Why placeholder and "coming soon" sales only appear on your company page
Every sale on EstateSales.org needs to show buyers what's for sale. If a sale is published before it does, we publish it as a placeholder: it appears on your company page, your website sale feed and your white-label site, but not in search results, city and map pages, or emails to subscribers. A placeholder also can't have upgrades or mailer days.
What counts as a placeholder
- A title or description that only says the sale is coming, such as "Coming soon" or "Check back soon", without describing the items.
- A sale with only a few photos, none of which show items for sale: flyers, logos, text announcements, maps, or pictures of the outside of the house.
A real description that lists the items and adds "more photos coming soon" is fine.
Why we do this
Shoppers come to EstateSales.org to find things to buy. When search results, city pages and email alerts fill up with sales that don't say what's for sale, everyone loses:
- Shoppers tune out. Pages full of empty listings look like there's nothing nearby, and shoppers stop checking.
- Emails get ignored. Subscribers who keep getting alerts about sales with no items stop opening them, or unsubscribe. Then your next sale email doesn't reach them.
- Search engines rank everyone lower. Thin pages with no real content make the whole site look less useful to Google, which means less traffic to every seller's sales.
- Real sales get buried. Placeholders compete for the same spots as sales with full photos and descriptions.
Placeholders hurt the sellers who post them most of all: a sale with photos and a list of items gets far more visits than one that says "coming soon".
How to get your sale shown everywhere
Edit the sale and:
- Describe the items being sold in the description.
- Add photos of the actual items.
Once the sale no longer looks like a placeholder, it's added to search, city and map pages automatically, and you can add upgrades and mailer days.
Upgrades and mailer days
Placeholders can't have upgrades, so a sale that would publish as a placeholder can't be published with any upgrades or mailer days applied. Remove them on the Upgrades page, or finish the sale's details first.
