eCRATER.com Forum Index

SearchSearch
ProfileProfile
  Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   
Log inLog in

Google Product Search Traffic Drop
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    eCRATER.com Forum Index -> News & System Status
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
griffengarb



Posts: 304

PostPosted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 12:53 pm    Post subject: Maybe they -Big stores want all small sellers Reply with quote

just to give up and go away?? for lack of sales. They know we are out here - most given up on ebay ...and do not like all the upstart new marketplaces. Afterall that is what the E*** now is.

Plus the economy may be making other buyers now change to purchasing pre-owned merchandise?

I hope I don't sound too cynical , but who knows? The new search results certainly have changed . I used to come up very well on the first to third page with my keywords. Not at longer if the designer name is entered works more but it sure has changed.

I also notice more of the Amazon,Ebay, Nordstrom and the big retailers come up a lot.
Makes you think is the E*** controlling it all as they did there, make the small sellers go away- can it be possible? now I sound like a conspiiratist!
Yikes, but .....
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
sewgood



Posts: 60

PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 12:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I agree with griffengargb, also I want to note, in my case checking out key words that things are not showing like they should. If Im searching for say vintage jewelry necklaces. All I see are the big name store and their reproductions. Its 10 pages of the same thing too. Over and over. People are not seeing everything right now but a few stores and repeated items showing the same things. Its a mess in my opinion. People are looking for the unique, they don't want to see the same ring for 10 pages, for instance.

And I would like to know how people are supposed to figure out how to go to the left and start filling out price and such to see an item. Or pull the menu down to see more sellers. They don't see it and move on. Its not buyer friendly at all.
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
griffengarb



Posts: 304

PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:38 pm    Post subject: You are so right sewgood Reply with quote

I also do not like seeing ring after ring all the same or whatever they are offering. I do not understand why the sellers of thousands of rings list 20 30 or more all the same.
I used to find that on E*** and was a big disappointment. No variety.
Many years ago when I started there in their infancy there was a fabulous variety of antique jewelry. Loved going through all of them and wishing to have them. There were some really great sellers and beautiful items.
I bought my first diamond ring on there.
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
vintagecornerstore



Posts: 151

PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 2:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sewgood, you're absolutely right. I just entered that search term and found that in the first 13 pages (I stopped looking at that point) only five sellers were represented. Amazon (only listed twice though) Buy.com (only twice, I believe) and all of the rest by only three sellers. (One of the sellers does lists under three store names, even though they all go to one store. So in effect is one seller, though three store names were showing.)

I know you used to show up really well, and I didn't see your store at all. My website used to always show up in the first three pages and it does not show at all now. So it really is a pit.

It looks like Google is showing them in the order that the feed is sent to them. I used to only send my feed every couple of weeks, but my site would still show up nicely. It looks like these three sellers are probably feeding daily, or maybe even more often. I think that stinks, because I have better things to do with my time than mess around doing feeds to Google. (It takes some time to do mine each time, which is why I don't do it that often.)

Let's hope this is just a transition and that Google gets it worked out. I hope so, cause it sure sucks now.
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
DollsAndMoreCollectibles



Posts: 29

PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 6:30 am    Post subject: Google Feed Error ?? Need help! Reply with quote

Hi all,

After reading this thread, I see I need to make some changes on my listings! I read my Google Feed Status and at the bottom it states I have an error:

"Unrecognized header: operating_system"

Can anyone explain what this means and/or what, if anything I can do to fix this??

Thanks so much!

Patsy
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
acread
moderator


Posts: 11986

PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 7:41 am    Post subject: Re: Google Feed Error ?? Need help! Reply with quote

DollsAndMoreCollectibles wrote:
Hi all,

After reading this thread, I see I need to make some changes on my listings! I read my Google Feed Status and at the bottom it states I have an error:

"Unrecognized header: operating_system"

Can anyone explain what this means and/or what, if anything I can do to fix this??

