We first reported this glitch back on the 12th November and on the 16th all indications showed that the problem had been rectified. Now once again there’s a high probability that although they’re looking for your product, desperate to spend their money and buy from you in the run up to Christmas, buyers just won’t see the item that you’re selling. If buyers do happen to select the Time Ending Soonest search view your items will magically reappear, chances are that they won’t and in Best Match they’ll just think eBay’s selection and availability is rubbish.

The image sent in by TameBay reader Jon shows a search for an A3 Epson Printer with 66 search results found, but eBay are only showing us 5 results comprising just 7 items. That means that 89% of matching search result items are hidden from buyers.

I’m a bit lost for words on what to say, so I’ll leave you to express your thoughts in commments.

Hunch recognises that one size doesn’t fit all and that when you’re looking for a recommendation you’re much more likely to find a product you like from someone that knows you well. Also people that know you well might recommend a product that you didn’t even know existed. Hunch aims to do the same based on the questions you answer and by linking other social networks to your Hunch account. Hunch then uses what it calls a “Taste Graph” to make predictions about the things that you like.

I’m liking the sound of this a lot. I’m fed up with eBay’s Daily Deals – They’re mostly a load of high street goods which I have little interest in most of the time. I’m fed up with eBay’s email marketing – they’re also run of the mill products I’ve little interest in.

If Hunch can be integrated into eBay then at last eBay might be able to draw on their heritage and get back to the site everyone loves because of the kooky niche products you would bid on or buy if only you knew that they existed. This does of course rely on eBay getting around to integrating Hunch into the site – not something they ever managed to do with the last great recommendation service they purchased – Stumbleupon. This time eBay need to get it right and integrate the technology and embed it into every aspect of buying behaviour and communication.

Most of the products I’ve bought lately on recommendation have been personal recommendations, not automated mass email marketing. I’d have never purchased items like the Acer Revo (which I love and you should have one of), if it hadn’t been recommended to my be a colleague. I’d have never known it existed and that’s what eBay should be doing for me. eBay should be helping me discover the unusual, the unique and most important of all the products I just can’t live without but didn’t know existed.

Of course that’s just extracurricular email marketing… here’s a thought, what would it do to eBay’s Best Match if everyone’s search results started to be individualised based upon what eBay knows about you, what you’ve purchased in the past and what people who know you or have similar tastes to you would like? What if Best Match became smart enough to find a Pogo Polaroid mobile phone printer for me and a…. well I don’t know what eBay might find for you and just possibly it’s something you don’t even know you want or need, but if eBay get Hunch right when you see it you’ll be buying it instantly.

I noticed today that I had started getting sales above the level of the last couple of weeks, so I went looking in search to see what was going on. Products are appearing on the first page of search results that previously had been missing – not surprisingly once items were visible they started to sell again. eBay have identified and fixed some of the issues (they are always monitoring the site performance) and the good news is things are getting put right just in time for Christmas sales – traditionally as soon as people receive their pay check at the end of November sales go through the roof.

How have your sales performed over the last few days? Have you seen an uplift in the last couple of days? eBay never share the secret sauce behind Best Match (partly to stop sellers gaming the system but also I think because they tweak it so often that what they told you today would be out of date tomorrow), but have you seen any change in sales patterns this week, particularly in categories that are catalogued and are displayed as Product Cards in search results leading to Product Pages?

I had thought one of the major problems might be how highly catalogue product cards were ranked in search results. I was concerned that my listings were being demoted in search results. I might have been wrong on both these counts as it appears that buyers simply might not be able to find my listings no matter how hard they try.

16 search matches but only 1 displayed to buyers

Today I did a search for a “17″ monitor”. I clicked to view just items from “Desktop PCs & Monitors” and then scrolled down to select the exact category “Monitors”. I then selected the brand I was interested in – IBM – from the sidebar product finder.

eBay happily tells me that there are 16 matching listings to my search (that’s good, 3 of them are mine!), but eBay only display a single listing! (You can click the screenshot to see the full page image)

Why is this? Why do eBay have 16 listings but are only showing one to buyers? Why are eBay not displaying my listings and the other 15 listings available to buy?

There’s a simple answer, eBay search is broken. I don’t know why, but for whatever reason the Item Specifics selected aren’t returning the products requested in search results.

To demonstrate that this is a problem with eBay Best Match I did one last thing. I changed the sort order from Best match to Time Ending Soonest and magically the missing listings appear. How many buyers will do this though and instead simply think eBay doesn’t have the inventory they want to buy?

The image to the right shows two screen shots side by side for the same search term, on the left is the search under Best Match and the only difference to the right hand side is that the sort order has been changed to Time Ending Soonest.

