I assume your questions are with respect to any particular item you are listing ... and that you are referring to the information on your account's traffic page.
How is eBay traffic calculated?
Each item on the traffic page has an explanation that you can view by hovering over it. You can find more details by watching the eBay for Business video describing the traffic page.
How does eBay attract traffic to sellers’ promotions and advertising links?
eBay has an algorithm that determines which listings are shown whenever a potential buyer does a search. This ordered list is the natural search results. eBay will insert promoted/advertised listings into the natural search results, and these are indicated by the word "sponsored".
eBay will also insert sponsored links onto individual item pages that the user might be viewing, and on other sites in the eBay network.
eBay may place ads on external sites, as indicated on this page, (look at "Where do Promoted Listings Standard ads appear?"), but I've noticed that Google Shopping lists many of our eBay items that are not sponsored. And, given the cheap nature of eBay, I doubt that they are paying external sites to advertise products ... but I don't know that.
How to get eBay’s natural traffic?
In my experience, eBay's natural traffic is affected by the quality of your inventory (compared with others), and the quality of you as a seller.
- New listings and new sellers get increased visibility for a time.
- Sellers that are below standard get reduced visibility
- At one point, eBay stated that titles that included special characters would get reduced visibility
- On your traffic page, you want your "click-through rate" and "sales conversion rate" to be high. eBay favors inventories of those sellers who are able to get clicks and sales. At some point, I had read that the average sales conversion rate on eBay is 1.35% - this is a really important number - so you want your rate to be above this. If not, what ugliness in your listing is keeping interested buyers from making the purchase? Harsh return policy? High shipping? High price with respect to other items eBay will show within your listing? Bad feedback? Poor description and photographs?
- An old, dusty listing will fade into obscurity, and weighs you down. Either relist and change pricing/shipping/return policy/etc., or donate or trash or auction. Don't let it just keep gathering dust.