You need to discuss that in the following topic. Read it before posting there

http://community.ecrater.com/viewtopic.php?t=19584
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
DollsAndMoreCollectibles



Posts: 29

PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 9:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi ACRead - Thanks! I sincerel appreciate it!

I am in the process of deleting my "terms" for shipping, payment and refund from my items and putting it in my "terms" section on ecrater. It seems a bit of a bummer though, because my past experience has been that most people don't read anything that isn't on the page the products on. Now, we may be refunding people who may not qualify under our terms since some will buy before clicking on another thing to read. Sad

I haven't had a sale since June, and it was hopping along pretty good until then.

I just wish we could just put it all on our individual item page instead of loading it here, there and yonder. But, Google rules are Google rules. Then again, if we have to refund because someone doesn't click on our "terms" at the bottom of each item page (that is already not that visible) then perhaps Google may be getting ready to start charging us an additional "refund" fee - more money for them.??

I hope they are not going to start being like the "painpal" side of payments!

Patsy
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
wtcollectibles



Posts: 2728

PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 10:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

DollsAndMoreCollectibles wrote:
Then again, if we have to refund because someone doesn't click on our "terms" at the bottom of each item page (that is already not that visible) then perhaps Google may be getting ready to start charging us an additional "refund" fee - more money for them.??

I thought they already did charge a refund fee. Question
Quote:

I hope they are not going to start being like the "painpal" side of payments!

Now that they both charge fees, how is Google better?
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
maggiethehousecat



Posts: 2457

PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 3:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Google has always charged .30 for refunds. If you have a lot of terms about who can and can't buy from you, you should change your Google checkout to manual charge and then if someone attempts to buy and you don't like them you can not charge them and the order automatically cancels after a few days.

Google checkout really has nothing to do with the drop in ecrater placement. Supposedly that is only to do with the number of no-no terms and phrases we include in our titles and descriptions. But when I see the number of NEW items on the first page of a vintage search I am starting to doubt that.
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
sewgood



Posts: 60

PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 7:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I hate to beat a topic to death. But in regard to the search I discovered for instance if I put my ring in the search, I don't see it, OR my store on the drop down menu. But if I know, say the ring for instance is 800. And I put in compare prices 800 - 800. It comes up and the store. Its insane. I know they can't mean to have google search working like this. LOL I hope they get it fixed.

Thanks to the other two posters for the nice words. Hugs, Sewgood
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
IncredibleClutter



Posts: 164

PostPosted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, thankfully I don't have a great lot listed in any of my stores, and will make the required changes, but...

I would like to be able to opt out of the feeds.

I don't give a rat's patoot about Google Shopping/Merchant/whatever it is now. My traffic - everywhere I sell - comes from organic search.

If that's not possible, then I agree that it would be really super swell to have another field (box) separate from the description for the "boilerplate" stuff.

Purty Please Sad
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
YayBeads



Posts: 359

PostPosted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 4:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Google search is really wierd. I was trying to force it to find one of my items by adding keywords to the search. when I got to "handcrafted rhyolite wire wrapped cap pendant", I hit paydirt...sorta

This is what Google returned:

24K gold Aqua Aura Crystal Cactus Pendant Necklace - Truth Sep 25, 2009 ... Black Line Jasper with Handcrafted Wrapped Sterling Cap Pendant ... Rhyolite Pendant - Copper Wire Wrapped Handcrafted 6-pointed Star - ...
www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=5474580 - Cached - Similar

The link takes me to the Aqua Aura Crystal, not the rhyolite. Google doesn't seem to be seeing them as separate items somehow.
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
snowflakememories



Posts: 207

PostPosted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another weird thing, I do have 294 items with free shipping or free ship on the title (out of 1200 total). The last 2 feeds rejected only 76 with the prohibited word in the title. In between the feeds I managed to change about 100 titles by removing the free ship but it did not affect the result.
I have no clue where to look further and it is so time consuming.

By the way removing the free ship on the title I give up the only competitive advantage I can offer on a very tight market, it is really a bummer.

