Data Feeds
eBay recently migrated their data feeds to a new system and severely reduced the speed at which items are added. They appear to be batching items, so some items will be very new while other with be minutes old when they hit the feed.
According to eBay, their websites will use the same data feed source, so items should appear in BINSNiper and VieBuy at the same speed as they do on the website.
In testing we find that items may arrive around 10-12 minutes after being listed, but will appear on the website at the same time. This also means that items will tend to arrive in groups rather than singly.
In practical terms, the new changes to the eBay servers mean that you will typically see items that started 0-15 minutes ago appear in the list with the majority being either less than two minutes old or around 10 minutes old. If eBay improves this batching behavior, the items will appear earlier in your results.
RSS Feeds
RSS speed is not yet affected by the data feed changes. We have also observed that RSS Feeds are not complete. Many items are never delivered via RSS but then later delivered by the Data Feeds. The RSS feeds are also now delivering some items that are 12 hours old which should not be included.
Updates to deal with this
VieBuy 3.0 addresses these issues and filters out outdated items.
BINSniper 2.X is unaffected by the RSS issues, since it doesn’t use RSS, but is experiencing delays due to the data feed changes. BINSniper 3.0 now under final development will use our new data feed technology and should correct these issues and bring order to the galaxy.
The Future
eBay has made at least one public statement indicating that the they plan to do away with RSS feeds entirely. This may not end up being the case, since many webmaster tools such as WordPress plugins depend on the RSS feeds. But if RSS is eliminated, VieBuy will continue to deliver the data feed. Since everyone would then be on the same data source, timeliness should not be impacted.
Update June 2015
Our stats indicate that RSS is no longer delivering items early. We’ve stopped delivering RSS items to VieBuy and BINSniper 3+. This allows faster processing of the data feeds.