ebay vs Search Engines 83
runlevel6 sent us worthwhile article about eBay vs Search Engines. The gist is that a small time auction site was returning search results into eBay. eBay was less than fond of this claiming that people ought to use their search tools. Little company claims this is counterintuitive to the whole point of having a search engine. Check it out.
Why not.. (Score:1)
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Reject
Re:I don't get it, eBay... (Score:1)
You own a grocery store, one of several in town, and the more people you can get to go to your store, the more money you get through ads. Now you would have one of two reactions:
1) You could be happy that there will be more people using your store (these won't count as customers for ads, because they don't see it)
2) Or you could view it as someone using the infrastructure you already built and profiting on it himself, because he gets money for ads as well. and you don't.
I agree with you, but their reasoning is 100% fiscal, they don't care about how often someone bids, or how often a sale gets made, they just care if they get their cash through marketing.
Just another perspective...
--[Patryn]
But what if his info is too old? -- A solution (Score:1)
I can believe it to some extent. General purpose search engines always cache stuff and a lot of the results are so out of date that the pages have gone, servers have gone, etc.
But these are auction-specific search engines, so they *know* that caching results more than a few hours old is worse than useless; in fact, it would give the auction search engines a bad rep.
Which brings up eBay's second complaint. To keep from showing obsolete results, the search engines trawl often enough that it ties up the auction site itself.
Now it seems to me that one solution would be for auction sites to have a compact data file they update once an hour or three times a day or sufficiently often, in a format meant to be machine readable, expressly for these auction search engines. That way, the auction site would get the benefit of the search engine with minimum fuss.
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Re:I don't get it, eBay... (Score:1)
Problems with your metaphor:
1) Lets say the guy comes to your store once an hour, instead of weekly.
2) Since bandwidth is limited, let's make the comparison that the guy brings 100 people with him, getting in everyones way, so that he can quickly look at every item in your store.
3) In your example the guy making the glossy insert isn't profiting in any way. Lets change it to the guy places an add with your prices saying he will provide the lowest prices if you join his low price club for $FOO. W
Re:robots.txt (Score:1)
Re:I don't get it, eBay... (Score:1)
Re:Why not.. (Score:1)
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Reject
Re:robots.txt anyone? (Score:1)
Re:advertising on the web - broken business model (Score:1)
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Re:I REALLY don't get it, eBay... (Score:2)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:The Onion (Score:2)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:robots.txt anyone? (Score:1)
"eBay should just deal with it, the Web is supposed to be free" or something like that. Yes, but bandwidth isn't free.
"eBay should stop advertising." It's kinda hard to stop when they never did it in the first place.
"First Post."
"It's just like..." (flawed analogy follows)
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Re:EBay bran recognition (Score:1)
Read. Think. Post. (Score:1)
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robots.txt (Score:3)
Some things are linkable, some things aren't. Welcome to the dynamic nature of the web.
SOMETHING EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ (Score:2)
Re:death to hrefs! (Score:1)
Publishing Biz (Score:2)
They also get some revenue by subscribers - people who buy and sell on their site.
What NO conventional publisher would tolerate would be publisher B taking their content ($$$ to develop) and publishing it with their own advertising. Imagine how the NY Times would react to The Daily News publishing their articles to attract readers? Surely their would by lawyers all over the place.
Re:I'm not sure I understand this one. (Score:2)
In short, the reasons that this AC gives are probably not really eBay's motivations. As others have pointed out, web-crawlers constantly going over your site would be a great pain and would slow things down. But if eBay licensed the data -- found some other way to distribute it -- they wouldn't have this problem and would have a new source of moolah.
So why aren't they doing this?
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
I'd block the domain from my subnet, and I wouldnt listen to anything anyone had to say about it. Is this a technical incompetence issue rather than a legal one?
Indeed - did ebay actually attempt to limit access by the 'bots using the Robots Exclusion Standard? (ie install a robots.txt file at the root of their document tree)
Given that www.ebay.com/robots.txt [ebay.com] returns a bog-standard 404 I doubt it. If they had tried this, maybe they would have more of a case?
S.