Now a passionate comment if I can, I am not a layer but I suspect there is something of illegal on what Google is doing, and may be someone can formulate the right term.
In fact they would like to force all the selling online to a mere directory of vanilla items, easy to compare apple to apple, and removing all the creative content, kill the entrepreneurship, create a monopoly.
I don't know in the past, but sure now they look at us as statistical samples, or cows to milk, they change the "feed" and weigh the milk to maximize the production. Shouldn't Google keep the cows happy to have more milk ?
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
aspencounty



Posts: 815

PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 1:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

snowflakememories wrote:

Now a passionate comment if I can, I am not a layer but I suspect there is something of illegal on what Google is doing, and may be someone can formulate the right term.
In fact they would like to force all the selling online to a mere directory of vanilla items, easy to compare apple to apple, and removing all the creative content, kill the entrepreneurship, create a monopoly.
I don't know in the past, but sure now they look at us as statistical samples, or cows to milk, they change the "feed" and weigh the milk to maximize the production. Shouldn't Google keep the cows happy to have more milk ?




A couple of year ago I had one of my most popular and most profitable (non-ecommerce) sites completely wiped off the map by Google. The only possible reason for Google to penalize the site is that I refused to use Google's dumb, stupid, only Google uses, piece of crap rel=nofollow meta tag on this particular site. Admittedly I lost lots of traffic from G but the good news is there is life after Google. I just had to make a few adjustments and life goes on.

For what it's worth here's my take on Google and what's been going on with their Shopping/Products.

They have now and have always had this very bad "my way or the highway" attitude. As long as webmasters allow them to wield such power they will continue to dictate things to us making it harder and harder for the little guys to make a few bucks. See, it's all about the $$$$ to Google and folks they could give a rip less about us small time webmasters and store owners and what they put us through or how their action affect us. Trust me, they are going to eat well and drink premium and won't lose a bit of sleep over wither I have any dinner or not.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, G shopping/products is 8+ years in beta. It's not one of their more lucrative money making projects and they are constantly playing around with it and changing it and usually not for the better. Unless you are one of the big names or big spenders and even then I think they could really care less if their BS destroys your site or not. They are beholding the the almighty $$$ and their shareholders not we webmaster and site owners.

I know most of you don't want to hear all this and I will probably piss a few of your off. Guys, I look at it his way, all this is about Google Shopping and that should just be one of your traffic sources and a small one at that. Believe me, I understand the frustration but I honestly think that you can do more harm than good at this point trying to change, edit, rearrange and reword your stores and really guessing at this point what Google wants.

I realize most folks feel G Shopping is the greatest thing since sliced bread and will jump through all kinds of hoops to try and get your stuff listed there. That's fine and I don't have an issue with that so I guess what I'm trying to say is tread with caution. All the editing of certain words and phrases etc may, I repeat may, help with G shopping but is it helping or hurting you when it come to the REST of the search engines and internet?

I know that Ecrater is working hard to submit our product feeds to G Shopping and I know it's important and I hope things eventually smooth out. However, if you feel your store(s) is solely dependent on the traffic/customers you receive from Shopping/Products and without this everything is hopeless you really need to re-evaluate how you are doing business. I'm sure many will say I'm was doing great with my GP traffic, I just want it fixed. If you are that is great but have you ever considered how much better you could potentially be doing if you broadened your focus just a bit and realized Google and Google Shopping isn't the Holy Grail after all.
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
zickit



Posts: 21857

PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 1:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
if you feel your store(s) is solely dependent on the traffic/customers you receive from Shopping/Products and without this everything is hopeless you really need to re-evaluate how you are doing business. I'm sure many will say I'm was doing great with my GP traffic, I just want it fixed. If you are that is great but have you ever considered how much better you could potentially be doing if you broadened your focus just a bit and realized Google and Google Shopping isn't the Holy Grail after all.

AMEN!
Back to top
View seller's profile Send private message Visit seller's eCRATER store
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    eCRATER.com Forum Index -> News & System Status
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4  Next
Page 3 of 4

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum