eBay Fraud Scams exposed

Last month we have noted decline in eBay search traffic based on ComScore reports and independently confirmed by AuctionBytes report using Nielsen data.

Here is an updated table on Unique Visitors and Site Searches for month to month change from March to April 2008.

Property  Unique Visitors
                    Apr-08 vs. Mar-08    M/M
Total Internet     190,728     188,010   +1%

Google             141,080     137,480   +1%
Yahoo              140,613     139,518   +1%
eBay                81,874      80,903   -1%
Amazon              58,683      58,057   -1%

comScore Expanded Search Query Report
April  2008 vs. March 2008

Expanded Search Entity  Search Queries (MM)

                                  Percent Change 

                       Apr-08 vs. Mar-08
Total Expanded Search  15,088  14,988  -1%

Google                  6,531   6,639   2%
Ebay                      474     450  -5%
Craigslist                277     273  -2%
Amazon                    149     137  -8%

eBay continues to show decline on both metrics on month to month basis, while Google continues growing.

Similarly eBay stock share price flatlined / declined in April 2008

                    April 1 -08     April 30 -08
NASDAQ               2362.75     2412.80
Google                465.71      574.29
eBay                   31.41       31.29
Amazon                76.70        78.63

Recession is supposed to be good for eBay, at least it used to be during the past tough economic times. It is important to note that Amazon and Craigslist show slowdown as well.

We own several ecommerce websites and primarily market through Google. Many of our websites appear on page one or two of Google natural search results…. so I was interested how these stats benchmark against our own sites, testing if Google natural search results bring increased traffic on year to year and on month to month basis.

Here are our stats, site A and site B

SITE A
Month Unique visitors
      2007  vs. 2008
Jan  14409     16106
Feb   7994      9307
Mar   9572      9326
Apr   8679     10241

SITE B
Month Unique visitors
      2007  vs. 2008
Jan   1276      1741
Feb   1054      1618
Mar   1099      1503
Apr    992      1220

It is important to note that :

• most traffic to the site is brought by Google natural search results
• no paid adversing traffic to the site, e.g. we do not advertise on Google or any other site to bring additional visitors to these sites
• our marketing or site content has not changed significantly from last year to this year
• both sites are ecommerce sites

This quick reality check with our own website confirms that while eBay visitors and search traffic declines, Google generated visitor traffic continues to grow and gain marketshare.

If you are developing your own store under your own domain name, be sure to learn all you can to market your ecommerce products via Google.