More Page Views on eBay than Google

A recent report by Nielsen NetRatings, the Internet research company, states that over 3 billion web pages on the eBay site were visited during July. This represents an increase of over 40% on the same period in 2004.

This volume of visits means that eBay now outranks Google as the most heavily used UK web site (in terms of page views) with over 40 per cent of the internet population visiting eBay last month.

European internet analyst at Nielsen, Alex Burmaster, is reported as saying, “We all know that eBay has been a huge success - but why? For many people eBay represents, more than any other brand, the greatest attributes about the internet – empowering and bringing people with complementary interests together.”

Burmaster continued, “The potential of the web to provide a virtual marketplace matching individual supply and demand has been realised brilliantly by eBay particularly when you consider that the site is visited each month by almost half of the entire UK internet population.”

Apparently, visitors to eBay spend an average of almost two hours on the site; viewing around 280 pages each month. The most popular time for people to visit eBay is said to be between 5pm and 9pm.

It’s interesting to note that Google is currently in the beta trial phase of it’s Froogle shopping comparison product which seems to list many thousands of “Buy-it-Now” items from eBay. Perhaps there is some collaboration between eBay and Google that will make it easier for potential shoppers searching Google to find their way to the eBay site? If so, it can only be good news for the millions of eBay sellers looking to increase their reach into the global marketplace.

More Bizarre eBay Auction Wins for GoldenPalace.com

Over the last year or so, the online casino, GlodenPalace.com, has acquired quite a reputation (together with a lot of publicity!) for winning auctions on eBay for bizarre and unusual items.

If you were to ask the question, “What do Britney Spears, Ariel Sharon and a grilled cheese sandwich have in common?”, then the answer would be that GoldenPalace.com has won items relating to all three on eBay.

The online casino has set new standards in creative marketing by bidding on these unusual items – Britney Spears’ pregnancy test helped raise money for charity. The 10-year-old grilled sandwich which apparently bears an image of the Virgin Mary burned into the surface raised nearly $6,000 including the pan used to cook the sandwich.

But the latest item in this series of innovative (not to say, somewhat gory) advertising and charity fundraising auctions, is an old blood-covered bandage once worn by Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.

CEO of GoldenPalace.com , Richard Rowe is reported as saying, “Although the authentic head bandage worn by Ariel Sharon has political significance, the goal of our collection of religious, historical and other unusual items is to make headlines worldwide as we want to capitalise on this unique way to get exposure”.

You’ve really got to hand it to GoldenPalace – this is a fantastic way of getting global publicity for relatively small amounts of money. And if it helps raise funds for charity too, then good luck to them!

New Competition for eBay in China

A deal has been struck between Yahoo and Chinese Internet portal Alibaba.com which analysts expect will create major competition for eBay – the world’s largest internet auction site.

Standard & Poor's Equity Research issued a "hold" rating on eBay and said that the business relationship between Yahoo and Alibaba.com will have a negative influence on the online auction company.

eBay has a strategic plan for it’s future growth in China, with CEO Meg Whitman saying earlier this year that China is a major priority for the company. But according to S&P Equity Research, Alibaba's consumer auction business - Taobao - is currently doing well on it’s own in competition with eBay in China.

The research firm is quoted as saying, "……and we think that adding Yahoo's resources and assets, including its portal and stake in e-commerce venture 1pai, would only enhance its prospects."

The deal between Yahoo and Alibaba is expected to be completed towards the end of this year and will result in the bringing together of the Number 2 and Number 3 operators in the Chinese Internet auctions domain.

On past performance, it seems unlikely that eBay will take this competitive threat lying down. So we can probably expect eBay to make some strategic moves to maintain it’s overall global dominance in the online auction business.

New Archive Categories Launched

We’ve been continuing to build our archive of items previously for sale on eBay to help people who aren’t yet registered to get access to benchmark prices so they can see what the current bargains are.

The latest “Value an Item by Category” we’ve published is for collectable Coins which includes six sub categories – Banknotes, Bullion/Bars, Coins, Historical Medals/Medallions, Share Certificates/Bonds and Tokens.

You can go direct to these archives by clicking on the links above, or if you’d like to browse through all the categories just click on the “value an item” link to the right.

We hope all these new pages are useful for those of you who haven’t joined eBay yet and so are not able to search through eBay’s finished listings. The number of visitors to our archives has increased threefold over the last couple of weeks so it certainly seems to be of interest. Happy eBaying!