Items STILL not on ebay!

You should ask eBay. We just help you list them, if they aren't in search after that long something is wrong with eBay.

oh ok thanks ill go find out

i have found that ebay is wanting to blame auctiva, but it isnt activa it is ebay, what i do is after listing the item, i go in through ebay find the item and go to the drop down menue and click revise, then i manually put it in the catagory again...then it shows right up, it is a huge pain in the ass, when you look at i have over 300 hundred items listed and listing 3 times that amount when i am done, but if i wait for ebay to do it...i will grow old before they are all listed....i hope this helps you

When I first asked an eBay rep about this they told me that it takes time to index listings. As a software engineer myself I think they are using the term "index" broad-like.

Not knowing the network topography that is eBay there are certainly things that are certainty given the sheer number of listings. Some of these being various categories will have individual databases and sub-cats as well (if not all some). The term indexing in engineering is generally associated with databases and/or structures of data in arrays, collections, lists etc.

Given some assumptions most certainly it may take some time for listings to propagate into the search mechinism. However, listings should appear visible in the categories, perhaps storefront rather rapid.

I've been working on some other stuff so I have not taken the time to really look at this. ie: If you post direct at eBay watch to see how long it takes for that listing to be visible in the category and the same test within a storefront. Additionally see how long it takes for it to show up in a search, preferably measuring both a search from the top of eBay and in the case of a storefront listing how long it takes to show up in a search inside the storefront as well.

Then do the same via Auctiva.

I have no doubt Auctiva launches listings timely. A question would be does eBay run listings coming from external third party services through additional filters or other mechinisms prior to listings going live and/or indexing.

In some regards it'd make sense (for eBay) if they did. For example to make sure someone is not using a third party service to spam categories for example.

However either way such delays create bad kharma for vendors in that:

1. WILL a listing actually CLOSE at the proper time. ie: You list at 11PM EST (8PM PST) thus the auction should end whatall... 5 days later at the specified time. It's an important facet as scheduling your auctions is important to maximize prospective viewing. Listing an auction at 3AM in the morning will not have as many folks viewing at at 10-11PM EST.

2. eBay has 4 ways basically of getting a listing sold:
1. Someone finds it in a search
2. Someone ends up browsing your store
3. Someone see's the listing when its first posted (view newest)
4. Someone bids/buys near closing (view closing soon).

Generally speaking all the time inbetween is black zone more often than not especially in categories with heaps of listings.

So lets say you vend DVD's a set of categories with tons of listings. There is a chance your listing gets viewed when posted. After "some time" (lets call it 3 hours for sake of discussion) its pushed so far down due to new listings its not likely a "browsing" customer will see it anymore unless they view say 20+ pages down in "recent listings".

From this point on we as vendors "hope" someone finds it be search or perhaps see's another listing and then does a "view all vendors listings" or visits the storefront.

This is the case until closing time. Come closing time it again becomes more likely someone will see it via "closing soon".

Point of all this being... One of the prospective time's when consumers may SEE your listing is when its FIRST LISTED. IF its not appearing then you loose 1 of the key timeframes where someone might "Buy it now" or "Mark it in a Watch".

Thus search indexing aside, how long does it take for your listing to show up in category listings. If you post at 10PM EST your covering (10 to 11:30 lets say) as your prime time EST and 7-11:30 PST prime. If it takes 5 hours for the listing to physically appear in a category (irregardless of search indexing) then the auction actually appears live at 3AM EST 12PM PST... completely for the most part out of "high traffic" time as most everyone on the east coast is asleep and most everyone on the west coast is either asleep or getting ready to go to sleep. Thus a key time of visibility is lost.

If we adjust and say... "ok its averaging 5 hours to go live" so we post at 5PM EST we now get that prime visible time at listing start. However, when the item closes at 5PM EST we are again out of prime-time surfing (at least Mon-Fri).

It'd be interesting to just run some test listings and see the time results. I'd planned to do this but I havent found the time.

Typically it's been taking eBay about 6 hours to get listings into search. Mainly because they are checking for fraud. Otherwise it would take them only about 1 hour like it used to.

eBay has some bug though where sometimes listings dont show in search and you have to contact their support to reset your listings. It's a rather bad bug considering who has time to go check every listing to see if it's made it into search or not.

