eBay and Walmart Offers New Web Search Engines

eBay plans to release an upgraded web search engines early next year. This move is slated to help eBay be more competitive with Amazon.com in the online e-commerce market. When a customer shops online, the first thing they do is a search for the product they want. If that process takes too long, the customer will most likely go to another online competitor, or make their purchase locally. The result is a loss in customers and revenue.

eBay’s old search engine, called the Voyager has been around for more than ten years and it needs an upgrade. It was the best technology around when it was launched, but times are changing. Instead of an upgrade to Voyager, eBay is creating a new search engine named Cassini that will be launched in early 2013. eBay hired over 150 skilled employees to work on Cassini to make it the best web search engine around.

Some of the interesting features of Cassini are searches will show full product descriptions, Cassini will match search inquires and include product photographs, the search will also hone in on information about the seller and the buyer. Cassini will “understand” what the searcher wants in more detail.

The Voyager search engine takes search keyword literally and currently matches the keyword to titles in the product descriptions. This is because each eBay vendor describes their products differently and there are no strict rules on the how to write descriptions. Voyager pulls up everything related to the keyword that a customer searches. The customer then must add another search term, and eventually they will find the product. This is time consuming.

Amazon.com has a catalog of products, and strict product descriptions. This allows the customer to search a product with ease and there will be no wait time for results. It’s almost a perfect search engine system.

Walmart has already launched their new search engine. It was created, amazingly enough, in less than nine months. This new search engine recognizes phrases that people use when they describe a product instead of matching the search to the exact words in the listings. One example of the way it works would be if a customer was searching for a backyard chair, the search engines will understand that a patio or garden chair is the same thing.

These types search engine improvements right on their websites for customers to use, this may be a threat to Google. Google wants the public to search for products on their website before going to Walmart.com or eBay. Google gets paid through e-commerce advertisements. If sites like Walmart.com and eBay suddenly stop advertising on Google, this will undoubtedly hurt Google’s business.

Google has also upgraded their search technology. Now they have visual recognition technology to search products. This means lots of photographs of products, mainly clothing.

With this competition to rein in the online buyer, it will be interesting to see how these new developments affect sales and traffic. We all have to wait a little longer to find out.

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Optimize Your eBay Keywords for Search Engines

Your objective when writing eBay titles should be to help buyers find you. Here are a few tips to help your listings appear in eBay and Google searches.

1) Choose the Right Keywords

choose up to five keywords that describe or relate to your item. Think like a buyer, not like a seller. If you are selling a bracelet, use the words jewelry, bangle, and bracelet in the title to catch different buyer searches.

2) Use eBay Real Estate with Discretion

You only get 55 characters for your title. Don't waste this space with meaningless symbols or words that buyers won't search for. Example - "Gorgeous Ralph Lauren sweater we ship fast." Buyers won't be searching for words like gorgeous or "we ship fast." A better title would be, "NEW Women's cashmere Ralph Lauren sweater Medium Red." The title does not need to be a coherent sentence. You are appealing to the search engine. The rest of your listing is for the human being once they find your listing.

3) Less is More on eBay.

Describe your item the in as much detail as possible but in as few words as possible. The listing should contain 200 words of text. Use your keywords 10-14 times in your listing. Avoid non-relevant information. Keep it short and to the point not only for the search engine, but for the human. Too much visual stimuli will drive buyers away.

4) Strategically name your images.

Instead of leaving your photos named something random the way they come off the memory card, name the photo with appropriate keywords. Naming images gives you another chance to get keywords on the page that the search engine will see (humans can't see them).

If you aren't getting traffic or sales, your keywords may be the problem. For help with your keywords, check out my eBay store critique.

Happy Selling!

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