I returned to Best Match and the search which should show my monitors but doesn’t and tested one last thing. I added the word “IBM” to make the search string “17″ Monitor IBM” and that miraculously helps Best Match find the monitors I’m selling, along with those from the other sellers. I shouldn’t have to do this though – I’ve already selected “IBM” from the Item Specifics.

There are some further complications in that eBay separate “IBM” and “Lenovo” as two different Item Specifics, (essentially the same brand with a name change). However that’s not the root cause of the problem as I’ve used both options on different listings.

The problem is that on the initial search eBay say that there are 16 matching items in search results but only choose to show me one. Buyers aren’t as persistent as me, they’ll get fed up and go away to buy somewhere else.

16/11/11 Updated to add: eBay appear to have fixed this glitch.

There’s a long thread on the eBay Business Seller Board and there are many more discussions about the matter. A TameBay reader even pointed out that when they searched for my own auction listings on eBay they too were dumped at the bottom of search results.

TameBay reader Robin has been doing some investigation and tested where his auctions appear in search and used two different eBay accounts to do some a-b testing. He’s captured his findings in video which makes for interesting watching and if you currently sell on eBay you need to be aware of this information.

eBay auctions (even in Best Match) are supposed to be sorted by Time Ending Soonest, the only sellers listings dumped to the bottom of search results should be those who are below standard. Why are good sellers listings being demoted? There’s been much discussion of this and some sellers have had answers from eBay support suggesting that their listings are being demoted due to their sell through rates. If you don’t have a high proportion of auctions closing with multiple bids there’s a pretty good chance that your auctions will be hidden from potential buyers regardless of your seller standards.

If your auctions are being demoted in search by eBay it’s not just your slow selling items that will be demoted though, it’s every eBay auction that you have running on the site.

The best advice we can currently offer if your listings are being lowered in search results is to cancel all of your auctions. Relist your products on fixed price listings and trust to eBay Best Match to enable buyers to find them. Start relisting auctions at low prices to encourage multiple bidders – eBay like auctions with lots of bidding activity. Try to avoid listing auctions which will end without sales – we know that this has been a valid selling strategy in the past but it will no longer ensure visibility but is now likely to lead to your auctions being blacklisted and demoted to the bottom of search results.

The most striking feature of catalogued items is that auctions are not being sorted by “Time Ending Soonest”, even if that’s what you’d normally expect. In many categories such as Televisions, or Computer Monitors half of the first page of search results are Catalogued listings. I’ve just been re-checking live listings and currently I’ve found a catalogued auction with just 24 minutes left to run on page 7 of search results. In the past all auctions about to end would have risen to the top of page 1 of search results!

Click to see more search results

So what appears to be happening here is that your fixed price listings are no longer sorted by Best Match and your auctions are no longer sorted by Time Ending Soonest. Your listings are sorted according to the eBay catalogue entry sort order.

Previously if you had a fixed price listing attracting a large number of sales then in eBay’s eyes it would have a high “popularity” sales score and would appear at the top of Best Match search results. Now it appears that your high performing listing may be being dragged down in search results by other sellers under performing listings. It’s the order that the catalogue products are presented, not how well your individual listing sells that counts. Worse still your auctions about to end are also being dragged down in search results and may never even reach page 1.

In some Tech and Electronics categories this might not matter – for instance if you’re searching for a White, 64GB, Wifi and 3G iPad 2, then (apart from eBay insisting on showing you Black ones) there are only a couple of options to choose from (SIM free, Vodafone etc). This means your listing will be found by interested buyers.

In other Tech and Electronics categories it’s much more disturbing for sellers. A buyer looking for a new LED TV or a Flat Screen Computer Monitor is probably not being as specific as in the case of an iPad. They may not mind which brand or model TV they purchase, but be more interested in particular features. In this case catalogue’d listings which hide bargains about to end on the 7th page of search results aren’t a great solution. Not displaying the most popular listings at the top of search results but instead amalgamating popular listings with overpriced under performing listings into a single catalogue entry dumped way down in search results isn’t a great buying and selling experience.

Currently there is no information apart from empirical data as to how search is sorted. If you can figure out what the sort criteria is for Catalogue Listings we’d love to hear from you. If you can’t figure out how they’re being ordered just bear in mind that the auctions you’re paying for may never make the first page of search results so you’re not likely to get great sale prices.

