Bots taking over views and visits, NO sales

[TheButlersCorner]

I've experienced this since December 1st. I have never experienced this before. My views and visits are through the roof yet I have no sales from them. No favorites. No one asking questions. No one liking anything. Very odd. I've never had this happen before. I was told by several people that it's "bots". What is this thing called bots and what can I do about it? It's ruining my business. I haven't had sales. This is absolutely devastating

[sharonjenkins1]

So it’s only 5 days, and you do have a ton of sales from before.  I think the bots refers to the robots who might be running Etsy right now and making lots of mistakes.  As far as I know there is nothing sellers can do.  I think we have to recognize that within not much more than a week, orders won’t come in because of shipping times.  Hey, I finally got a sale last night after going about 2 1/2 months with no sales at all.  Maybe you’ll get one tonight.

[PrairiePrimitives]

@sharonjenkins1 Not everyone is shopping for Christmas gifts, so not everyone needs their purchase to arrive by 12/25. 

[TheButlersCorner]

@sharonjenkins1

5 days is a lot for me considering that I get two to three sales a day. My business was booming before this, sales hit an all-time high in August, September and October. November came and went right down the tubes compared to last year. I work very hard at my shop, like I'm sure a lot of other people do. This is very discerning to me that this should be even be happening at all. It makes absolutely no sense in my opinion and I just can't understand why nothing can be done about it.  I also get sales every year right through the holiday season. People are buying for themselves. They're still buying Christmas gifts. I ship out within 24 hours in most cases unless it falls on a Saturday afternoon, then I ship out Monday morning.

[ArlingtonGamingComp]

After April of this year my sales basically dropped to zero. I have sold maybe half a dozen items from my shop since then. Not sure if it is bots, but this time last year, the 1st year for this shop, I was selling 3 or 4 items a day sometimes. Now my shop might as well be closed as no one is buying anything. The economy was good last year, but inflation has killed people's discretionary spending and shops like ares are suffering imo. Do you use Etsy Ads, I don't. Too expensive and you pay weather you have sales or not. I wish they did it like Ebay where you only pay ad fees when your item sells.

[ArlingtonGamingComp]

For the year I have 7639 views, 4010 visits, with 55 sales. Horrible conversion rate this year. 

[Sassydoggs]

This is happening to vintage sellers.  It is either a technical problem or some type of new test that is affecting vintage shops.  I posted about it yesterday because all those stat views are sold items that sold up to 10 years ago.  Did you check your stats to see what items are being viewed?  I have few to zero views on recently listed, only views on items that sold many, many  years ago and they are obviously no longer available. 

[TheButlersCorner]

@sassydoggs, I did and I found that they are looking at my listings, not allot of sold ones, but last week, I had quite a few that were sold, so it changed from then, but still odd, because Im getting a lot of views and visits and no sales, not even favorites, I have never experienced this, no favorites, is just odd, its very upsetting, seeing I went out and bought tons of new things for Christmas and November wasn't that better, down over half from last year. People in the past have bought right up to Christmas and after, thru end of January, so not sure what's happening.

[sharonjenkins1]

@TheButlersCorner    I understand your frustration.  I’ve been here over 12 years and have seen all the changes which sadly have not been helpful to many shops.  I’d like to know also how to fix it all…but it’s Etsy’s playground to do what they want.  I do think your shop has been very successful.  Best to you-

[TheButlersCorner]

@sharonjenkins1, thank you I have worked so hard to get it to where it is and the past year has been challenging, not nearly as good as it used to be, I blame Etsy for all the changes, testing, outsourcing, etc......very, very frustrating. I do sell on another platform and that's been steady, promoting on Facebook, Instagram, X and Pinterest hasn't brought me any sales, just lookers.

[Sassydoggs]

@TheButlersCorner  It is very upsetting.  I just went through 32 pages of my views since yesterdat, according to stats, and in those 32 pages, there is only one single view in that listv for an active item.  On page 33 there are Zero views on any active items that show up.  This is really bad when there are 32 pages since yesterday of only views on sold items. 

[TheButlersCorner]

@sassdoggs

I am so sorry!, it is heart wrenching when you put so much of your time into your items, listing them and just putting your heart and soul into your business. It never used to be like this, I remember the better days, many years ago. I'm not sure where they are headed, but I know Vintage is still alive and well. I just wish they would stop playing around with our shops. I wish you the best, I truly do! You have wonderful things!!!

[OneEyeCatStudio]

That seems to be an ongoing issue ...

https://community.etsy.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Yep-here-we-go-again-today/m-p/147219279

[BagmakerSupply]

@TheButlersCorner: If the visits and views and organic, with the current state of Etsy search it is possible that your listings are just being shown to the wrong audience.

If the views and visits are external, it could be bots which are automated programs. It could be search engines crawling Etsy, it could be the multitude of sales tools (such as eRank or Everbee) looking for data to sell to their users, it could be some app that looks for comparables, it could be coupon / sales sites, or it could be malicious people scrapping your pages for their own reasons - possibly to throw off your statistics.

Etsy does try to stop web scraping but like so much on the internet recently it can be a losing game of whack-a-mole.

[MoonstruckCottage]

This is happening to me and other vintage shops -- but the high amount of views we have been getting for the past few days are of mostly sold items.

[RiverRatAntiques]

HELP 

I had 10k of sales in November As of Dec 3rd nothing at all, crickets. Today I've had 2 favorites in 20-hours. But spending Way too much on advertising every day. 

Any thoughts??

[ArlingtonGamingComp]

When ya'll say a vintage shop, do you mean one that sells vintage or vintage style items, or do you just mean a shop that has been on etsy a long time, like since the begining or so?

[PlatypusDream]

If you're looking for actionable tips for your shop... ask in the Critique section.

There are certainly things you can do to improve your placement in search.

[SappySouthern]

This is happening to me also. It started about 5 days ago. My shop was starting to finally pick up with sales and things were going well. I was consistently getting daily sales with multiple items per order. I had been feeling very positive finally. Then the views increased to 300-400+ daily with 286+ visits. That was initially exciting as my store never receives that kind of traffic. The excitement ended when I realized the increased views and visits translated to my sales completely stopping. No sales, no favorites, nothing to show for all of the views and visits. My listings are being looked at, but a ton of them are sold items from years ago as well.  Whatever is happening has completely killed my store all of a sudden. 

[TheButlersCorner]

@sappysouthern , I'm so sorry you're experiencing the same thing everyone else's that sells vintage is.  The worst, absolutely worst time this could happen.  I just checked and I have well over 200 views and visits in my shop which is completely unheard of. This is going on day 6,  I sure hope it stops real soon because it's devastating and literally crushing my shop right now.

[EvaGiftedHands]

I had it in November. It totally wrecked my conversion. Though changed towards mid November and didn't happened since. 

[Pincapallina]

People are viewing my very old sold item today..

[TheButlersCorner]

Just got a call back from Etsy support. I explained my issues with the views and visits and no sales and asked her what she knows and if she can help fix this problem, she said she doesn't see an issue and she has no record of technical issues going on now, LOL

[TheButlersCorner]

As of today, Sunday, December 8th, 6am, my views and visits look as if they are back to normal, 49 views and 7 visits, as opposed to 400-600 views and 200-300 visits over the past 5 days when I woke up. Im praying something was fixed, keeping fingers crossed, oh and 2 sales last night! 

[Sassydoggs]

I also hope that this issue has been fixed.  My stats show more normal activity since 6 PM last night, after 800 + bot visits to sold out items yesterday.