Perverting their customer profiles? (Score:2)
If you read the marketing-speil coming from all the current e-commerce sites, be very afraid. They want to know how who, what why, where, when and what you spend. Now if a robot that emulates a human search (or aggregate metasearches) then GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) rules apply. For people who work in the database field, the technology is the least of the worries as cleaning up the data is probably 80% of the work.
similar analogies would be
- creating artifical users on Hotmail
(their name space is NOT infinite)
- inserting mega dynamic indexes to Yahoo
(overwhelm the human classifiers)
- creating recursive reviews to Amazon
(drowning the human comments with noise)
In short, anything automated can be screwed up to some degree. If the script kiddies ever get a clue, I suspect there will be some sort of arms race between robot automation and exclusion. Fun and games.
LL
Re:They'll be upset with Apple then (Score:1)
solution for ebay (Score:1)
Re:eBay and MacOS 9 (Score:2)
Re:I'm not sure I understand this one. (Score:1)
Re:I'm not sure I understand this one. (Score:1)
Ebay charges more for better placement of your auction. Better placement is useless if your auction is listed in a place where ebay's placement is ignored.
Re:I REALLY don't get it, eBay... (Score:1)
It doesn't use graphical banner doesn't there is no ad.
cy
Re:robots.txt (Score:1)
ebay isn't thinking right! (Score:1)
Re:I REALLY don't get it, eBay... (Score:2)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
I'm not sure I understand this one. (Score:2)
The other side of the argument, I suppose, is that the only reason these companies are worth the billions that they are is because of eyeball counts. If that really is the case, we can expect to see lots more suits of this type.
Ebay kinda justified...for now (Score:4)
The jist is that the aggregate auction sites continuously spider the 2.8 million items on ebay's site multiple times each day. Given their current scaling problems I can see why ebay would like to go it alone.
Obviously, if they can't solve the scaling problems and the public chooses auction portals over the single ebay site then ebay may have problems. For now they certainly have name recognition to get 'em through the short term.
Andy
I don't get it, eBay... (Score:4)
1)I could lavish the guy with praise, because with faith in my service, I know he'll be bringing more customers my way, due in part to name recognition, and in part to the fact that I've got better prices on some items than my competitors.
2)Or, I could have a complete lack of faith in my services, thus basically admitting that others offer a better deal, and try to keep this guy from publishing his rag.
If they don't want this guy searching eBay for deals, how can they even pretend to stand behind their service?
What... AGAIN? (Score:3)
Once again, as The Onion put it, 79% of Americans 'Just Don't Get It'. The whole point of the web is to make the information "Site Transparent". You don't care where you are and you can drift from one server to another as you wish.
Is there anything we can do to stop this stupidity?
Heh, two points (Score:2)
Second, if they want people to use their search engine, why not make it usable? Simple text matches is not enough. I want to be able to say: "Give me all Nintendo 64 or N64 games under $25. Return back the seller, the price, the closing time and shipping terms".
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scalability (Score:1)
hm...they seems to be having enough problems as it is. seriously, ebay should be doing their own meta-auction service. this would be the smart way to do it...
death to hrefs! (Score:2)
Did the internet ever have a href-blockade before?
Maybe alta vista, yahoo, hotbot, excite, etc. shoud remove ebay from their search results...
e-Bay: Stop advertising my site!!!! (Score:1)
Too many companies are full of control freaks. Just having any old person linking to their page drives them nuts and causes them to act against their own self-interest.
Re:What... AGAIN? (Score:3)
If bandwith were free I couldn't agree more with the little guy. But Bandwith isn't free and ebay has to pay to let them slow down their services by crawling the whole site all day.
Joseph Elwell.
Hmm. Tough (Score:2)
Well, what is Yahoo and other search engines doing, then? They're providing an access method to different websites. If you want to search a website by going through another search engine, sure, it's a pain, but it's feasible.
I'd hate to see eBay win on this. As far as I'm concerned, the method of accessing a website hierarchy is irrevelant, and you are free to propose any method you wish. eBay is a huge milk cow at the moment, and it sounds as if this is just another example of someone trying to leech off some of their revenues.
However, I have a sinking suspicion that eBay will win its point. It's time Linux takes over the world... We wouldn't have that silliness under Linux. Okay, so if LinBay has an (OS) search engine and someone else picks it up and adapts the code, LinBay wouldn't sue or something as silly; they'd take the new code, and better it and so on.
I know, I'm dragging this whole thing into another "Linux rulz!!!" issue... But I've got to say it: this news piece makes me say this: Open Source is to the Internet what the Middle-Class was to 1950's economy: perhaps the only hope against the self-destruction of capitalism.
