooks1940s (1165 ) View Listings |    Jun-17-07 13:26 PDT     18 of
oh, i do need to add that my hits/visits are down this month, not specifically since ebay pulled the google ads.
joan

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minibeesknees

(591

) View Listings |      Jun-17-07 15:40 PDT       19 of
I don't understand...if you g**gle 'dollhouse linoleum' I'm all over that first page...what is it that ebay stopped doing?

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post_a_note (0 ) View Listings | Report       Jun-17-07 16:47 PDT     20 of
...what is it that ebay stopped doing?

They stopped the adword advertisements. Those are the 'sponsored links' on the right hand side of a Google search result.

Notice when you Google 'dollhouse' eBay does not appear. They used to have prominent links to just about every major keyword you can think of with a little message saying Shop for Dollhouses on eBay!.

The visibility or ranking in Google of your inventory or personal pages has not been affected, as far as I know.

Disclaimer: This is a Posting ID. If you are uncomfortable with posting IDs, feel free to ignore this post. Thank you in advance.

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clact (3588)     Jun-17-07 16:53 PDT     21 of

On the bright side if you search "big butts" you no longer find "Find Big Buts on Ebay.. click here" and all those other silly ads.

I havent seen any decrease yet, but just came off vacation settings so I will let you know.

Sell through adjust down rapidly (per medved) when this first happened but then in the last two days is going up at a good clip (why I dont know).

Marty
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post_a_note (0 ) View Listings | Report         Jun-17-07 17:00 PDT     22 of
By the way, mini, unless you're a high-roller you probably never got any direct hits out of eBay's adwords anyway. If you clicked on a link, it would take you to a page of 'core listing' Dollhouses, for instance, along with a nice box featuring three Stores selling more dollhouses. From what I can determine, ranking in that box was made my the seller who ran the most 'core' dollhouse listings.

The only benefit for most of us would be the possibility that that Dollhouse buyer might happen upon one of our core listings. And since most online shoppers are well aware of eBay anyway, the adwords probably did a lot less to boost eBay volume than it does for my personal site.

I will note, that one of my top competitors seemed to have cornered the market on eBay's adword searches. She'd show up in just about every keyword combination I could think of. It will be interesting to take a look at his sales in a week or two and see if there's any down turn. It's probably a bit early to tell, as he runs 200 auctions a day, so some of his sales today could still be the result of adword search hits.

Disclaimer: This is a Posting ID. If you are uncomfortable with posting IDs, feel free to ignore this post. Thank you in advance.

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bangkokbint (451 ) View Listings  Jun-17-07 19:21 PDT     23 of
Sales have come to a screeching halt for me since they did this. My EBay fees are looking to be 50% of what they were last month ($150 as oppose to $300) as no sales means I'm NOT listing any more stuff and instead will be moving it to other sites I list on. Pathetic.

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bangkokbint (451 ) View Listings    Jun-17-07 19:23 PDT     24 of
Oh weird thing though, some of my ebay items used to be #1 on Google search - now my items are still #1 but now from my 'moon' store - wondered why my sales had increased over there (and NO fees over there - yay!)

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funkoma

(2525

) View Listings | Report     Jun-18-07 09:49 PDT       25 of

well, whatever.....I'm only gonna run about 5 to 10 auctions a week...moving almost everything to an online store, I already opened a B&M in Tacoma.....my pageviews , etal have dropped about 90%..sales dropped the same...I've gone from 2 grand in May to 200 dollars in June...So, until ebay puts Stores in Search.....ebay can kiss my Arse....a cute arse for sure but still arse!I'm happy Google no longer has ebay ads....Google is like Craigslist, the drama class kids, the science kids...smart and sweet and geeky.....Ebay and Yahoo are JOCKS....and you know what that means...stupid, mean and alcoholic.....

~funkoma in Tacoma! style recycle~
~tressie~
 

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Event Horizon 1984 Blog Log

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 4 One Year Old

eBay Express was officially one year old on 14 June 2007.

• If you missed the Official Announcement from eBay regarding the anniversary, don't worry about it.  They never issued one.
  

eBay Corporate proclaims that eBay Express is a popular success.

    http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/32757
    eBay Q1 2007 Earnings Call Transcript
    April 18, 2007 5:00 pm ET

• "Lastly, eBay Express continues to experience increased adoption and growing success. For those of you who remember our eBay velocity statistics from the old days, on eBay Express an article of clothing sold every 67 seconds during the quarter, while a piece of jewelry sold every 2.5 minutes." Meg Whitman

But despite the glowing praise, and after over a year of promotion to the world, is eBay Express really popular? Or is this a Corporate eBay Urban Myth?

To answer this, let's use the free Alexa (www.alexa.com). There are always questions of accuracy with any tool, and Alexa is no exception. While there exist several subjective reports regarding Alexa's measuring methodologies, there are NO objective reports or hard proofs showing Alexa's lack of accuracy. Each reader will have to judge whether findings from Alexa meet their own criteria for usefulness.

Keep in mind that if you want Professional numbers, you have to pay Professional prices. Alexa is FREE.

Sites will be pulled from the often referred to Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite. And we'll throw in some extras and ringers. The ringers provide a means to compare like sites, and to show the accuracy limitations of Alexa.

For the number of items on eBay Express, let's use eBay Corporates' assumption that everything on eBay.com is on eBay Express. We'll leave out the ongoing contribution from Half.com, given eBay does not provide those numbers.  eBay Store counts are left out because eBay provides no day-to-day counts, and as of the end of April 2007 eBay began pursuing an aggressive policy of reducing the visibility of eBay Stores products.

Ultimately, as can be seen from the charts below, the number of items available is not necessarily proportional to the number of potential buyers. Or as put by the old saw, 'size doesn't matter.'

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Reach:
Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. For example, this means if you took random samples of one million Internet users, on average 19,400 of them visit eBay.com

Page Views per user:
The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site.

Statistics quoted as of 16 June 2007

............................................... Page Views ...... Reach per
.............. Number of ... Traffic Rank ..... per user ........ million users
............... Listings .... Now . 3 mos AVG .. Now . 3 mos AVG . Now . 3 mos AVG
eBay ......... 11,486,992 ..... 20 ....... 19 . 14.3 .. 14.9 ... 19,400 .. 20,240
eBay Express . 11,486,992 .... n/a ... 49,658 .. n/a ... 1.7 ...... n/a ...... 35
Bidville ...... 1,049,214 .... n/a ... 83,845 .. n/a .. 10.7 ...... n/a ..... 8.6
eCRATER ......... 572,505 . 12,004 ... 13,003 .. 6.3 ... 5.3 ....... 80 ...... 81
uk.ebid.net ..... 532,266 . 15,494 ... 20,655 . 29.3 .. 14.7 ....... 30 .... 30.5
Blujay .......... 174,511 .... n/a .. 117,485 .. n/a ... 2.7 ........ 9 ...... 11
Tazbar .......... 151,023 . 73,229 ... 50,160 . 11.2 .. 16.2 ....... 10 .... 11.5
ePier ........... 127,203 . 86,224 .. 129,260 .. 5.5 ... 2.1 ....... 10 .... 10.5
Wagglepop ........ 94,198 .... n/a .. 131,138 .. n/a ... 7.5 ...... n/a ..... 6.5
Yahoo! ........... 66,426 ...... 1 ........ 1 . 13.7 .. 14.5 .. 250,500 . 253,500
AuctionQuests .... 54,502 .... n/a .. 112,093 .. n/a .. 11.3 ........ 7 ..... 5.9
HiBidder ......... 37,599 . 77,150 ... 55,659 . 27.7 .. 34.9 ........ 6 ..... 8.2
PlunderHere ...... 30,827 .... n/a ... 69,762 .. n/a .. 47.1 ........ 7 ..... 5.4
Bid-Alot ......... 28,014 .... n/a .. 221,684 .. n/a ... 2.4 ...... n/a ..... 5.6
Overstock ........ 21,344 .. 1,162 .... 1,187 .. 7.0 ... 6.3 ...... 630 ..... 630
StuffPals ........ 18,397 .... n/a .1,183,176 .. n/a ... 4.0 ...... n/a ..... 0.4
WeBidz ........... 17,621 .... n/a ... 66,734 .. n/a .. 19.5 ...... 7.5 ..... 8.5
Lowbid ........... 11,344 .... n/a .. 451,411 .. n/a ... 6.6 ...... n/a ..... 1.3
Ewaey ............... n/a .... n/a .. 609,259 .. n/a ... 5.9 ...... n/a ....... 1

Amazon .............. n/a ..... 32 ....... 31 .. 5.5 ... 5.8 ... 17,050 .. 16,995
BestBuy ............. n/a .... 531 ...... 527 .. 6.3 ... 5.8 .... 1,350 ... 1,345
Buy.com ............. n/a .. 1,409 .... 1,402 .. 3.7 ... 3.8 ...... 730 ..... 697
CompUSA ............. n/a .. 3,157 .... 2,209 .. 4.9 ... 4.8 ...... 305 ..... 398
eBay ProStores ...... n/a .. 9,275 ... 11,288 .. 6.8 ... 5.2 ...... 100 ...... 90
WalMart ............. n/a .... 509 ...... 431 .. 6.2 ... 6.1 .... 1,400 ... 1,565

** Per conflict of interest notice, we have in the past or currently have items on or have bought from eBay, eBay Express, Yahoo!, Bidville, eCRATER, Blujay, Wagglepop, Overstock, Ewaey, Amazon, BestBuy, Buy.com, CompUSA, WalMart, Google. All shares of eBay stock were sold in the summer 2004.