I haven't seen this in a while. It used to happen all the time to 1 or 2 of all a persons listings. Usually not all 9 or 10 like you had listed.

Interesting...

I figured it'd be due to spam listings or give time for filters to check listing content.

I reported a completely unrelated bug to eBay several days back. It's pertinent to CSS and IE. I'd created a flyout menu system for listings which works fine locally with MSIE, Opera, Firefox, Nutscape etc. When I sent it up to eBay worked fine in everything but MSIE.

So I went through the various support platform and even spoke to someone at eBay. Today I got back a canned response that has absolutely nothing to do with what was reported.

As you may know (Jeff) there are countless people not using CSS (rather than Javascript) for menu systems. For a flat menu system works just fine. But when having a system with sub-categories be it a vertical, horizontal drop down etc. CSS menu system something at eBay is murdering things.

As I said I reported it to them as with the number of vendors using CSS menu's it'd seem rather important. That is to say if a consumer cannot navigate/traverse a vendors menu system that will equate to consumers not being able to access product at least in the way the vendor intended they would. That'd equate to lost sales, loss perhaps of significant eBay revenue?

Canned response. Surprised me.

quote:

Originally posted by thayneb:
i have found that ebay is wanting to blame auctiva, but it isnt activa it is ebay, what i do is after listing the item, i go in through ebay find the item and go to the drop down menue and click revise, then i manually put it in the catagory again...then it shows right up, it is a huge pain in the ass, when you look at i have over 300 hundred items listed and listing 3 times that amount when i am done, but if i wait for ebay to do it...i will grow old before they are all listed....i hope this helps you

Hi
i was interested in revising it manually, but it didnt work .Did i do something wrong? I revised, but not sure if i manually put it into category again? how is this done? Many thanks xx
Its put me off listing with Auctiva.

yesterday, i spent over an hour in the live help box with a store help team member trying to get my listings fixed, once i told them i wanted credit because it was them screwing it up, they fixed it , but then we are talking over 50.00 in credit i was asking for

quote:

Originally posted by Auctiva Jeff:
Typically it's been taking eBay about 6 hours to get listings into search. Mainly because they are checking for fraud. Otherwise it would take them only about 1 hour like it used to.

eBay has some bug though where sometimes listings dont show in search and you have to contact their support to reset your listings. It's a rather bad bug considering who has time to go check every listing to see if it's made it into search or not.

I haven't seen this in a while. It used to happen all the time to 1 or 2 of all a persons listings. Usually not all 9 or 10 like you had listed.

I only run a store, i don't use auctions anymore, but when i revise i put it in the category i have listed for the item, now if you don't have a category, ebay will list it anywhere, don't give up on auctiva, it is the same if you use turbo lister, and if you have more then one picture you will pay for it, auctiva now that i have pret much gotten it figured out is a damn good lister, and the forums here are great....when i first posted this, they were still listing right away, but now it still takes time, no matter what..good luck...Thayne

quote:

Originally posted by Minty:

quote:

Originally posted by thayneb:
i have found that ebay is wanting to blame auctiva, but it isnt activa it is ebay, what i do is after listing the item, i go in through ebay find the item and go to the drop down menue and click revise, then i manually put it in the catagory again...then it shows right up, it is a huge pain in the ass, when you look at i have over 300 hundred items listed and listing 3 times that amount when i am done, but if i wait for ebay to do it...i will grow old before they are all listed....i hope this helps you

Hi
i was interested in revising it manually, but it didnt work .Did i do something wrong? I revised, but not sure if i manually put it into category again? how is this done? Many thanks xx
Its put me off listing with Auctiva.

Thanks for replying.
I think my frustration lies with the fact it took from 6.00pm when i submitted the listings, till after 12.00 midnight and 1.00 am next day to actually go into search engines.
Ebay answered my queiry twice and mentioned indexing.
It never used to take this long, but now i understand it better it helps a little.
I still think it is annoying that they do not go in even an hour after listing. Your first crucial hours wasted, when you get bids and watchers.

Mine seem to index fast and I can find them fast. Guess I'm one of the lucky ones.