What are the best title names for ranking?

[soul5555511]

What is the best title method for your titles so they appear first in your listing?

[mr.elmwood]

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@soul5555511 wrote:

What is the best title method for your titles so they appear first in your listing?

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You mean in search? A good title, alone, will not do much. eBay has a complicated and shifting algorithm called Cassini. It looks at title, description, pictures, item specifics, age of listing, seller standing, refund policy, free shipping, on and on, etc.

Title used to be that the first three words were very important. That seems to have gone away and there is now a belief that a logically flowing string of words, starting with a noun, is better.

[femmefan1946]

What is your customer Searching for?

Some go by price. But that isn't useful in the title, especially if you use Auctions.

Some by size. Every Size your item fits should be in the title

Some by product. Perhaps the first word in your title should be Shoes.

And look at the listing on a mobile device. Younger customers in particular shop and buy on their phones.

You have 80 keystrokes. A Search on, say 'stiletto' with produce any listing with that word in those 80 keystrokes, but what puts it higher includes closing date, seller's feedback and DSRs, price, location, opening date, number of similar listings, and similarity with the other Search terms the customer uses.

Make your titles longer.

Check the listings on a smartphone.

Look at the items that other sellers have already sold.

[acanthaster]

interesting question.  i was making titles so they would show up on logical keyword searches. 

i have been trying to find out if the search engine sorts on fragments (e.g. does "harddrive" = "hard drive"?  what if i search for "drive"?)

usually when i'm shopping i sort with best price + ship, and i see my sort preference overrides the default 'best match' search.

[mr.elmwood]

What people search for is not what they buy.  That is the essence of best match.  All companies use best match. I have now been trained to enter generic words and refine down to what I am looking for.

As a seller, I rely, not as much, on my title as I do on item specifics and all of eBay's little policy beliefs. I can either play the game their way with good results, or play it another way with poor results.

Many sellers do things the way they want from their perspective. As Vicki said to me today: "You are not selling to yourself".

[rose-dee]

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@mr.elmwood wrote:

Many sellers do things the way they want from their perspective. As Vicki said to me today: "You are not selling to yourself".

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That's a good point to remember.

I see so many items listed with descriptions that are either practically gibberish (seller trying to catch every possible keyword in the universe in a title without actually describing the item in English), or else titles that are so arcane that only the seller really knows what he/she is selling.  

We were told some time ago by one of the eBay.ca staffers that a clear, descriptive title in plain English that actually flows as a thought, is the best, but that, as 'Mr. Elmwood'  points out, there are so many other parameters now, and from what I gather eBay's search/display mechanism is so sophisticated, that the title is only one component of the whole.  

So it isn't just about titles anymore.  Make sure you have lots of great photos, clear and complete text description, good return policy, reasonable shipping, fill in all relevant item specifics (clearly and honestly), use understandable English to compose your title, and your item will have a better chance overall of being seen.  Keeping your seller status above standard and your defect rate at a minimum probably doesn't hurt either.