Make of that what you will. :)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Re:Heh, two points (Score:1)
EBay bran recognition (Score:2)
1. Brand recognition - They don't want to be one of a number of auction sites. They feel they are the biggest, original, and baddest, so why put yourself in the first of a long list of auction sites.
2. Full site searches are slow on their 8088 - They have problems enough handling their users. Someone searching their full site 24 times a day or so is going to cause system slowdowns.
3. Not their pretty little ads - They want users to see their ads. Not some schmuck who's getting a "free ride"
Of course, this isn't in the best interest of users, but it's actually probably in the best interest of EBay.
Re:Ebay kinda justified...for now (Score:1)
Re:scalability (Score:1)
'Most accurate up to date prices' yeah right. (Score:3)
This is full of crap. eBay's 'current' bid prices from their own search engine are typically many hours old, I have even seen day-old bid prices displayed on bids.
And for some odd reason, the search seems to miss some items quite often, and I haven't figured out why yet. A search checking for a certain word in the title or description overlooks items that have that word in it. I am sure it isn't a spelling problem, and I believe it isn't a caps problem.
'Deep Linking' is one thing, but constantly spidering a dynamic database is stupid, and eBay has a right to limit it, but I believe that they should keep it open until it really shows signs of causing trouble.
An open letter to ebay (Score:2)
These auction search sites not only get you a wider audience for your auctions, the audience they give you is more likely to buy than someone meandering aimlessly through your behemoth of a site. Oh, yes; it is a behemoth. Slow, painful, approaching the experience normally associated with a cheese-grater to the forehead.
I can understand you're concerned about these engines slowing down the experience of those directly viewing your site, through their incessant search crawl of your database. Unfortunatly, you're seeking a short term solution; what you really need is much more power.
Until then, throw a few more Ultras into the mix and enjoy the extra business the search engines deliver to your door. Don't risk larger amounts of dubious revenue when one of these companies takes you up the lawsuit trail.
Re:They'll be upset with Apple then (Score:1)
Does Sherlock spend all day combing and re-combing and traversing and re-traversing the site it is searching?
No. It just makes a call to eBay's own search engine. Unlike these other sites that eBay is complaining about, Sherlock does not tax their site anymore than any other user does. Less, in fact, since you don't load up the front page. Sherlock users certainly aren't downloading all of eBay once an hour.
Since eBay doesn't have advertising, their complaint must rest in the fact that spiders slow them down -- and that's the last thing they need. They have enough problems as is, eh?
So why would eBay have a problem with Sherlock II -- especially since it doesn't have a problem with the original Sherlock?
advertising on the web - broken business model (Score:2)
are they upset because the other company is making money? or because they are losing consumer traffic, and therefore advertising dollars? if their business model was "we sell the service of putting your lot in front of many many people and you pay us for it" or "we provide you with many many lots which you can bid on, and you pay us for it", then they wouldnt care how many search engines distilled their content, because they'd still be making money.
unfortunately, their business model seems to be something like "we make money because lots of people come to our site and see the ads we run", and this is why they are throwing a hissy fit.
advertising on web sites isn't a good idea. there are too many ways to break the advertising-on-webpage model and there aren't any ways to fix it except by suing people who break the model. why should a company like the auction search engine company be penalized because eBay can't figure out a good way to make money?
the Web has quickly become a networked system of banner ads and popup windows, and it sucks. if businesses tried to provide services to consumers in return for payment, things would work a lot better.
robots.txt anyone? (Score:3)
Any search engine which ignores the robot exclusion standard deserves to be spanked in the harshest way possible (DENY ALL FROM *.luser.com comes to mind).
Any web admin who threatens legal action without even implementing this simple procedure (http://www.ebay.com/robots.txt does not exist) deserves to be pointed at, laughed at, and then forced to RTFM until they understand why what they did was wrong.
Sure, I don't think that this would stop someone who was determined to send a spider through their site, but you can't very well blame someone for walking on the lawn if you can't be bothered to put up a 'Keep off the grass' sign.
-D
It's a pity that stupidity isn't more painful.