Let's move measures of popularity, Page Views and Reach, leftward.

Remove Yahoo! as they have closed shop on auctions. They're still Number 1 anyway.

Organizations have good and bad days. Let's use 3 months data to average this out. Round up everything. Order lists according to Page View and Reach.

3 Month Average
............. Page Views .. Reach per .. Number of
.............. per user . million users . Listings
PlunderHere .... 48 ............. 6 ....... 30,827
HiBidder ....... 35 ............. 9 ....... 37,599
WeBidz ......... 20 ............. 9 ....... 17,621
Tazbar ......... 17 ............ 12 ...... 151,023
eBay ........... 19 ........ 20,240 ... 11,486,992 <=
ebid ........... 15 ............ 31 ...... 532,266
AuctionQuests .. 12 ............. 6 ....... 54,502
Bidville ....... 11  ............ 9 .... 1,049,214
Wagglepop ....... 8 ............. 7 ....... 94,198
WalMart ......... 7 ......... 1,565 .......... N/A
Overstock ....... 7 ........... 630 ....... 21,344
Lowbid .......... 7 ............. 2 ....... 11,344
Amazon .......... 6 ........ 16,995 .......... N/A
BestBuy ......... 6 ......... 1,345 .......... N/A
ProStores ....... 6 ............ 90 .......... N/A <==
eCRATER ......... 6 ............ 81 ...... 572,505
Ewaey ........... 6 ............. 1 .......... N/A
CompUSA ......... 5  .......... 398 .......... N/A
Buy.com ......... 4 ........... 697 .......... N/A
StuffPals ....... 4 ............. 1 ....... 18,397
Blujay .......... 3 ............ 11 ...... 174,511
ePier ........... 3 ............ 11 ...... 127,203
Bid-Alot ........ 3 ............. 6 ....... 28,014
eBay Express .... 2 ............ 35 ... 11,486,992 <===

eBay Express is dead last in Page Views per user.  eBay should reconsider touting to the Press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

3 Month Average
.......... Reach per .... Page Views . Number of
......... million users ... per user .. Listings
eBay ......... 20,240 ....... 15 .... 11,486,992 <=
Amazon ....... 16,995 ........ 6 ........... N/A
WalMart ....... 1,565 ........ 7 ........... N/A
BestBuy ....... 1,345 ........ 6 ........... N/A
Buy.com ......... 697 .........4 ........... N/A
Overstock ....... 630 ........ 7 ........ 21,344
CompUSA ......... 398 ........ 5 ........... N/A
ProStores ........ 90 ........ 6 ........... N/A <==
eCRATER .......... 81 ........ 6 ....... 572,505
eBay Express ..... 35 ........ 2 .... 11,486,992 <===
ebid ............. 31 ....... 15 ....... 532,266
Tazbar ........... 12 ....... 17 ....... 151,023
Blujay ........... 11 ........ 3 ....... 174,511
ePier ............ 11 ........ 3 ....... 127,203
HiBidder .......... 9 ....... 35 ........ 37,599
WeBidz ............ 9 ....... 20 ........ 17,621
Bidville .......... 9 ....... 11 ..... 1,049,214
Wagglepop ......... 7 ........ 8 ........ 94,198
PlunderHere ....... 6 ....... 48 ........ 30,827
AuctionQuests ..... 6 ....... 12 ........ 54,502
Bid-Alot .......... 6 ........ 3 ........ 28,014
Lowbid ............ 2 ........ 7 ........ 11,344
Ewaey ............. 1 ........ 6 ........... N/A
StuffPals ......... 1 ........ 4 ........ 18,397
 
In Reach per million users, eBay Express is less popular than Overstock, eCRATER, and it's sibling ProStores, and barely more popular than the much smaller sites.

3 Month Average
............... Traffic .. Number of
................ Rank ..... Listings
eBay ............... 19 . 11,486,992 <=
Amazon ............. 31 ........ N/A
WalMart ........... 431 ........ N/A
BestBuy ........... 527 ........ N/A
Overstock ....... 1,187 ..... 21,344
Buy.com ......... 1,402 ........ N/A
CompUSA ......... 2,209 ........ N/A
ProStores ...... 11,288 ........ N/A <==
eCRATER ........ 13,003 .... 572,505
ebid ........... 20,655 .... 532,266
eBay Express ... 49,658 . 11,486,992 <===
Tazbar ......... 50,160 .... 151,023
HiBidder ....... 55,659 ..... 37,599
WeBidz ......... 66,734 ..... 17,621
PlunderHere .... 69,762 ..... 30,827
Bidville ....... 83,845 .. 1,049,214
AuctionQuests . 112,093 ..... 54,502
Blujay ........ 117,485 .... 174,511
ePier ......... 129,260 .... 127,203
Wagglepop ..... 131,138 ..... 94,198
Bid-Alot ...... 221,684 ..... 28,014
Lowbid ........ 451,411 ..... 11,344
Ewaey ......... 609,259 ........ N/A
StuffPals ... 1,183,176 ..... 18,397
 
Compared to the previous reports (see bottom), eBay Express has been slowly sinking in this ranking. But by Traffic Rank eBay Express remains fair compared to other substantially smaller competing sites.

To comprehend the magnitude of these numbers, let's use Yahoo! and Google in this last list.

3 Month Average
............ Reach per .. Page Views . Number of . Traffic
.......... million users . per user .. Listings ... Rank
Yahoo! ....... 250,500 ...... 15 ........ 66,426 ...... 1
Google ....... 238,850 ....... 7 .... EVERYTHING ...... 3
eBay .......... 20,240 ...... 15 .... 11,486,992 ..... 19
ProStores ......... 90 ....... 6 ........... N/A . 11,288
eBay Express ...... 35 ....... 2 .... 11,486,992 . 49,658

Is eBay Express leading the competition? According to the metrics, mixed results.

Is eBay Express popular?

What do you think?

This article is a followup to:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 3
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular
• The Online Competition To eBay And Industry (Loss) Leader eBay Express

See also addendum:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2 Compete   

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From eBay Stores Forum - No Traffic?? eBay commits Suicide. ebay Pulls All Google Advertising.

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From eBay Stores Forum
No Traffic?? eBay commits Suicide. ebay Pulls All Google Advertising.
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000510819&tstart=0&mod=1181794228538

gone2deriver  (0 )     Jun-13-07 12:58 PDT
ebay has really done it now. In it's childish tiff with Google over checkout, ebay pulls all Google Adwords ads!

Yes this is true, they are no longer buying the complete dictionary at Google. From Ina:

We reported early this morning that eBay and Google are duking it out over eBay continuing to ban Google Checkout. Today, reporter Juan Carlos Perez (IDG News Service) confirmed the report from ComparsionEngines.com that eBay has pulled its paid-search ads from Google in the US: "Durzy said the decision to "reallocate" the Google ad budget elsewhere isn't tied to the Checkout protest party, but he acknowledged that the Google event hasn't gone down well inside of eBay."

Hani Durzy is of course referring to the Google "Let Freedom Ring" party in Boston on Thursday evening.

We'll keep you posted live from Boston! Hopefully no one will be swimming in the harbor.

link:

http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl

Yes we can now confirm the theory. Idiots are running ebay!

gone2deriver  (0 )      Jun-13-07 13:22 PDT     1 of
Scott Wingo's take ebay is stupid:

http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/

gone2deriver  (0 )      Jun-13-07 13:39 PDT     2 of
From Firemeg:

http://www.firemeg.com/2007/06/official-google-checkout-blog-let.html

sandrarn83 (2678 ) View Listings |     Jun-13-07 14:50 PDT     3 of
Today, reporter Juan Carlos Perez (IDG News Service) confirmed " gonetoderiver Stay tuned for tomorrow's edition by Juan. I think you will find something very familiar in it.

bangkokbint  (450 )     Jun-13-07 20:11 PDT     4 of
Oh yay!  Everybody, support Google where you can.  I'm off to do a bunch of searches and click on some ads

rockinghorsegirl4now (2310 ) View Listings |     Jun-13-07 20:25 PDT     5 of
Last year at Ebay Live the rival Chinese auction service (I forget the name) offered free lunches to Live Attendees, plus some free gifts in competition with Ebay. Many attendees were carrying around their orange tote bags all over Ebay Live. And one competing service (maybe the same one) had limo rides to a big bash with food one day. Evidently they weren't big enough to bother Meg & Bill.

It's so silly for Ebay to get hot & bothered by google since google has no auction service and is not really a competitor. Google Checkout might make a dent into Paypal's profits but Ebay could become more competitive to handle that. Ebay just doesn't want to lose a penny.

faeries_finest  (771 )     Jun-13-07 20:31 PDT     6 of
I hope while people are clicking on ads to help Google they remember that other businesses are paying for those clicks.

