How would you, as a seller, like to know what the top search terms are in your favorite top category? Great idea huh? Well, how would you like to drill down into a few sub-categories to see even more detailed info on what to sell on eBay? Finally, how would you like to use this tool to find niche products so you could sell what people really want? Sound good? Well, sorry you missed it.
The new version of eBay Pulse was released today with a small announcement by Dennis Goedegebuure of eBay Marketing. Dennis may be a great guy, and I hate to jump on new releases right away, but this product is pretty bad.
Evidently, they have taken away the most useful part of eBay Pulse, which is the ability to drill into several leaf categories to find more detailed information. The only top searches shown are for the main or "meta" categories. If this is just a test or beta or whatever, then they shouldn't have released it with such incomplete information. If this is the final version, it's basically useless. Based on the announcement, this is intentional. One of the new features is that:
New modules that display the most popular searches in each of our main categories, as well as the biggest movers.
The newest feature is "Internet Pulse" which according to the eBay Ink blog contains:
RSS feeds of online influencers, pull the keywords from these expert blogs, and build links to search pages on eBay. This methodology gives eBay a scalable way to get the hottest product keywords linked from the Pulse page and indexed by the search engines.
Couldn't I just use Google Trends or Google Insights to find out what's hot? Yes, as a matter of fact, I already do. eBay picks the "online influencers." Why would I rely on them? Who knows who they pick for me? Another example of "we know what's best for you."
The New eBay Pulse
Popularity: 19% [?]
5 comments ↓
Something must have happened. Ebay Pulse this morning (saturday) looks like its now back to the old, original style.
Hi Jeff - I get the old and new intermittently too. I assume it will take a while for the new page to appear consistently. If you keep refreshing, you’ll get the new one in a short time.
They unilaterally eviscerated the Pulse pages as a tool for research. I liked drilling down in my categories (not that I was able to go far enough down but it worked. And worked well)
Now? My categories aren’t event there. So much for product sourcing info.
And Frankly? the stupid explanation given by Dennis Googlehead was ridiculous. Then he “scorned” another seller’s post, because that person mentioned using keywords on Pulse.
Hey Dennis, please go to work for like Yahoo auctions…soon dude, cause eBay can’t stand any more “improvements of this nature”.
Good blog Steve. Thanks.
@Beth,
I will stay at eBay for a while.
Based on community feedback, we have rolled back the old pulse for a limited time. Until the application is live, we will build in the needed functionality for drill down in categories for detailed information in the new pulse pages.
Until then, you can find the new pulse at http://new-pulse.ebay.com
Kind regards,
Dennis
[...] lit up with complainers. Dennis G. (Dennis Goedegebuure, eBay Marketing?) posted this comment on my most recent post about eBay [...]
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