Re:Hmm. Tough (Score:1)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Sherlock? (Score:2)
Re:Ebay kinda justified...for now (Score:1)
But if that's the case, why don't they set up a mirror of their database on another server that
gets updates during off-peak times? If these 3rd-party search sites want access, they'd probably be willing to pay for this to be set up.
Re:I REALLY don't get it, eBay... (Score:1)
The advertising is. Just like the advert for thebazaar above the
E-Bay sells ads to pay their bills. Andover sells ads to pay the
If you can search the auctions without seeing the ads, then E-bay has lost some possible revenue, depending on their advertising model.
Airneil
Copyright (Score:2)
They own the right to their content and they decide, what is allowed to do with it.
If they decide to give the information to individuals directly, but not to any seach engines, this is their right, isn't it?
Huh? (Score:2)
It's not complicated, ebay... (Score:3)
If people make bots fake their referrer fields to get in anyway, then you've got a case for wire fraud. If not, then you can shut up and be happy.
Listening to companies whine that "Those people are accessing the data we made publically accessible! Make them stop!" is getting annoying.
They'll be upset with Apple then (Score:1)
Sherlock 2 has internet search categories, like people, and news, and auctions.
Tell it you want to search for auctions of rare mono The Who vinyl, (to send to your good buddy Rob) and it'll find them for you, on eBay, on Yahoo, on Amazon, ect. It'll tell you the current bids and how long they have to run.
I think they're just upset because someone else is grabbing impressions with their content. I probably would be to.
Don Negro
Re:What... AGAIN? (Score:1)
How do you think those companies get the links to
ebay items? That's right, they search ebay's database (using ebay's resources) to pull this
information.
YOU may not care "where you are," but most
companies care where you are... that's how the
bills get paid.
-WW
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Once there was a time when religion ruled the world.
eBay and MacOS 9 (Score:1)
I've been playing with the betas of MacOS 9 for a bit and one of the nicest new features is a direct search of online auction sites like eBay using Sherlock II. Last I heard Microsoft is also planning to add similar functionality in InternetExplorer 5.0 for the MacOS (and presumably 5.x for Windows as well).
It'll be interesting to see how eBay handles this one, seeing as how a Sherlock plugin just taps into a remote search engine using their own code--it just calls their perl, PHP, etc. from your local machine. I don't know if eBay could really get irked about this, seeing as you'd technically still be using their search engine.
Re:Ebay kinda justified...for now (Score:2)
Think about it: if a company had developed software that could aggregate and keep multiple databases synchronized over the Internet in realtime, would they be in the meta auction business?
Re:Hmm. Tough (Score:1)
Re:I don't get it, eBay... (Score:3)
I like the idea posted above. Collect the info and sell it at a fair price on a different server. I don't think eBay should mind people finding info from other sites (assuming they eventually come to eBay and purchase there). If you have some degree of quality control and can throttle the effects of this searching your real-time database at the expense of performance for live users, I don't think there would be a problem.
But what about ad impressions? Does eBay benefot from visitors clicking through multiple pages to search for what they want, seeing an ad each time (I don't know, never been to eBay - just asking).
Another stupid eBay decision (Score:2)
The problem with competing with eBay is that it's nearly impossible to get enough eyeballs to visit your site to build volume and name recognition.
I think that non-eBay auction sites banding together to form common search databases is a good thing, and I also think that it is a good thing that eBay will NOT be part of this, as it will hasten the backlash against eBay. There are plenty of people who really wish that there was a viable alternative.
Re:I don't get it, eBay... (Score:2)
Still brings in customers, doesn't it?
2) Since bandwidth is limited, let's make the comparison that the guy brings 100 people with him, getting in everyones way, so that he can quickly look at every item in your store.
I have a hard time believing this guy is eating up all the bandwidth of eBay. It's just an excuse, somewhat akin to the RIAA saying mp3s are eating up all the industry's sales.
3) In your example the guy making the glossy insert isn't profiting in any way. Lets change it to the guy places an add with your prices saying he will provide the lowest prices if you join his low price club for $FOO.
I figured the fact that he'd make money in those glossies off of ads was somewhat implied.
Furthermore, if he advertises that, that's a different issue entirely. if he advertises such, and doesn't follow through, that's false advertising, and the dude should be shut down accordingly. But it has nothing to do with the store's sales.
As for those who mentioned advertising, if you check out ebay, there are *very few* ads on their system, from what I've seen. And I'll reiterate that I bet they (do|will|would) make far more money indirectly through name recognition than their ads.