Faerie

rockinghorsegirl4now (2310 ) View Listings |     Jun-13-07 20:44 PDT     7 of
You know, for Ebay to abandon its sellers by not advertising is showing us poor faith. Why do we lose buyers and lose advertising to punish Google? Since Google also owns YouTube, I imagine that advertising is out also.

Ebay mostly depends on sellers to advertise themselves in blogs, reviews, MySpace, YouTube, Squiddoo, paid Google ads, store malls, etc. And if we don't, we just don't have any sales.

pepins4b8e  (8 )      Jun-13-07 20:45 PDT     8 of
I can find better causes that supporting the poor billionaires of Google. eBay has its fault but I still find no better place. Even the anti-eBay boardies spend all their time here

rockinghorsegirl4now (2310 ) View Listings |    Jun-13-07 20:57 PDT     9 of

One billionaire is like any other, and we support Meg plenty. And she probably isn't the only billionaire at Ebay.

joint_runner  (Private )     Jun-13-07 21:02 PDT     10 of
Even the anti-eBay boardies spend all their time here

First and foremost that's because as someone said on another thread, "It's like watching a train wreck". Secondly, now that we don't have to spend our days and nights revising auctions because eBay made a change for the sake of change we actually have time to watch the train wreck.

---

As transparent as eBay itself.

sandrarn83 (2678 ) View Listings |     Jun-13-07 21:08 PDT     11 of
pepins4b8e I watched a video about Google employees. Do you realize they LOVE to go to work? Google is probably everyone's dream employer.

You can take your pet to work. You can take your laundry to work. You can either do your laundry at work free or you can have the free dry cleaning service do it for you. They have free gourmet food. All meals are free. Want to learn a different language? Fine you can learn it in on the job. If it's one they don't have just notify Human Resources. They'll find a teacher. Need a break from your crazy day? Then go play the free pinball machines and arcade games or go out side on the basketball court and shoot some hoops. They have full gyms. OMG when I watched this video I realized I wanted to go to work for Google.

Do you think these poor Ebay Live Helpless reps get perks like these Google people? As one Google employee said "If you haev to work for a living this is the place to do it." I have never been so impressed with an employer as I was Google.

kias  (70 )      Jun-13-07 21:10 PDT     12 of
OMG - I wanna work there not here

homedecorstudios  (10 )      Jun-13-07 21:14 PDT       13 of
I read google gets 3000 job applications a day.

They are can spend 25% of their time on their own projects. Also the entire googlplex is wired so you work inside, outside, wherever.

pepins4b8e  (8 )        Jun-13-07 22:54 PDT       14
sandra, if you work or worked for a large corporation, you should know such work conditions don't last. The best thing that can happen to a company is hardship. Take IBM for example, they got so fat and happy, eager and aggressive competition attacked them on all sides; so bad that in the early 90's they cut employee count in half and the Walton family (yes, Wal-Mart) had an offer to buy 51% of the share, becoming the controlling body.
IBM turned around and hired a CEO from the outside (against their culture) and re-shaped everything. Today, IBM don't even make PCs, they are a services business.

Anyway, my point is that Google is about to get attacked on all sides, and I'm not even referring to eBay. The works conditions indicate very fat profit; I hope they enjoy it while it lasts and don't become complacent. There are some hardships that even money don't solve. Watch what Google is up against in about 3 years.

I'm not anti-Google...They don't create bad nor good emotions in me. Just a search engine to me. I make money on eBay, not Google, therefore I care more about eBay.

Google v eBay, It's not over til we get it right

Google v eBay, It's not over til we get it right
14 June 2007
by Robert Walsh

The Google's 'Let Freedom Ring' skirmish at eBay Live! Boston 2007 ended quickly. But "It ain't over till it's over." [1]

Not a great fan of sport allegories. But does this other one sound familiar?

"Leading up to the fight he had declared he was going to 'dance' and use his speed to keep away from Foreman and out box him. However in the first round Ali headed straight for the champion ... Ali caught Foreman nine times in the first round with this technique but failed to knock him out." [3]

Leading up to the June 14th opening of eBay Live! 2007, Google had this to say:

"Join us for a celebration of freedom and your right to use Google Checkout. Hop on a classic Beantown trolley outside eBay Live! and follow the freedom trail to the Old South Meeting House, where revolutionaries launched the Boston Tea Party and where eBay sellers will have a party of their own."

eBay reacted, and action from eBay was predictable to anyone.

The Hare

Shift mindset to long country drive for a moment and think about this.

eBay reacts quickly to stimuli, and prioritizes short term over long term. The latter leading to ignoring problems that have no immediate consequence.

"The notion that managers must above all appease investors drives behavior that focuses exclusively on quarterly results." Clayton M. Christensen and Scott D. Anthony [4]

To get an earful of how eBay reacts, read through eBay's Discussion Boards at http://pages.ebay.com/community/boards/

When you pick out that scintilla of how eBay runs it's day to day operations, you'll see it matches Corporate policy.

"The key thing is, if you make a mistake, have the courage to fix it quickly. I do think the price of inaction is far higher than the cost of making a mistake."  Meg Whitman, eBay, 2002

The thing about this philosophy is it only looks good on paper. Or as might be found in some forgotten pseudo-hypothetical eBay Training Manual. "You don't want to make the problem worse by solving symptoms of the problem only to have the problem get worse or manifest itself in another way."

Or put another way:

• "Never chase a man over a cliff." Constable Benton Fraser, Due South

The Tortoise

Google reacts slowly, thinks long term and is methodical about what it does. The weakness here is over thinking a situation to death and going nowhere.

"If opportunities arise that might cause us to sacrifice short-term results but are in the best long-term interest of our shareholders, we will take those opportunities," the letter read. "We will have the fortitude to do this." Larry Page, Google, 2004 [5]

• "Let's solve the problem but let's not make it any worst by guessing." Gene Krantz, Apollo 13
• "When you get in situations where you cannot afford to make a mistake, it's very hard to do the right thing. So if you're trying to do the right thing, the right thing might be to eliminate the cost of making a mistake rather than try to guess what's right." Ward Cunningham, Inventor of the Wiki

A measure of this patience is seen in Google's Google Operating System project. [6] This has been ongoing for years with a projected 2010 release.

Neither method is perfect, but they do work. Billions in revenue is fair proof of that.

You can observe a lot just by watching. [7]

The distinction between eBay and Google planning philosophies is striking.

It also makes for easy predictability of how one will react.

Google, and anyone capable of thinking past 90 days, would have anticipated eBay's eventual removal of ads from Google. eBay had already established an exclusive ad relationship with a Google competitor, Yahoo! in May 2006. With more ads to come.

• "The Yahoo ads now appearing on eBay is a sore topic among eBay sellers. AuctionBytes has speculated that eBay may make an announcement this week about eBay Express ads possibly appearing on Yahoo's ad network." AuctionBytes, 2007 [8]

And there have been sufficient hints and facts dropped to anticipate what eBay would eventually do.

• "What's most important to eBay, analysts say, is that it turn more profit from advertising as its auction business matures." August 2006 [9]

Not much forethought is required to see these probabilities. When you have a customer that appears to have bought more of your product, but not directly from your business, you know they're looking elsewhere.

The questions become:

1. Will they remain a customer?
2. Will they buy less from you? How much less? Over how long a period?
3. Will they stop buying from you? When?

The smart seller asks a customer, 'how can I make this better for you?'

Not being privy to Google and eBay talks, I'll take the leap that Google did ask eBay the same question. And got essentially got a nothing useful answer.

Depending on the source, Google receives $25 to $100 million a year in ad revenue from eBay.

Google Ad Revenues [10]

• 2006 $10,604,917,000
• 2007 Q1 $3,663,971,000

This represents less than 1% of Google's yearly ad revenues.

Any business intending to exist for the long term would be loathe to lose even this amount of revenue. But what if you could project down the road that purely based on the mercurial whim of the customer, the 1% would eventually become zero?

And what if the customer is aggressively moving into areas you sell in, reducing your own revenue stream?

Feint [11]

• A feint attack is designed to draw defensive action towards the point under assault. It is usually used as a diversion to force the enemy to concentrate more manpower in a given area so that the opposing force in another area is weaker. Unlike a related diversionary maneuver, the demonstration, a feint involves actual contact with the enemy.
• A feint retreat is performed by briefly engaging the enemy, then retreating. It is intended to draw the enemy pursuit into a prepared ambush, or to cause disarray.

Any reasonable person would expect eBay to react to Google's Boston party.  Predictable behavior; prod eBay and eBay jumps.

The actual response is not 100% predictable.

Okay, you're Google. You need to know what eBay will do that will impact your business. eBay won't tell you. Your job then is to see how eBay responds in kind.

Possibilities.

1. eBay takes the high road and does nothing. Free speech, right to assemble.
2. eBay gives the appearance of strength, and does nothing except to say,"We keep an eye on their efforts." Hani Durzy, April 2007
3. eBay goes society tsk tsk and does nothing except say, "When we heard of their plans to have their party and the way they were marketing it, we were disappointed." Hani Durzy, eBay Live! 2007
4. eBay goes defensive and pushes the benefits of PayPal, and takes no other action.
5. eBay goes defensive, pushing the benefits of PayPal, and warning sellers about Google, "In our estimation, it fails in at least one requirement of the Accepted Payments Policy." Hani Durzy, 2006
6. etc.

