Some sellers are angry about a new eBay policy that encourages visitors to their listings to go to other listings. eBay inserts a message at the top of View Item pages for any listings in which a visitor has come directly from a search engine. The message says "Welcome to eBay! Find more items similar to (Auction title) and See all items in (auction category)," and contains links leading away from the auction and going to other eBay listings.

The message does not appear if a visitor comes to the listing from another page on eBay, it only appears when a visitor comes directly from a search engine. Sellers are expressing anger in postings on the eBay Stores message board because they don't want eBay to direct potential buyers away from their own listings under any circumstances, though there are some sellers who do not have a problem with the new policy. But those sellers who pay search engines to drive traffic to their listings through programs like Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing are especially upset.

One seller said, "I'm going to contact Google (and suggest everyone does the same) telling them what eBay's doing and strongly insist they recommend eBay stop this practice or I will stop paying for Adwords."

eBay sellers have been moving toward Google AdWords advertising as a way to drive traffic to their listings. Now they say they may cease AdWord campaigns or use the AdWord advertisements to drive traffic to their own websites instead of to their eBay listings.

One seller asked: "Why would I want to have a "store" and promote it , like a business should, just to have eBay tell my customers to "look elsewhere" when they came to look at My Product?"

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200601231552072.html

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?messageID=1003597493