eBay traffic - where has it gone, and where is what's left of it coming from?

A few weeks ago I was checking out my eBay traffic reports, and found a couple of surprises that I wasn't expecting - number one, my traffic over the last three months is running at about half of what it was the year before, and number two, Yahoo is sending me more traffic than Google is more often than not.

Interesting, to say the least.

So I decided to download my reports and take a good look at exactly where my eBay traffic is coming from, and compare it to the numbers from a year before:

Here is December. eBay is first of course, with a measly 4,348 - well, it's measly when you compare it to Dec. 2007 - 7,738. Yeah, a little disheartening.

Yahoo is coming in at number 2, with 597. In 3rd is Google, with 374. That's a pretty decent difference! What is interesting also is that both of those numbers are higher than Dec. 2007, when they were Yahoo at 157 and Google at 198.

My blog is in a respectable 4th place with 199, and look who is at number 7 - The Vintage List with 50!

Ok, let's see how things shook out in January. eBay on top with a higher number than Dec. - 5,452 (January '08? 9,025). Google nudges out Yahoo into the 2nd spot, but only by 43 - 401 to 358. Again both are higher than the year before.

My blog maintains the 4th position with 264, and the List hangs in at number 7 with 45.

And last but not least, Feb. 2009. eBay brings 3,588 compared to 7,350 in Feb. 2008. Yahoo is back to number 2 with 318, and Google falls to number 3 with 269. My blog and the List maintain around the same, other than the List being nudged out by live.com and eBay UK.

Conclusion? - Something's going on with eBay.

There are a lot of things here to make me think, obviously...

In all honesty I was ready to blame Google for the change in numbers originally, thinking that their fallout with eBay was robbing me of traffic, along with the fact that I have never been able to get my eBay items to work in the Google Base Store Connector. (I recently discovered why it would never work for me - it doesn't like calculated shipping.)

But, a close look at these numbers is telling a different tale - the loss of traffic has to be dropped squarely in eBay's lap. Google and Yahoo are both sending more my way than they were a year ago - it is eBay itself that is sending half as much.

I could go on and on speculating about the drop in traffic - the economy, eBay's changes (Best Match?), the quality/quantity of my items... I imagine in reality it is a combination of all of those things, plus others.

So, what to do? That's the real question here. Problem identified - it is time to move on to figuring out a solution. The way I see it, I have a few options:

1. Get my items into Google Base. If anyone has any tips or ideas on this, please let me know!

2. Advertise my eBay items more. I tend to advertise them the least, because I always figured my time was better spent promoting items on Etsy.

3. List more. I'm forever struggling to keep a decent number of auctions listed - and auctions bring traffic. Simply concentrating on making sure my auction numbers are up every week could help a lot.

4. Open up shop on a different venue, get the items from there into Google Base, and spend time promoting the new shop. This is of course a whole other project, and while it is appealing on the surface (less fees on another venue!) the realities and practicalities of it aren't so exciting.

I would love to hear what those of you who also sell Vintage on eBay have been experiencing - is it similar to my experience? Or are you doing better? What are you all doing to help with traffic to your eBay items?