And the very last possibility that an adult might expect from another adult:

1. eBay throws a tantrum.

Now you know eBay's response. Now you know what eBay can and will do.

Now everyone knows.

And everyone has seen your response. A Gentleman's response to doing something that bordered on questionable, but within your rights as a business.

And again if you're Google, you already had planned responses to eBay's responses.

And you absolutely know you're playing chess against an opponent used to Nintendo.

"This company truly is built by the community of users." Meg Whitman [12]

• "It's a little like Frank Perdue crediting his chickens." Adam Lashinsky [12]

At this time, the message eBay sent to Google, also filtering to eBay sellers: ads can disappear at any time and sales decreased as a result. This is called collateral damage.

TSK, TSK.

You'll need a lot of patience following Google v eBay, as this tableau between Google and eBay may run several months.

I am betting though that Google is up to something, and this is only a peek.

What is the moral? Must be a moral. [13]

Remember the fight mentioned at the beginning? Fights last more than one round, and it's a lesson in patience.

"We will have the fortitude to do this." Larry Page, Google [5]

Ali vs Foreman, 30 October 1974:

"He then decided to take advantage of the young champion's one weakness: staying power.

In the second round, the challenger retreated to the ropes inviting Foreman to hit him, whilst counterpunching and verbally taunting the younger man. Ali's plan was to enrage Foreman and absorb his best blows in order to exhaust him mentally and physically.

The champion threw hundreds of punches in seven rounds but with decreasing technique and effect.

This was later termed "The Rope-A-Dope". [3]

Only time will tell who's the "Dope."

//

Footnotes

1. "It ain't over till it's over.", Yogi Berra
2. Starship, It's Not Over ('Till It's Over)
3. Muhammad Ali, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali
4. Put Investors In Their Place, Clayton M. Christensen and Scott D. Anthony,  http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_22/b4036100.htm
5. Co-founders release Google 'owner's manual, http://news.com.com/Co-founders+release+Google+owners+manual/2100-1038_3-5202090.html
6. GooOS, the Google Operating System http://www.kottke.org/04/04/google-operating-system
7. "You can observe a lot just by watching.", Yogi Berra
8. Google Cancels eBay Live Party, Yahoo in the Mix? http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m06/i14/s01
9. Google, eBay: Strategic bedfellows http://news.com.com/Google,+eBay+Strategic+bedfellows/2100-1024_3-6110304.html
10. Google Investor Relations, http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html
11. Feint, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feint
12. Meg and the Machine http://www.mutualofamerica.com/articles/Fortune/August03/fortune.asp
13. A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum
14. Official Google Checkout Blog: Update to our event on 6/14

Permalink  |  Links to Google post 

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From eBay Stores Forum - Google - Let Freedom Ring

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

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http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000509458&tstart=0&mod=1181619990513

                                           

		Jun-11-07 13:13 PDT

          

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000384599&tstart=0&mod=1181614092665 Party with Google Checkout at eBay Live - Thurs June 14 Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:51:01 -0500 Join us for a celebration of freedom and your right to use Google Checkout. Hop on a classic Beantown trolley outside eBay Live! and follow the freedom trail to the Old South Meeting House, where revolutionaries launched the Boston Tea Party and where eBay sellers will have a party of their own. Who eBay Live! attendees Where Old South Meeting House Downtown Boston 310 Washington Street Boston, MA 02108 What Google Checkout Freedom Party When Thursday, June 14 8:00pm - 11:00pm RSVP Click here to RSVP for this event Feel free to bring a friend

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2 Compete

We'll change the methodology somewhat in this version.

Instead of the free Alexa (www.alexa.com) service, we'll use the services of the free Compete (http://snapshot.compete.com) service.

Compete advertises itself as a more accurate and better than Alexa.

Since there are no hard facts to support or deny claims of accuracy, for Alexa or Compete, judgement should be reserved on the exact details provided.

The current data from Compete covers up to April 2007. We will use this baseline. Also the Compete data is a snapshot in time and not a running average. Situations can change rapidly on the Internet. Numbers can go from good to bad and back again in days.

For a June 2007 view using Alexa (www.alexa.com) see:
    Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 3

In April 2007 eBay Express was one year old. After a year of promotion to the world, was eBay Express popular?

To answer this, let's use the free Compete (http://snapshot.compete.com), Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite (www.powersellersunite.com). And throw in some ringers.

For the purpose of relative site comparison only, inventory counts will be left out.

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Rank:
The Compete Rank is based on People Counts and does not consider page views or number of visits made to the site. Rank is often used as a complement to People Count to privide a relative metric that shows the significance of a site.

Pages Per Visit
Pages Per Visit is used as an engagement metric. Pages are also known as Page Views and represent how many clicks a person makes on a given website.

People Count:
People Counts are also known as unique visitors - they only count a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month. People Counts are typically used to determine how popular a site is.  


Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
................. Traffic . Pages Per .. People
.................. Rank .... Visit ... Counts (Hits)
eBay .................. 3 ... 29.0 .... 78,533,631
eBay Express ...... 2,336 .... 3.4 ....... 785,870
Bidville ......... 59,173 ... 33.3 ........ 27,364
Yahoo ................. 1 ... 21.4 ... 116,096,827
eCRATER ........... 8,172 .... 6.2 ....... 235,799
ebid.net ......... 84,652 ... 15.1 ........ 17,944
Blujay ........... 34,903 .... 6.6 ........ 49,971
Tazbar .......... 480,518 ... 14.0 ......... 2,037
ePier ............ 23,312 ... 11.6 ........ 78,490
Wagglepop ........ 50,455 .... 6.0 ........ 32,820
AuctionQuests ... 284,729 .... 8.8 ......... 4,048
HiBidder ........ 266,370 .... 4.5 ......... 4,382
PlunderHere ..... 446,558 .... 4.4 ......... 2,259
Overstock ........... 159 ... 12.4 ..... 5,916,812
StuffPals .......... > 1M .... 1.0 ........... 585
WeBidz ........... 94,849 .... 6.6 ........ 15,587
Lowbid .......... 242,242 ... 26.8 ......... 4,900
Bid-Alot ........ 158,023 .... 6.0 ......... 8,289
Ewaey .............. > 1M .... 1.3 ........... 325

Amazon ................ 9 ... 10.4 .... 47,608,312
BestBuy .............. 78 ... 20.7 ..... 9,971,408
Buy.com ............. 779 .... 6.6 ..... 1,978,685
CompUSA ........... 1,364 ... 10.1 ..... 1,251,416
ProStores.com ..... 7,029 .... 9.9 ....... 273,962
WalMart .............. 18 ... 14.9 .... 24,144,210

Let's remove Yahoo! The site measures for Yahoo! include listings and everything Yahoo! They are Number One, so let's move on.

Numbers will be rounded up. Order the above list according to Pages Per Visit, People Counts, Traffic Rank.

Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
............. Pages Per ... People ...... Traffic
.............. Visit    . Counts (Hits) .. Rank
Bidville ....... 34  ....... 27,364 ...... 59,173
eBay ........... 29 .... 78,533,631 ........... 3 <=
Lowbid ......... 27 ......... 4,900 ..... 242,242
BestBuy ........ 21 ..... 9,971,408 ......... 779
ebid.net ....... 16 ........ 17,944 ...... 84,652
WalMart ........ 15 .....24,144,210 .......... 18
Tazbar ......... 14 ......... 2,037 ..... 480,518
Overstock ...... 13 ..... 5,916,812 ......... 159
ePier .......... 12 ............ 15 ..... 128,551
Amazon ......... 11 .... 47,608,312 ........... 9
CompUSA ........ 11  .... 1,251,416 ....... 1,364
ProStores.com .. 10 ....... 273,962 ....... 7,029 <==
AuctionQuests ... 9 ......... 4,048 ..... 284,729
Buy.com ......... 7 ..... 1,978,685 ........ > 1M
eCRATER ......... 7 ....... 235,799 ....... 8,172
Blujay .......... 7 ........ 49,971 ..... 134,206
WeBidz .......... 7 ........ 15,587 ...... 94,849
Bid-Alot ........ 6 ........ 78,490 ...... 23,312
Wagglepop ....... 6 ........ 32,820 ...... 50,455
HiBidder ........ 5 ......... 4,382 ..... 266,370
eBay Express .... 4 ....... 785,870 ....... 2,336 <===
PlunderHere ..... 4 ......... 2,259 ..... 446,558
Ewaey ........... 2 ........... 325 ........ > 1M
StuffPals ....... 1 ........... 585 ........ > 1M

