The Mystery of the Disappearing Me Page
by Sue Bailey
We’ve heard from numerous sellers over the last few days that they’re having problems accessing their own and other sellers’ About Me pages on eBay UK. On the View Item page, the link to the Me page seems to point back to the same page you’re on; the link at the top of the Shop home page doesn’t work (though AFAIK the one in the sidebar normally does); several of the links from within My eBay don’t seem to work… the list goes on, the problem seems to be intermittent, and of course, there are conspiracy theories.
The About Me page is – still – the one page on eBay where a seller is permitted to link an off-eBay commercial website, and lots of sellers – myself included – have speculated in the past that we’d see it disappear. In the US, a revised links policy saw off-site links banned even from About Me for a while in 2008, but that policy was quickly reversed.
But for now, at least, sellers can rest easy: these non-linking links are a glitch, and James the eBay UK Community Manager has confirmed that eBay will be fixing them. How much of a priority that fix will be remains to be seen: if you’re relying on your About Me page to offer your buyers crucial information re. their eBay purchases, you might want to look at other options for that.
18 Responses on "The Mystery of the Disappearing Me Page"
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There is no way this is a “glitch”. Nothing in that area of the layout has been changed/edited/updated, so someone has been playing around me thinks…
I have a theory, not a conspiracy theory I might add, large numbers of eBay Sellers use the ‘one click away from listings’ rule as far as business seller address details are concerned and use the ‘About Me’ page to display these.
With this ‘glitch’ or whatever you want to call it, eBay have in effect rendered many sellers on the wrong side of legislation as they are not showing these ‘one click away’ as they are not visible at all.
So perhaps editing your listings now rather than later would be the best option, reports of ‘Seller is not displaying correct contact details’ will be rife. I’m sure it’s not a way to get sellers to add details to individual listings faster, now that would be a conspiracy theory
only problem with your theory is that I can click through other users “me” link, its just my own that doesnt work.
Sandy, the problem seems completely intermittent and inconsistent. Different people are reporting different problems. I certainly couldn’t click other seller’s ME links yesterday.
One thing I’ve learned in the past two years is that glitch means test. Except when it brings the site to a standstill for 24 hours, then it is eBay not being able to handle its own success.
Once business sellers details have to be included in the listings themselves, there’s little to be gained by eBay allowing me pages.
Just as it’s got rid of other things such as blogs not so long back I can see the days of me pages being a limited one.
My feelings entirely.
A well written me page can return very decent placings in organic search results.
Forget about “About Me” pages – can anyone tell me what the point of “My World” pages are now that eBay blogs are gone?
Social Networking tumbleweed waste of space is about all My World has turned into!
It makes it easy to look up someone’s id on eBay. Just type http://myworld.ebay.com/userid . Otherwise you’d have to type some crazy url or use eBay search.
My me page takes me to my seller dashboard, I hope thats just me and not everyman and his dog.
It just returns the page you are currently on IME
p.s the powerseller logo has been back showing in listings all week.
I wondered if that bit of fiddling might have had anything to do with the “glitch”.
The link to my “me” page takes me to various places depending where I click from.
On MyeBay summery page its linked to http//my.ebay.co.uk/ws (which comes up as page not responding)
The one at the bottom of my main shop page takes me to http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk
the one in the seller info box on each listing takes me to http://cgi.ebay.co.uk (which comes up as page not responding)
the one on my main feedback page links to http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/ (which comes up as page not responding)
the only one’s that seen to work is the one on the drop down under “Member Quick Links” on the feedback page or the one I’ve hard coded in each listing.
confused at just what the hell they’re up to.
How’s this for a theory ? eBay want to leverage some more cash from already overloaded sellers …. So some bright spark at Richmond says “how about we scrap ‘me’ pages then start enforcing the T&C/contact details etc rule so they have to delist, relist or revise and we stack loads of extra listing fees in the process.”
Cynical moi ?
You’re out of date Steve
You can edit item descriptions on listings even if some of the available quantity has already sold these days. No extra fees involved 
Not only that but there are services that will you do it for all listings at once.