The one thing we can tell you that eBay haven’t, is that your auctions in catalogue categories are not being sorted by Time Ending Soonest regardless of what you thought your insertion fees were paying for.

eBay search now defaults to Best Match, which blends auctions in Time Ending Soonest with Fixed Price items sorted according to relevance. The criteria that is most important for relevance is recent sales – the more an item sells the higher it will appear in eBay search.

You can change your eBay shop settings to sort your products by Best Match and this will ensure that your best selling lines are featured highest in your eBay shop. This works for both the home page view, for eBay shop categories and for eBay shop searches.

In the run up to Christmas (yes I know it’s early, but Christmas isn’t that far away) it’s worth changing your default shop setting to sort by Best Match as this will ensure visitors to your eBay shop will be presented with your fastest selling most popular items first.

As an added bonus it’s a quick and simple way to see which of your products are performing best, and which could do with some extra promotion with Best Offers or MarkDownManager or possibly just lowering the price or offering a shipping promotion. If an item is at the bottom of your eBay shop when sorted by Best Match you know that item isn’t selling well compared to other products you stock on eBay.

TameBay reader Dario spotted the anomaly and if you check the seller’s feedback or the “Seller Information” section of their eBay listings they’re clearly not a Top Rated Seller and eBay aren’t displaying the TRS badge on their listings.

However if you’re looking for their items in search results the search result page is still promoting them as Top Rated. Any buyer looking for items this particular seller supplies will still see the Top Rated Seller badge displayed in search results alongside their listings. What we don’t know is if the products are still receiving the TRS boost in Best Match search results.

Have you ever seen this before? How many sellers have lost Top Rated Seller status but still have their products promoted as TRS in eBay search results? Are eBay gifting certain sellers search preference even if they have lost TRS status?

I’m sure that there are plenty of conspiracy theorists out there who will believe that eBay are showing bias based on the sellers feedback, but from past experience with eBay it’s much more likely to simply be a bug in their software.

What do you think? Are eBay showing unfair favouritism to certain sellers, or is the site so unwieldy it’s just not working as it should?

In a way this makes sense – fixed price listings are not sorted by Time Ending Soonest, but by Best Match. Those listings at the top of search results may have up to 30 days left to run, and if they are Good Til Cancelled listings may run indefinitely.

eBay say that the change is to simplify the search experience and to enable buyers to identify which items are auctions from those available to purchase immediately.

Should it make a difference to purchases whether or not the time left is displayed for fixed price items? The chances are if they’re not sold they’ll be relisted anyway but some sellers believe it gives an additional incentive to buyers if they think they’ll lose the item if they don’t purchase immediately. However unless the buyer choose to sort listings by time ending soonest they’re probably not seeing fixed price listings about to end in any case.

What do you think about the change? Do you believe it will affect buying behaviour or will it not make any difference to sell through rates?

Many thanks to TameBay reader Joe for the heads up on this site change.

One of the interesting features of a Multi-Variation listing is how the price is displayed in eBay search results. In Best Match this often appears to be a random price selection and not usually the lowest or highest priced variation.

As an example I used the search term “Duvet” and one particular listing was shown in search results with a price of £17.97. Hovering over the “More Options” link displays a different price of “From £7.95″ which is the lowest price variation available for that particular listing.

Using a slightly more specific search term of “Double Duvet” includes the same listing in search results, but this time the price is displayed as £13.97. That’s a 22% reduction in the price I’m being shown, so what causes the difference in pricing and how does eBay choose which price to show?

What appears to happen is that eBay are trying to show the price for the option that they think I’ll choose. This could be based on sales from that actual listing and/or historical data based on the search term I use and the option that previous buyers have actually purchased.

That makes sense, after all if almost all buyers that search for a duvet end up buying a king size duvet then showing prices for single duvets would be misleading. By narrowing my search for a “Double Duvet” that tells eBay to display the price for the Double, although they still have to predict which tog rating would be of most interest – again sales history on the listing as well as historical category sales would help decide which price to display.

eBay appear to be using similar technology to choose which price to display in the same way that Best Match decides which items to return first in search results. As a search is narrowed by using more keywords then the price displayed will be more accurate as eBay identifies which option on the Multi-Variation listing matches that particular buyer’s requirements.

The current solution for pricing isn’t elegant – it can lead to some items in search results appearing more expensive than others even if that’s not the case for the variation I’m actually looking for. The more specific my search the more accurate the prices displayed become.

It’s worth noting that if you change the sort order to say “Price: lowest first” that the lowest price item will be displayed from the Multi-Variation listing.

The big question is are eBay doing the right thing in displaying a price based on the option they think the buyer may choose? Should they display the highest or the lowest price for a listing or should a range of prices be displayed in search? If you were designing Multi-Variation how would you choose what price to display?