Re:robots.txt (Score:2)
That's a good way to keep general-purpose robots out of trouble, especially when those robots are written in good faith. But eBay is presumably being subject to robot code that was custom-built for eBay's site. Given eBay's perception that these searchers are some how "hostile", they cannot just assume that the robots will play fair and read robots.txt.
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Have a Sloppy day!
This is stone stick stupid. (Score:2)
-Meta searches expose those auctions to a wider audience, thereby increasing eBay revenue derived from completed sales.
-eBay derives revenue from banner ads.
If eBay is not interested in exposing its sellers' auctions to the widest possible audience, which source of revenue do you think is more important to them? Which source of revenue do you think will (and currently is) get greater support from eBay?
How will removing load on eBay's servers from remote search engines and placing that very same activity back on the eBay servers (NT boxes that are always crashing and require a weekly four hour reboot) alieviate server load on eBay's notoriously unreliable servers?
-Jake
Points of view (Score:1)
From the seller's point of view, meta auctions are good. They get more eyeballs on their products - on the other hand, this could have the effect of devaluing their product, if forced to compete against lower-priced items on other sites.
From the buyer's point of view, meta auctions are good, they get the customer a wider selection, and more power to find the lowest-priced item.
From the auctioneer's point of view, they're bad, because he's now gotta compete with other auctioneers with his service. His service is ultimately devalued, and his marketshare is likewise devalued.
From the meta auctioneer's point of view, of course they're good, they're his free-ticket to hijack someone else's service and offer it.
Would it be nice if the internet was site-independent? Yes, that's what HTML was designed for - but on the other hand, computers were designed to do what they're programmed to do, if that's limiting where a user can go from point A, that's what it was programmed to do. So, just because the feature exists in HTML - doesn't mean the site designer has to use it.
So, what is the purpose of an auction site? to make the auctioneer money. If that goes away, then so do the auction sites. (unless metering content to collect revenue from the meta auction sites somehow becomes feasible).
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
Not a completely accurate picture (Score:1)
This is a more complete picture of the situation.
Now does it really sound like this is to your advantage as a store owner?
wait a minute.. (Score:2)
Re:The Onion (Score:1)
Speaking of The Onion, once upon a time there was a "The Onion" channel on My Netscape linking back to The Onion site for individual stories. It was taken down at the request of The Onion.
This channel would have provided lots of traffic directed back to their site, more advertising dollars, etc. However, they didn't want their content linked in from anywhere else.
They just don't get it.
Meta engines (Score:2)
Site that try to find the best price for items must pose an even more troublesome problem for online retailers. There's a site [addall.com] that search 20+ online booksellers and returns their prices. A site like this will bring some business to your site but will force you to lower your margins to compete.
Re:Meta engines (Score:1)
Re:I don't get it, eBay... (Score:1)
top dog, and they have the "pull" to stand on
their own merits. Letting the search engines
provide the front-end to eBay means they lose
out on chances to advertise to the eyeballs that
would normally be there.
In a year, things may be different. But for now,
ebay is king, and if they can make you browse
their site directly, they'll do it.
-WW
There's two sides to every issue. One side, and...
then the other side.
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Once there was a time when religion ruled the world.
so mcdonalds has a tacobell menu? (Score:1)
Re:EBay bran recognition (Score:1)
Re:I'm not sure I understand this one. (Score:2)
I don't really think eBay gives a frogs fat ass if you can't (won't) bid on their stuff because they're not available on some "meta auction site". eBay is growing rapidly. They have to protect their trademark/bandwith/network integrity somehow.
Pete
I can see through time - Lisa Simpson
I REALLY don't get it, eBay... (Score:1)
just my 20 lira (approx. $0.02 US)
Re:I don't get it, eBay... (Score:2)
I suppose that depends on how often he checked your prices. If he brought a hundred of his friends and went through your shelves every hour, you'd probably be less pleased.
If you had large advertising displays at the end of each aisle, and if you made a non-trivial amount of revenue from each display, and if this fellow and his colleagues had some way of bringing the desired item directly to the checkout stand for the customer, bypassing those displays... you'd have a pretty cool grocery store, and I'd shop there.
The analogy falls apart right there.
I sympathize with both sides of this issue, unfortunately. Maybe eBay should tighten up its
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