Check out the new features on WatchedItem.com. There is a new 500 “most watched items” list with neat 24 hour change tracking info. The Hall of Fame banner shows a seller’s listings that made the top 500 most popular listings on eBay.

Here’s the list of eBay.com sellers with the most watched items on the week of 10/21/08:

The most popular seller is shutterblade. They sell used camera equipment.

The Today Show profiled the reborn baby phenomenon. Reborns have become one of the most watched niches on eBay.

Reborns make up 5% of the 100 most watched items on eBay.com. There are 8 reborn babies in the top 100 most watched listing one eBay.co.uk.

Most people seem to love them or hate them. I kinda like the little darlings.

Now this is a nice looking seller banner!

They have high watcher counts too.

There is a new eBay Pulse. The new page seems to come and go. The old page shows about 50% of the time.

It’s got a nice layout but there is not enough meat. I need numbers, pictures and names. It’s so neutral.

The most prominent section called the “internet pulse” makes no sense. You click the top searched terms on the internet and they take you to matching eBay items. People googled “blog”, “iphone”, “google” (google squared?), and “launch”. Only “iphone” is something you would buy on eBay.

Take a look and tell me what do you think.

eBay seller bravosixx has multiple eBay listings that stuff eBay Partner Network affiliate cookies. Here’s one: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300246242550

Bravosixx is using the HTML object tag to force the cookie. Tracing the header info when the eBay listing loads, you can clearly see this http header roll by:

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?type=1&
campid=5336016432&toolid=10001&customid=

eBay’s response to this junk is to ban all active content starting in 2009. No Javascript or flash. Only a subset of html tags will be allowed. I imagine the object and iframe tags will be blacklisted. See eBay’s active content plans.

Bravosixx is also a pulser. This listing for a “Real live ghost! Trapped in a box!” has 1,135 watchers.

You can see the latest watcher count on this page: http://watcher.esellerstreet.com/?page=watchitem&ebayID=bravosixx

Cookie stuffers on eBay are annoyingly short-sighted. The trick never lasts. They will get caught soon and it makes my job of complying with eBay rules more difficult.

I use the Firefox add-on called Load Time Analyzer. It tells me what my browser is loading and from where. For example, when you view a site like http://cashcownobull.com/ed/, the site calls two eBay MakeTrack URLs which forces you to become a watcher of their listings.

Which eBay seller is this MakeTrackster? Just visit the site and you will be watching their listings. Or you can just view the output of the Load Time Analyzer below:

http://cgi1.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MakeTrack&item=140240913340&ssPageName=VIP:watchlink:middle:us%20quality=
onStateChange – 594ms: start, 1266ms: redirecting, 1282ms: stop
Waiting for cgi1.ebay.com…
onStatusChange – 703ms: status Waiting for cgi1.ebay.com…
onStateChange – 610ms: start, 1563ms: redirecting, 1563ms: stop
Waiting for cgi1.ebay.com…
onStatusChange – 1328ms: status Waiting for cgi1.ebay.com…
http://cgi1.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MakeTrack&item=130234108769&ssPageName=VIP:watchlink:middle:us%20quality=
onStateChange – 610ms: start, 985ms: redirecting, 985ms: stop
Connecting to cgi1.ebay.com…
onStatusChange – 703ms: status Connecting to cgi1.ebay.com…
Waiting for cgi1.ebay.com…
onStatusChange – 735ms: status Waiting for cgi1.ebay.com…
onStateChange – 625ms: start, 1203ms: redirecting, 1203ms: stop
Waiting for cgi1.ebay.com…
onStatusChange – 1016ms: status Waiting for cgi1.ebay.com…

Here’s that listing that I meant to write about. It’s the wife and girlfriend listing on the right. This is a different seller, tjm2k5, but it’s the same listing and trick.

This one gathers watchers from a mature audience listing using the MakeTrack trick. The mature listing has a picture that says “click me for another pic.” I’ll show the screen shot here because I’m sure eBay Trust & Safety will tear it down pretty soon.

See the watcher action here.

Here’s a new Pulser that has not been NARUed yet.

I think they must use the make track trick. It’s too random for the Pulser script.

See the latest watcher count here.

Someone reported that Kekoa64 went NARU again. The last time was in February. I don’t know anything else. Anyone?

This 10 day listing was #1 on the Pulse with 965 watchers on Monday at 5 am eBay time. It was ended by eBay on Tuesday at 7:15 pm with 975 watchers.

It was removed from the eBay site but you can view it by using Google cache.

I guess they ran a script to add watchers before the listing started.

eBay’s response time to watcher manipulation is now down to 36 hours. That’s pretty fast for a large corporation.