eBay Policy Changes – Enhanced Search to Boost Relevancy in Listings
By Vickie Sayce

Did you ever wonder why your eBay auction listing wasn’t getting visitors? You may have a great item up there but let’s face it; until recently, eBay’s search relevancy wasn’t the best. Finding items that actually interested you was a crap shoot. The new changes put this down for good.

First, if you are using the Best Match feature and decide to edit the price or description of an item, you retain your recent sales figures. Until now, those sales figures would be re-set and you lost all relevancy up to that point. This helps sellers stay at optimal advantage competitively.

Next, eBay finally got the point that it takes traffic to sell. So they now added some traffic generation type adjustments to their fixed price auctions format. For instance, impressions now count towards your listing performance using a percentage formula. A listing with 5 sales in 50 impressions sores higher than one with 5 sales in 100 impressions.

NOTE: An impression is any search results page that has that item listed on it.

Also a major change is that multiple quantity and single item listings will receive this exposure under the new Best Match format. This means that even though these items typically do NOT gather historical sales stats, they WILL get the same exposure as all listings. More visibility = more sold items, plain and simple.

Many other factors have been added as well, like accuracy of titles and seller performance ratings. Relevant titles are will raise your score and seller performance will positively affect the status of top rated sellers. Sellers who do not meet the new requirements will be demoted in auction and fixed price listings.

Considerations in shipping costs will be figured in as well, so offering free freight is a great idea to increase the visibility and raise the performance score, especially for single item sellers. Another factor will be optimization by category where the most recent listings from the best sellers get the best exposure. Basically, the new system takes many different aspects into view, so there isn’t one magic potion.

eBay has also launched a new “visibility tool” for sellers to manage their listings, monitor impressions, check performance and determine what can be done to make the listing better. This is much like the PPC control board at Google’s AdWords site. A one stop analysis tool that allows sellers to quickly adjust listings and move inventory.

One important change is the one made to auction style listings with a Buy It Now option. After October 1, the Buy It Now price HAS to be at least 10% more than the starting price.

Features that have been mainstays are going away forever, folks, and here’s a list of them:

– Featured plus
– Highlighting
– Home page featured
– Border
– Gift services
– Pro Pack

All these are being made no longer available. In addition, “Featured First” will only be available to Top Rated sellers. These will NOT display under Best Match searches.

Product pages will appear to more buyers across the board.

All in all, eBay has made it more profitable than ever to sell on the site. Check them out personally for more details.

Vickie Sayce has written a very informative book on starting an eBay business to make money from home while raising the kids. If you want to make money on eBay, visit http://AuctionPaydayKidsPlay.com and sign up for a free 7-Day Mini Course. Vickie teaches others how to get started on eBay and offers tips and resources at her blog, VickieSayce.com She has been buying and selling on eBay since 2001; Her ebay store is Vickie’s Ventures.

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