eBay Search: There's a New Sheriff in Town

Outgoing Sheriff - Jamie Ionnone

New Sheriff - Hugh Williams

I've been pretty vocal that while the recent eBay (EBAY) changes are in the right direction, I don't think they nailing the top 20 priorities. Everyone always asks, what do you think the top priorities are? My answer for the last 2yrs+ has been: search, search, search, search.

A core part of my 'A new hope for eBay / eBay 2.0' thesis was that the search needs a major overhaul and pretty much everyone agrees that the current eBay search experience is pretty much very broken (We did an internal meeting on this and came up with the top 10 things wrong with eBay search - if time allows, I'll have to post that as it's pretty interesting/scary when you really dig into this topic).

The first glimmer of hope for eBay's search woes came earlier this year when eBay acquired a little startup that was led by some ex Amazon/Microsoft search gurus including Chris Payne.

Thursday we're getting news of many more changes with the eBay search team:

• First, Jamie Iannone, eBay's VP of Search, has been hired by Barnes and Noble to run their ecommerce group. This seems to have caused a cascade effect.
  • I've met Jamie numerous times and was a big fan. He was the driving force behind eBay Express which I actually think we will see eBay turn into slowly over the next couple of years. It's a loss to eBay to see him go, but like many larger companies, sometimes its hard to have the kind of impact you want to as your tenure increases and I'm sure he's looking forward to a new opportunity - I wish him the best of luck at Barnes and Noble.
• Second, news has leaked out that Hugh Williams has joined eBay as VP of Search to backfill Iannone. Hugh was a Partner (MSFT for 'very senior') developer manager of a piece of the new Bing search engine at Microsoft. Hugh is an Aussie that appears to have been pretty darn active as there's a good bit of information out there about him online. For those that want to learn more about the new grand pooba of eBay search:
  • Linkedin profile is here
  • Facebook is here
  • Twitter is here - twitter.com/hughewilliams
  • He has co-authored two books - both about mysql - wonder how he will like the eBay massive oracle infrastructure?
    • You have to keep an eye on these book authors - lots of hot air ;-)
  • His personal website is here
  • CV/Resume ishere
  • Here's a podcast of him talking about Live/Bing.
  • And for my uber-geek readers, here's an ACM paper he wrote on the efficient online index maintenance for contiguous inverted lists (I was wondering about this problem just the other day ;-)
  • He's in this microsoft research video.

The bottom line is there's a new sheriff in town for eBay Search and it will be interesting to see what kind of impact he has going forward. Also, is it too little too late?

Disclosure:- I am long Amazon and Google. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor

Comments

[Patricia013:]

Hmpf - time will tell but if they follow their track record I still see only doom! When one type of seller is hidden in search while another type of seller is exposed to more traffic then I say the search is no good. Its cheating sellers and its cheating buyers! If that continues then Ebay's reputation will continue to degrade until nobody in the world trusts them anymore! They simply have forgotten they are paid by sellers to give exposure to sellers in order to make SALES! Simple as that! If they no longer want small sellers then don't continue to milk them and treat them like crooks...cut them loose!

Jun 25 11:38 AM

[Bob C:]

Hope the new sheriff knows how to handle a gun better than eBay's management team.
I'm sure the 'team' members are missing all of their toes by now.

Shoot low sheriff, the're riding shetlands.

Jun 25 01:41 PM

[nityn:]

I agree even I find difficult searching anything on ebay. I does have Search As You Type but I don't get easily what I am looking for.

One challenge I can think is the whole DB would have been indexed and then when an item has been sold it has to be removed from the indexing right... How do they do it ???? Does this even make sense??? Ignore my ignorance

nityn

Jun 25 03:05 PM

[fatseal:]

But why does the new sheriff look like Legolas in 30 years?

Srsly, he worked on Bing, which shows you less stuff than Google. Don't we already have a problem with half the stuff not showing up in search, so we hire someone who built a search engine to show fewer results? I'm confused and probably need a lie down, but I think I want more items, not less when I search. Just a though.

Jun 25 11:21 PM

[Gadz:]

I know an absolutely fool proof way to search EBay..it's called GetItNext.com.

Its a website search engine devoted entirely to helping people search whatever they're looking for in EBay and it works magnificently.

Try it out..tell me I'm wrong.

getitnext.com

Jun 26 03:03 AM

[Tony P.:]

The new sheriff may be full of all kinds of great ideas and common sense, but he still must obey the Master and Commander.

Gupta was/is one smart cookie - with enough common sense to restore one's faith in an MBA - but none of the higher-ups listened to a thing he told them.

But, then again, who knows?! Maybe Hugh can work the code in such a way that everyone can be happy. No? Well, I'd bet he could whupdashitoutta JD and that'd certainly make me happy. :-)

Jun 26 12:34 PM

[a. palmer jr.:]

One thing that bothered me when I sold things on ebay was all the fees. I think if you'll check the sellers you'll find that just as much a problem as the search. I've kinda given up on ebay because I sold things to make a little extra spending money and some items you don't make anything on because of high postage, paypal fees, listing fees and final value fees. In order to pay all of that plus make a little money for your efforts you have to charge too much for your product. A lot of people have chosen to go elsewhere.

Jun 27 08:17 AM

[jay dee:]

palmer jr - You've got that right re all the fee's - I recently figured out that up untill a year or so ago I was paying approximately 4% on my antique auto parts sales.
Now with the illegal Pay Pal "shakedown racket" and increased final value fee's I would be paying almost 14% !!
Then there are the hours I spend packing heavy but delicate carburators, manifolds etc, and they have the gall to tell us to offer free shipping - unbelievable. Trying to make themselves (ebay) look good off of sellers "backs" !!

Jun 27 12:17 PM

[exodusfromebay:]

What a crock.

Who paid this guy off?

Jun 29 02:01 PM

[ebay_trustee:]

@ exodusfromebay

Scot Wingo :-: I am long Amazon and Google. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor

seekingalpha.com/autho... :-: Scot Wingo is the CEO of ChannelAdvisor.

Jul 11 03:51 PM

[redbaron:]

Scott, are you watching today (7/13) what is happening on the eBay site? Apparently the 'June' changes have been made mostly operational, and the site has some severe technical issues that are causing all sorts of tech problems. Go to the Technical Issues board, and read the posts, and there are also several posts on the Power Sellers Board. Some sellers are reporting getting multiple emails (up to 50 at a time) that they think are originating outside the country, coming through eBay messages, and those emails are usually 'Returned:Postmaster' type, with attachments, and foriegn email addresses, that some say carry trojan horses. Some buyers are reporting not being able to buy, or watch, using certain browers, and some say their problems date back to June 18 when the new changes were implemented. Lots of posts on the boards, and if you haven't looked today, suggest you take a look. Would have contacted you some other way, but this was the only way I could reach you immediately. Sounds to me like the whole site has some really serious problems, and some say it carries over to PayPal as well.

Jul 13 12:43 PM