eBay promise more off site links in search results
by Chris Dawson
We reported Shopping.com links appearing in search results promoting sales on eBay’s rival Amazon back at the begining of December. Now eBay are promising more off site links in the form of Google text adverts on search results driving yet more buyers off the eBay site.
Testing will commence on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie for Google ads, supposedly in searches where few results appear on eBay. It does make sense that if a buyer can’t find what they’re looking for on eBay that they’re directed to another site where they can purchase, but concerns have been voiced where a buyer can legitimately claim to have made a purchase clicking on a link on eBay but are directed to an off eBay site.
eBay have in the past educated buyers that the only safe way to purchase is to keep their transaction “on eBay” and now in a sea change they are to encourage buyers to leave eBay and purchase on alternative sites, and in many cases from eBay’s competitors. Even worse having seen some of the results from shopping.com adverts buyers are directed to minor websites with no large company backing and no recourse for assistance if a transaction goes bad.
eBay should consider very carefully how the legitimacy of a safe marketplace could be undermined by buyers being directed elsewhere. There are enough stories where buyers complain they purchased on eBay but it was a spoof site, or they took the transaction off eBay, now eBay are going to encourage them to do so.
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It’s not just limited to searches where there are few relevent eBay results:
We’ll also be testing placements on a limited number of other search results pages.
I know it’s eBay’s site and they can do what they want, but this is bloody cheeky: they’re totally undermining their own customers. X-(
[...] What to do with website searchers when you just don’t have what they’re looking for, has been one of those problems that’s bugged me for years. If someone’s searching my beady site for 7mm orange beads, they obviously have a very specific requirement, and telling them sorry, would you like these 4mm pink beads instead isn’t going to help much. Then inspiration struck: if eBay were sending their zero-result searches off-site, then I could do the same thing in reverse. I’d send my customers back to eBay. [...]
[...] Several months back eBay announced that adverts for third parties would appear on eBay search pages when there were no other results. They were very keen to emphasise this when there are no other results - but I know I wasn’t the only seller who cynically thought it was the thin end of the wedge. [...]
[...] When third-party ads began on eBay, they were about improving the buyer experience: if the buyer’s desired item wasn’t on eBay anywhere (including Shops), they could be sent somewhere else. There is undoubtedly logic in this procedure, and one has to assume that there was also some money in it, because the accountants who are now running eBay’s marketing and site design have decided to roll it out site-wide. [...]