eBay Express is near the bottom in Pages Per Visit.  And given the prime visibility afforded it, eBay Express still performs poorly compared to eBay ProStores. eBay should reconsider touting to the Press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
.............. People ...... Pages Per .. Traffic
........... Counts (Hits)..... Visit     .. Rank
eBay ......... 78,533,631 ..... 29 ........... 3 <=
Amazon ....... 47,608,312 ..... 11 ........... 9
WalMart ...... 24,144,210 ..... 15 .......... 18
BestBuy ....... 9,971,408 ..... 21 ......... 779
Overstock ..... 5,916,812 ..... 13 ......... 159
Buy.com ....... 1,978,685 ...... 7 ........ > 1M
CompUSA  ...... 1,251,416 ..... 11 ....... 1,364
eBay Express .... 785,870 ...... 4 ....... 2,336 <===
ProStores.com ... 273,962 ..... 10 ....... 7,029 <==
eCRATER ......... 235,799 ...... 7 ....... 8,172
Bid-Alot ......... 78,490 ...... 6 ...... 23,312
Blujay ........... 49,971 ...... 7 ..... 134,206
Wagglepop ........ 32,820 ...... 6 ...... 50,455
Bidville  ........ 27,364 ..... 34 ...... 59,173
ebid.net ......... 17,944 ..... 16 ...... 84,652
WeBidz ........... 15,587 ...... 7 ...... 94,849
Lowbid ............ 4,900 ..... 27 ..... 242,242
HiBidder .......... 4,382 ...... 5 ..... 266,370
AuctionQuests ..... 4,048 ...... 9 ..... 284,729
PlunderHere ....... 2,259 ...... 4 ..... 446,558
Tazbar ............ 2,037 ..... 14 ..... 480,518
StuffPals ........... 585 ...... 1 ........ > 1M
Ewaey ............... 325 ...... 2 ........ > 1M
ePier ................ 15 ..... 12 ..... 128,551
 
In People Counts, eBay Express is less popular than the much smaller Overstock.com, but does have significant leads over the other substantially smaller sites.

Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
................. Traffic . Pages Per .. People
.................. Rank .... Visit ... Counts (Hits)
eBay .................. 3 ... 29.0 .... 78,533,631
Amazon ................ 9 ... 10.4 .... 47,608,312
WalMart .............. 18 ... 14.9 .... 24,144,210
BestBuy .............. 78 ... 20.7 ..... 9,971,408
Overstock ........... 159 ... 12.4 ..... 5,916,812
Buy.com ............. 779 .... 6.6 ..... 1,978,685
CompUSA ........... 1,364 ... 10.1 ..... 1,251,416
eBay Express ...... 2,336 .... 3.4 ....... 785,870
ProStores.com ..... 7,029 .... 9.9 ....... 273,962
eCRATER ........... 8,172 .... 6.2 ....... 235,799
ePier ............ 23,312 ... 11.6 ........ 78,490
Blujay ........... 34,903 .... 6.6 ........ 49,971
Wagglepop ........ 50,455 .... 6.0 ........ 32,820
Bidville ......... 59,173 ... 33.3 ........ 27,364
ebid.net ......... 84,652 ... 15.1 ........ 17,944
WeBidz ........... 94,849 .... 6.6 ........ 15,587
Bid-Alot ........ 158,023 .... 6.0 ......... 8,289
Lowbid .......... 242,242 ... 26.8 ......... 4,900
HiBidder ........ 266,370 .... 4.5 ......... 4,382
AuctionQuests ... 284,729 .... 8.8 ......... 4,048
PlunderHere ..... 446,558 .... 4.4 ......... 2,259
Tazbar .......... 480,518 ... 14.0 ......... 2,037
StuffPals .......... > 1M .... 1.0 ........... 585
Ewaey .............. > 1M .... 1.3 ........... 325

By Traffic Rank eBay Express is a solid number 2, again compared to other substantially smaller competing sites.

To comprehend the magnitude of these numbers, let's use Yahoo! and Google, in this last list.

Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
.............. People ...... Pages Per .. Traffic
........... Counts (Hits)..... Visit     .. Rank
Yahoo! ...... 116,096,827 ..... 16  .......... 1
Google  ..... 113,883,603 ..... 13 ........... 2
eBay ......... 78,533,631 ..... 29 ........... 3 <=
eBay Express .... 785,870 ...... 4 ....... 2,336 <===
ProStores.com ... 273,962 ..... 10 ....... 7,029 <==
 
 
Is eBay Express leading the competition?  Mixed results based on the metrics.

Is eBay Express popular?

What do you think?

This article is an addendum to:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 3
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular
• The Online Competition To eBay And Industry (Loss) Leader eBay Express

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From eBay Stores Forum - If you have an eBay Store you MUST have this, Google Base Store Connector

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

//

From eBay Stores Forum
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000234829
If you have an eBay Store you MUST have this, Google Base Store Connector

evanp (26940 ) View Listings                 Oct-02-06 14:16 PDT  

http://base.google.com/base/storeconnector/index.html

Make sure Google users can find your online store

Get your data from other popular services

If you have an online store with eBay, Amazon or Yahoo, why not make sure that Google users can find it, too? Google Base Store Connector is a free download that puts info about your store into our index, so that when people search Google for the products you have to sell, you'll show up in their search results, along with a link directly to your site on eBay, Amazon or Yahoo.

Effortless bulk upload of items

You'll never have to manually enter the same items on different websites; we'll automatically format your items for you in the proper Google Base format.

Synchronize multiple sites in one click

This is UNBELIEVABLY good it posted all my store items to GBase in about 2 minutes and that included downloading and installing the software!

Evan

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 3

eBay Express will be Officially* one year old this month.

eBay Corporate proclaims that eBay Express is a popular success.

    http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/32757
    eBay Q1 2007 Earnings Call Transcript
    April 18, 2007 5:00 pm ET

    "Lastly, eBay Express continues to experience increased adoption and growing success.
    For those of you who remember our eBay velocity statistics from the old days, on eBay Express
    an article of clothing sold every 67 seconds during the quarter, while a piece of jewelry sold
    every 2.5 minutes." Meg Whitman

But despite the glowing praise, and after a year of promotion to the world, is eBay Express really popular?

To answer this, let's use the free Alexa (www.alexa.com), and an Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite. And throw in some extras and ringers.

For the number of items on eBay Express, let's use eBay's assumption that everything on eBay.com is on eBay Express. We'll leave out the ongoing contribution from Half.com. We'll also leave out eBay Store counts because as of the April 2007 eBay began pursuing an aggressive policy of reducing the visability of eBay Stores products.

Ultimately, as can be seen from the charts below, the number of items available is not necessarily proportional to the number of potential buyers. Or as put by the old saw, 'size doesn't matter.'

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Reach:
Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. For example, this means if you took random samples of one million Internet users, on average 18,650 of them visit eBay.com

Page Views per user:
The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site.

Statistics quoted are as of 5 June 2007.

............................................... Page Views ...... Reach per
.............. Number of ... Traffic Rank ..... per user ........ million users
............... Listings .... Now . 3 mos AVG .. Now . 3 mos AVG . Now . 3 mos AVG
eBay ......... 11,629,538 ..... 20 ....... 17 . 15.7 .. 15.0 ... 18,650 .. 20,530
eBay Express . 11,629,538 . 55,637 ... 44,456 .. 1.6 ... 1.7 ....... 35 ...... 37
Bidville ...... 1,017,535 . 64,977 ... 81,030 . 13.8 .. 11.1 ...... 9.5 ..... 8.9
Yahoo ........... 718,801 ...... 1 ........ 1 . 13.8 .. 14.7 .. 247,999 . 255,100
eCRATER ......... 556,089 . 16,034 ... 13,431 .. 3.3 ... 5.5 ....... 80 ...... 79
uk.ebid.net ..... 513,749 . 29,019 ... 20,589 . 12.2 .. 14.4 ....... 25 .... 30.5
Blujay .......... 168,455 .... n/a .. 112,060 .. n/a ... 3.0 ........ 8 ...... 11
Tazbar .......... 156,856 .... n/a ... 44,425 .. n/a .. 17.5 ...... n/a .... 12.5
ePier ........... 127,203 .... n/a .. 126,320 .. n/a ... 2.0 ..... 12.5 ...... 11
Wagglepop ........ 97,357 . 63,829 .. 140,567 . 25.3 ... 5.8 ........ 7 ..... 6.7
AuctionQuests .... 56,961 .... n/a .. 102,366 .. n/a .. 14.0 ........ 7 ....... 6
HiBidder ......... 35,001 . 67,352 ... 52,895 . 22.7 .. 32.1 ........ 7 ..... 8.6
PlunderHere ...... 28,220 . 87,745 ... 69,225 . 12.7 .. 50.2 ........ 7 ..... 5.2
Overstock ........ 23,860 .. 1,156 .... 1,155 .. 6.9 ... 6.3 ...... 625 ..... 640
StuffPals ........ 18,401 .... n/a .1,159,728 .. n/a ... 4.0 ...... n/a ..... 0.4
WeBidz ........... 17,594 .... n/a ... 67,164 .. n/a .. 18.1 ........ 9 ....... 9
Lowbid ........... 12,397 .... n/a .. 318,140 .. n/a ... 6.6 ...... n/a ..... 2.3
Bid-Alot .......... 1,515 .... n/a .. 412,619 .. n/a ... 6.4 ...... n/a ..... 1.4
Ewaey ............... n/a .... n/a .. 731,762 .. n/a ... 6.4 ...... n/a ..... 0.9

Amazon .............. n/a ..... 32 ....... 30 .. 5.4 ... 5.8 ... 18,000 .. 17,130
BestBuy ............. n/a .... 509 ...... 528 .. 6.4 ... 5.8 .... 1,400 ... 1,345
Buy.com ............. n/a .. 1,155 .... 1,369 .. 3.5 ... 3.8 ...... 910 ..... 701
CompUSA ............. n/a .. 2,498 .... 2,035 .. 5.2 ... 4.8 ...... 360 ... 416.5
ProStores.com ....... n/a . 13,376 ... 11,021 .. 4.2 ... 5.2 ....... 90 .... 90.5 
WalMart ............. n/a .... 504 ...... 427 .. 6.3 ... 6.1 .... 1,400 ... 1,580

** Per conflict of interest notice, we have in the past or currently have items on or have bought from eBay, Bidville, Yahoo, eCRATER, Blujay, Wagglepop, Overstock, Ewaey, Amazon, BestBuy, Buy.com, CompUSA, WalMart. All shares of eBay stock were sold in the summer 2004.

Let's move measures of popularity, Page Views and Reach, leftward.

Remove Yahoo! as they are closing shop on auctions. And they're also Number 1.

Organizations have good and bad days. Let's use 3 months data to average this out. Round up everything. Order lists according to Page View and Reach.

3 Month Average
............. Page Views .. Reach per .. Number of
.............. per user . million users . Listings
PlunderHere .... 51 ............. 6 ....... 28,220
HiBidder ....... 33 ............. 9 ....... 35,001
WeBidz ......... 19 ............. 9 ....... 17,594
Tazbar ......... 18 ............ 13 ...... 156,856
eBay ........... 15 ........ 20,530 ... 11,629,538 <=
uk.ebid.net .... 15 ............ 31 ...... 513,749
AuctionQuests .. 14 ............. 6 ....... 56,961
Bidville ....... 12  ............ 9 .... 1,017,535
WalMart ......... 7 ......... 1,580 .......... N/A
Overstock ....... 7 ........... 640 ....... 23,860
Lowbid .......... 7 ............. 3 ....... 12,397
Bid-Alot ........ 7 ............. 2 ........ 1,515
Ewaey ........... 7 ............. 1 .......... N/A
Amazon .......... 6 ........ 17,130 .......... N/A
BestBuy ......... 6 ......... 1,345 .......... N/A
ProStores.com ... 6 ............ 91 .......... N/A <==
eCRATER ......... 6 ............ 79 ...... 556,089
Wagglepop ....... 6 ............. 7 ....... 97,357
CompUSA ......... 5  .......... 417 .......... N/A
Buy.com ......... 4 ........... 701 .......... N/A
StuffPals ....... 4 ............. 1 ....... 18,401
Blujay .......... 3 ............ 11 ...... 168,455
eBay Express .... 2 ............ 37 ... 11,629,538 <===
ePier ........... 2 ............ 11 ...... 127,203

eBay Express is virtually dead last in Page Views per user.  eBay should reconsider touting to the Press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

3 Month Average
.......... Reach per .... Page Views . Number of
......... million users ... per user .. Listings
eBay ......... 20,530 ....... 15 .... 11,629,538 <=
Amazon ....... 17,130 ........ 6 ........... N/A
WalMart ....... 1,580 ........ 7 ........... N/A
BestBuy ....... 1,345 ........ 6 ........... N/A
Buy.com ......... 701 .........4 ........... N/A
Overstock ....... 640 ........ 7 ........ 23,860
CompUSA ......... 417 ........ 5 ........... N/A
ProStores.com .... 91 ........ 6 ........... N/A <==
eCRATER .......... 79 ........ 6 ....... 556,089
eBay Express ..... 37 ........ 2 .... 11,629,538 <===
uk.ebid.net ...... 31 ....... 15 ....... 513,749
Tazbar ........... 13 ....... 18 ....... 156,856
Blujay ........... 11 ........ 3 ....... 168,455
ePier ............ 11 ........ 2 ....... 127,203
HiBidder .......... 9 ....... 33 ........ 35,001
WeBidz ............ 9 ....... 19 ........ 17,594
Bidville .......... 9 ....... 12 ..... 1,017,535
Wagglepop ......... 7 ........ 6 ........ 97,357
PlunderHere ....... 6 ....... 51 ........ 28,220
AuctionQuests ..... 6 ....... 14 ........ 56,961
Lowbid ............ 3 ........ 7 ........ 12,397
Bid-Alot .......... 2 ........ 7 ......... 1,515
Ewaey ............. 1 ........ 7 ........... N/A
StuffPals ......... 1 ........ 4 ........ 18,401
 
eBay Express is slowly sinking in this ranking.  In Reach per million users, eBay Express is less popular than Overstock.com, eCRATER, and it's sibling ProStores, and not much more popular than the smaller sites.

3 Month Average
............... Traffic .. Number of
................ Rank ..... Listings
eBay ............... 17 . 11,629,538 <=
Amazon ............. 30 ........ N/A
WalMart ........... 427 ........ N/A
BestBuy ........... 528 ........ N/A
Overstock ....... 1,155 ..... 21,877
Buy.com ......... 1,369 ........ N/A
CompUSA ......... 2,035 ........ N/A
ProStores.com .. 11,021 ........ N/A <==
eCRATER ........ 13,431 .... 556,089
uk.ebid.net .... 20,589 .... 513,749
Tazbar ......... 44,425 .... 156,856
eBay Express ... 44,456 . 11,629,538 <===
HiBidder ....... 52,895 ..... 35,001
WeBidz ......... 67,164 ..... 17,594
PlunderHere .... 69,225 ..... 28,220
Bidville ....... 81,030 .. 1,017,535
AuctionQuests . 102,366 ..... 56,961
Blujay ........ 112,060 .... 168,455
ePier ......... 126,320 .... 127,203
Wagglepop ..... 140,567 ..... 97,357
Lowbid ........ 318,140 ..... 12,397
Bid-Alot ...... 412,619 ...... 1,515
Ewaey ......... 731,762 ........ N/A
StuffPals ... 1,159,728 ..... 18,401
 
eBay Express has also been slowly sinking in the rankings. By Traffic Rank eBay Express is fair compared to other (substantially smaller) competing sites, including ProStores.

To comprehend the magnitude of these numbers, let's use Yahoo! and Google, in this last list.

3 Month Average
............ Reach per .. Page Views . Number of . Traffic
.......... million users . per user .. Listings ... Rank
Yahoo! ....... 255,100 ...... 15 ....... 718,801 ...... 1
Google ....... 239,450 ....... 7 .... EVERYTHING ...... 3
eBay .......... 23,765 ...... 15 .... 11,629,538 ..... 17
ProStores.com ..... 91 ....... 6 ........... N/A . 11,021
eBay Express ...... 37 ....... 2 .... 11,629,538 . 44,456

Is eBay Express leading the competition? According to the metrics, no.

Is eBay Express popular?

What do you think?

This article is a followup to:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular
• The Online Competition To eBay And Industry (Loss) Leader eBay Express
  

See also addendum:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2 Compete   

See also the post-Part 3 one year anniversary article:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 4 One Year Old

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Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
Originally Posted Apr-01-07 11:59:16 PDT

eBay Express will be one year old this month. After a year of promotion to the world, is eBay Express popular?

To answer this, let's use the free Alexa (www.alexa.com), and an Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite (www.powersellersunite.com). And throw in some ringers.

For the number of items on eBay Express, let's use eBay's assumption that everything on eBay.com is on eBay Express. We'll leave out the ongoing contribution from Half.com.

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Reach:
Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. For example, this means if you took random samples of one million Internet users, on average 280,000 of them visit yahoo.com.

Page Views per user:
The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site.

............................................... Page Views ...... Reach per
.............. Number of ... Traffic Rank ..... per user ........ million users
............... Listings .... Now . 3 mos AVG .. Now . 3 mos AVG . Now . 3 mos AVG
eBay ......... 12,366,494 ..... 16 ....... 16 . 14.8 .. 15.3 ... 19,900 .. 23,765
eBay Express . 12,366,494 . 73,341 ... 23,794 .. 1.9 ... 1.7 ....... 25 ...... 77
Yahoo ......... 1,053,923 ...... 1 ........ 1 . 14.7 .. 15.3 .. 251,500 . 268,750
Bidville ...... 1,053,332 . 51,990 ... 87,695 . 10.8 ... 8.3 ....... 15 ..... 9.8
eCrater ......... 439,821 . 10,171 ... 17,892 .. 8.0 ... 5.7 ....... 80 .... 61.5
uk.ebid.net ..... 433,724 . 29,515 ... 12,988 . 21.6 .. 16.9 ....... 20 ...... 49
MightyBids ...... 273,710 .... n/a ... 70,427 .. n/a .. 10.7 ...... n/a ..... 9.9
Tazbar .......... 139,789 . 31,804 ... 34,355 . 21.9 .. 18.6 ....... 15 .... 16.5
Blujay .......... 134,206 .... n/a ... 95,174 .. n/a ... 3.9 ......10.5 .... 12.5
ePier ........... 128,551 . 67,963 .. 109,711 .. 6.2 ... 2.2 ....... 15 .... 13.5
Wagglepop ........ 97,894 .... n/a ... 73,537 .. n/a .. 15.7 ...... n/a ..... 9.7
AuctionQuests .... 46,855 .... n/a .. 106,312 .. n/a .. 21.5 ...... n/a ..... 5.4
Bid-Alot ......... 43,658 .... n/a .. 183,398 .. n/a ... 3.2 ...... n/a ..... 6.4
HiBidder ......... 24.979 . 46,034 ... 63,954 . 31.5 .. 32.5 ........ 9 ..... 7.6
TheAuctionMan .... 23,389 .... n/a ...... n/a .. n/a ... n/a ...... n/a ..... n/a
Overstock ........ 21,877 ...1,207 ...... 761 .. 5.7 ... 6.5 ...... 650 ..... 897
WeBidz ........... 21,065 . 97,546 ... 61,318 .. 6.5 .. 14.0 ........ 9 ...... 12
Lowbid ........... 20,690 .... n/a .. 318,140 .. n/a ... 6.6 ...... n/a ..... 2.3
whaBAM ........... 20,347 .... n/a ...... n/a .. n/a ... n/a ...... n/a ..... n/a
PlunderHere ...... 17,481 . 94,519 ... 92,601 .. 111 .. 38.4 ...... 2.5 ..... 4.4
Amazon .............. N/A ..... 31 ....... 26 .. 5.6 ... 6.0 ... 17,000 .. 19,865
BestBuy ............. N/A .... 540 ...... 378 .. 5.3 ... 5.9 .... 1,350 ... 1,745
CompUSA ............. N/A .. 2,465 .... 1,381 .. 4.4 ... 4.9 ...... 385 ... 613.5
ProStores.com ....... N/A . 10,794 .... 9,114 .. 4.3 ... 6.2 ...... 105 ..... 104

Let's move measures of popularity, Page Views and Reach, leftward.

Remove Yahoo! The site measures for Yahoo! include listings and everything Yahoo! They are Number One, so let's move on.

Organizations have good and bad days. Let's use 3 months data to average this out. Round up everything. Order lists according to Page View and Reach.

3 Month Average
............. Page Views .. Reach per .. Number of
.............. per user . million users . Listings
PlunderHere .... 39 ............. 5 ....... 17,481
HiBidder ....... 33 ............. 8 ....... 24,979
AuctionQuests .. 22 ............. 6 ....... 46,855
Tazbar ......... 19 ............ 17 ...... 139,789
uk.ebid.net .... 17 ............ 49 ...... 433,724
eBay ........... 16 ........ 23,765 ... 12,366,494 <=
Wagglepop ...... 16 ............ 10 ....... 97,894
WeBidz ......... 14 ............ 12 ....... 21,065
MightyBids ..... 11 ............ 10 ...... 273,710
Bidville ........ 8  ............ 10 .... 1,053,332
Overstock ....... 7 ........... 897 ....... 21,877
ProStores.com ... 7 ........... 104 .......... N/A <==
Lowbid .......... 7 ............. 3 ....... 20,690
Amazon .......... 6 ........ 19,865 .......... N/A
BestBuy ......... 6 ......... 1,745 .......... N/A
eCrater ......... 6 ............ 62 ...... 439,821
CompUSA ......... 5  .......... 614 .......... N/A
Blujay .......... 4 ............ 13 ...... 134,206
Bid-Alot ........ 4 ............. 7 ....... 43,658
ePier ........... 3 ............ 15 ...... 128,551
eBay Express .... 2 ............ 77 ... 12,366,494 <===
whaBAM ........ n/a ........... n/a ....... 20,347
TheAuctionMan . n/a ........... n/a ....... 23,389

eBay Express is virtually dead last in Page Views per user.  eBay should reconsider touting to the Press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

3 Month Average
.......... Reach per .... Page Views . Number of
......... million users ... per user .. Listings
eBay ......... 23,765 ....... 16 .... 12,366,494 <=
Amazon ....... 19,865 ........ 6 ........... N/A
BestBuy ....... 1,745 ........ 6 ........... N/A
Overstock ....... 897 ........ 7 ........ 21,877
CompUSA ......... 614 ........ 5 ........... N/A
ProStores.com ... 104 ........ 7 ........... N/A <==
eBay Express ..... 77 ........ 2 .... 12,366,494 <===
eCrater .......... 62 ........ 6 ....... 439,821
uk.ebid.net ...... 49 ....... 17 ....... 433,724
Tazbar ........... 17 ....... 19 ....... 139,789
ePier ............ 15 ........ 3 ....... 128,551
Blujay ........... 13 ........ 4 ....... 134,206
WeBidz ........... 12 ....... 14 ........ 21,065
Wagglepop ........ 10 ....... 16 ........ 97,894
MightyBids ....... 10 ....... 11 ....... 273,710
Bidville ......... 10 ........ 8 ....... 992,936
HiBidder .......... 8 ....... 33 ........ 24,979
Bid-Alot .......... 7 ........ 4 ........ 43,658
AuctionQuests ..... 6  ....... 22 ........ 46,855
PlunderHere ....... 5 ....... 39 ........ 17,481
Lowbid ............ 3 ........ 7 ........ 20,690

In Reach per million users, eBay Express is less popular than Overstock.com and it's sibling ProStores, and not much more popular than the smaller sites.

3 Month Average
............... Traffic .. Number of
................ Rank ..... Listings
eBay ............... 16 . 12,366,494 <=
Amazon ............. 26 ........ N/A
BestBuy ........... 378 ........ N/A
Overstock ......... 761 ..... 21,877
CompUSA ......... 1,381 ........ N/A
ProStores.com ... 9,114 ........ N/A <==
uk.ebid.net .... 12,988 .... 433,724
eCrater ........ 17,892 .... 439,821
eBay Express ... 23,794 . 12,366,494 <===
Tazbar ......... 34,355 .... 139,789
WeBidz ......... 61,318 ..... 21,065
HiBidder ....... 63,954 ..... 24,979
MightyBids ..... 70,427 .... 273,710
Wagglepop ...... 73,537 ..... 97,894
Bidville ....... 87,695 .. 1,053,332
PlunderHere .... 92,601 ..... 17,481
Blujay ......... 95,174 .... 134,206
AuctionQuests . 106,312 ..... 46,855
ePier ......... 109,711 .... 128,551
Bid-Alot ...... 183,398 ..... 43,658
Lowbid ........ 318,140 ..... 20,690

By Traffic Rank eBay Express is number 4 compared to other (substantially smaller) competing sites.

To comprehend the magnitude of these numbers, let's use Yahoo! and Google, in this last list.

3 Month Average
............ Reach per .. Page Views . Number of . Traffic
.......... million users . per user .. Listings ... Rank
Yahoo! ....... 268,750 ...... 16 ..... 1,053,923 ...... 1
Google ....... 252,000 ....... 7 .... EVERYTHING ...... 3
eBay .......... 23,765 ...... 16 .... 12,366,494 ..... 16
ProStores.com .... 104 ....... 7 ........... N/A .. 9,114
eBay Express ...... 77 ....... 2 .... 12,366,494 . 23,794

Is eBay Express leading the competition? According to the metrics, no.

Is eBay Express popular?

What do you think?

This article is a followup to:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular

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Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular
Originally Posted Feb-10-07 16:18:43 PST

While reading the thread WOW!  Opting out of ebay express really boosted our biz I was reminded that eBay has taken the stance that topics negatively impacting the public relations image of eBay Express are "Urban Myths."

Those topics are well documented, with evidence presented by reputable Sellers. In reality the "Urban Myth" is eBay has provided facts to support their suppositions; none have been presented.  But it is eBay's playground, and they are entitled to pout in public about the bad press directed toward eBay Express.

Today let us reverse the table, and look into eBay's contention that eBay Express is a popular buying site. Is this fact or "Urban Myth"?

eBay Express launched in April 2006. Eight months later eBay's official comment was:

"I can't comment on individual seller experiences but I'd say we're certainly in the early days of the site. It's a new channel and we're seeing traffic grow organically"
Lara Housser, Director of eBay Express, U.S.
December 2006

Less enthusiastic comments:

"We've certainly not seen the results we and other sellers anticipated, with sales and traffic generation under 1% of overall eBay activity."
David Yaskulka, marketing chair The Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PeSA)
November 2006

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-ebay1225,0,2193425.story?coll=bal-business-indepth
"And while eBay's main auction site attracted more visits than any other online retailer in November, eBay Express was at No. 87 on the list of top shopping and classified sites, according to research firm Hitwise Pty. Ltd."

eBay presents this convoluted definition of popular, "historical buyer behavior on the site for similar searches." In normal speaking terms, popular = lots of hits.

For today's demonstration we'll use the free tool Alexa (www.alexa.com), and the Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite (www.powersellersunite.com).

We have no financial stake or affiliation with either organization. The Power Sellers Unite list is commonly used. Alexa is being used because it is free.

We will use eBay's assumption that everything on eBay.com is available on eBay Express. The separate ebid.net sites are considered one collective. No Google, as Google includes everything. And throw in some ringers.

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Reach:
Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that if you took random samples of one million Internet users, you would on average find that 280,000 of them visit yahoo.com.

Page Views per user:
The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site.




................................................. Page Views ........ Reach per
............... Number of ... Traffic Rank ...... per user .......... million users
................ Listings .. Today . 3 mos AVG . Today . 3 mos AVG . Today . 3 mos AVG
eBay .......... 14,497,600 ..... 16 ...... 13 ..  15.5 .. 15.7 ..... 23,650 .. 27,560
eBay Express .. 14,497,600 . 18,626 .. 24,005 .... 2.4 ... 1.7 ......... 90 .... 81.5
**.ebid.net .... 1,138,347 . 29,515 .. 12,988 ... 21.6 .. 16.9 ......... 20 ...... 49
uk.ebid.net ...... 363,355
us.ebid.net ...... 270,653
ca.ebid.net ...... 253,164
au.ebid.net ...... 251,175
Yahoo .......... 1,095,626 ...... 1 ....... 1 ... 15.7 .. 15.9 .... 273,000 . 271,900
Bidville ......... 992,936 . N/A ..... 60,082 .... 7.0 ... 6.2 ........ 5.5 .... 16.5
MightyBids ....... 388,472 . N/A ..... 30,944 .... 1.8 .. 15.4 ......... 11 ...... 22
eCrater .......... 383,571 . 25,057 .. 17,240 .... 5.1 ... 6.0 ......... 45 .... 61.5
Tazbar ........... 132,712 . 54,683 .. 34,055 ... 18.8 .. 14.9 ......... 11 .... 20.5
ePier ............ 128,551 . N/A ..... 96,716 .. . 1.0 ... 3.3 ........ 5.5 ...... 15
Blujay ........... 122,781 . N/A ..... 74,682 .. . 4.8 ... 4.7 ......... 11 .... 15.5
Wagglepop ........ 100,696 . N/A ..... 53,683 ... N/A ... 18.8 ..... N/A ......... 13
TheAuctionMan ..... 24,394 . N/A ..... N/A ...... N/A ..... N/A .... N/A ...... N/A
Overstock ......... 23,769 .... 802 ..... 404 .... 7.3 ... 7.0 ........ 865 ... 1,590
Bid-Alot .......... 22,304 . N/A ..... 71,955 ... N/A .... 8.7 ..... N/A ....... 11.5
HiBidder .......... 21,821 . N/A ..... 88,965 ... 71.0 .. 27.6 ........ 2.5 .... 6.25
whaBAM ............ 20,566 . N/A .. 1,440,270 ... N/A .... 2.3 ..... N/A ........ 0.2
WeBidz ............ 20,161 . N/A ..... 45,798 .... 2.2 .. 19.4 ......... 15 .... 13.5
Lowbid ............ 15,667 . N/A .... 313,279 ... N/A .... 6.2 ..... N/A ........ 2.8
Amazon ............... N/A .... 26 ....... 21 .... 6.2 ... 6.8 ..... 19,600 .. 24,840
BestBuy .............. N/A ... 433 ...... 241 .... 6.1 ... 6.3 ...... 1,650 ... 2,650
CompUSA .............. N/A . 1,889 .... 1,066 .... 5.1 ... 5.0 ........ 480 ... 816.5
ProStores.com ........ N/A . 8,018 .... 8,150 .... 6.9 ... 5.7 ........ 115 ..... 125

Let's clean and reduce this pile of numbers.

This article is about popular, and we'll move measures of popularity, Page Views and Reach, leftward. Also eBay considers these measure of utmost importance. Page Views because the more pages viewed, the more advertising viewed. And Reach because you want a large audience products and spam.

Yahoo! will be removed. The site measures for Yahoo! include listings and everything Yahoo! They are Number One, so let's move on.

Overstock will be removed. Believe the statistics are skewed as they may reflect the viewing a automobile pileup psychology.

Organizations have good and bad days. As a running average is a good measure of performance, we'll remove the Today columns. Let's get rid of decimals and round up everything. Order lists according to Page View and Reach. And let's add statistic change or growth as a percentage.


3 Month Average
............. Page Views ... Reach per .... Number of .... Traffic
.............. per user .. million users ... Listings ..... Rank
HiBidder ....... 28 (+222%) ...... 7 ......... 21,821 .... 88,965
WeBidz ......... 20 (-21%) ...... 14 ......... 20,161 .... 45,798
Wagglepop ...... 20 (+26%) ...... 13 ........ 100,696 .... 53,683
ebid.net ....... 17 (-4%) ....... 49 ...... 1,138,347 .... 12,988
eBay ........... 16 (+1%) ... 27,560 ..... 14,497,600 ........ 13 <===
MightyBids ..... 16 (+107%) ..... 22 ........ 388,472 .... 30,944
Tazbar ......... 16 (-28%) ...... 21 ........ 132,712 .... 34,055
Bid-Alot ........ 9 (-29%) ...... 12 ......... 22,304 .... 71,955
Amazon .......... 7 (-3%) ... 24,840 ............ N/A ........ 21
BestBuy ......... 7 (+5%) .... 2,650 ............ N/A ....... 241
Bidville ........ 7 (-42%) ...... 17 ........ 992,936 .... 60,082
ProStores.com ... 6 (+16%) ..... 125 ............ N/A ..... 8,150
eCrater ......... 6 (-15%) ...... 62 ........ 383,571 .... 17,240
CompUSA ......... 5 (+4%) ...... 817 ............ N/A ..... 1,066
Blujay .......... 5 (+10%) ...... 16 ........ 122,781 .... 74,682
ePier ........... 4 (-11%) ...... 15 ........ 128,551 .... 96,716
whaBAM .......... 3 (-39%) ....... 1 ......... 20,566 . 1,440,270
Lowbid .......... 3 (+44%) ....... 7 ......... 15,667 ... 313,279
eBay Express .... 2 (-19%) ...... 82 ..... 14,497,600 .... 24,005 <===
TheAuctionMan . N/A ............ N/A ......... 24,394 ....... N/A

In Page Views per user eBay Express is virtually dead last.  eBay may wish to reconsider it's touting to the press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

3 Month Average
.............. Reach per .... Page Views .. Number of .... Traffic
............. million users ... per user ... Listings ..... Rank
eBay .......... 27,560 (-11%) ... 16 ..... 14,497,600 ........ 13 <===
Amazon ........ 24,840 (-13%) .... 7 ............ N/A ........ 21
BestBuy ........ 2,650 (+36%) .... 7 ............ N/A ....... 241
CompUSA .......... 817 (-1%) ..... 5 ............ N/A ..... 1,066
ProStores.com .... 125 (0%) ...... 6 ............ N/A ..... 8,150
eBay Express ...... 82 (+8%) ..... 2 ..... 14,497,600 .... 24,005 <===
eCrater ........... 62 (+51%) .... 6 ........ 383,571 .... 17,240
ebid.net .......... 49 (-10%) ... 17 ...... 1,138,347 .... 12,988
MightyBids ........ 22 (-22%) ... 16 ........ 388,472 .... 30,944
Tazbar ............ 21 (+173%) .. 15 ........ 132,712 .... 34,055
Bidville .......... 17 (-38%) .... 7 ........ 992,936 .... 60,082
Blujay ............ 16 (-3%) ..... 5 ........ 122,781 .... 74,682
ePier ............. 15 (-12%) .... 4 ........ 128,551 .... 96,716
WeBidz ............ 14 (-33%) ... 20 ......... 20,161 .... 45,798
Wagglepop ......... 13 (-32%) ... 20 ........ 100,696 .... 53,683
Bid-Alot .......... 12 (-12%) .... 9 ......... 22,304 .... 71,955
HiBidder ........... 7 (0%) ..... 28 ......... 21,821 .... 88,965
Lowbid ............. 7 (-47%) .... 3 ......... 15,667 ... 313,279
whaBAM ............. 1 (-91%) .... 3 ......... 20,566 . 1,440,270
TheAuctionMan .... N/A ......... N/A ......... 24,394 ....... N/A

In Reach per million users, eBay Express is more "popular" than the other smaller auction sites.

By Traffic Rank eBay Express is number 3 when included with the smaller auction sites.

eBay .......... 27,560 (-11%) ... 16 (+1%) ..... 14,497,600 ........ 13
eBay Express ...... 82 (+8%) ..... 2 (-19%) .... 14,497,600 .... 24,005

Compared to the eBay.com Mothership, eBay Express performance is abysmal.


When compared to the other auction web sites, is "eBay Express popular" a myth?

Leading in the Reach per million does mean popular.  But fact is these are small numbers when compared to eBay.com. Out of 1 million (1,000,000) users, 82 will view eBay Express, followed by 62, 49, etc. views for the competition. If eBay considers an 82 a brilliant success, a 62 share is not that bad of an audience.

Were the statistics for Overstock.com valid, throw them back in and eBay Express loses. On all fronts.

So ... yes and no.

eBay Express will be 1 year old in April 2007. Let's revisit the Myth question then.

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