eBay

007steveb16 · ‎09-28-2013

I was tinkering around with one specific listing a few days ago trying to see and understand better how it would show up in a "Best Match" search.

-Without changing anything from the eBay catalog title it showed up 8th Best Match

-Added the word "used" into the title it showed up 7th Best Match

-Added the words "Used, Widescreen & the lead actors last name", showed up 9th Best Match

-Added only "Used & Widescreen", showed up 7th

-Added the words "Used, Widescreen & Free Shipping", showed up 9th

It does not seem that adding more to the title is a benefactor, both times I tried to increase the amount of info in my title I lost 2 spots.

Probably because of other factors as well, my same item over the past 2 days has moved up to 4th best match from 7th. But what perplexes me the most is that the #1 best match of this exact title, 2 days ago from a different seller is now 15th today......I looked into the ad and they haven't touched it, no revisions at all

femmefan1946 · ‎09-28-2013

I think one of the criteria is how long the listing has been live-- which might explain the drop from #2 to #15.

As for the Best Match, surely the more you have in the title the more Best Matches you would have? That is, if I wanted to buy Slither for my widescreen TV, and searched "Slither widescreen" then you having Nathan Fillion in the title wouldn't make it any higher in BM, but if I didn't care about widescreen only about all the movies Nathan ever made and used "Nathan Fillion" as my Search, BM would not show your copy that only said "Slither used widescreen".

"Course, there're other schools of thought." - Corporal Zoe Alleyne.

pjcdn2005 · ‎09-28-2013

It seems that best match will show different items and a different order depending on who is doing the search so your findings could be unique to you. I've heard too that the new search is partly based on the number of sales on that item so that if an item has been sitting for a long time, it can hurt you in search.

I was thinking about that the other day and it seems like it could be a lose lose situation in some cases. For example..let's say I have an item listed for 2 months and it hasn't sold so it is now showing up near the bottom in search. That means that it is even less likely to be sold and that it hurts my sell through rate which I've heard can also affect a seller. Keep in mind though that what I've heard isn't necessarily true as we're not told how it really works.

rose-dee · ‎09-29-2013

We're all trying to glean the parameters of Best Match as we go along, and honestly, I can't say I've been able to pinpoint anything specific.

To add an example of the opposite case of what you've mentioned, I actually had a rather expensive and attractive item for sale for over a year that kept coming up consistently on the very first page of searches, despite the fact that it was "stale" and a GTC listing. I could never quite figure that out, although my best guess was that it had something to do with the number of hits and watchers it had gathered.

As I've said before, it's probably a good thing that eBay doesn't produce a manual giving sellers all the details of how to achieve Best Match. Otherwise the site would be chaos. When everybody qualifies to be #1, who is really #1.

Yet one thing that does annoy me is when I see an obviously poorly-displayed, poorly-described, badly-priced item from a seller with a mediocre status, up there near the top of the list. In those cases, I'm really at a loss to imagine what the qualifications are for Best Match.

ricarmic · ‎09-30-2013

Hi Rose! I totally agree. I too have observed "poor" sellers stuff showing up early in the search results which seems to make no sense! I've given up trying to understand what things cause listings to show up earlier. This is even true with my own material, sometimes it is pretty weird stuff that is showing up earlier!!!

My personal belief is that aside from the rules/algorithms they use, there is also a bit of a randomizing factor.

I say this because, if a buyer was interested in a certain type of item, ebay and the sellers wouldn't want the same group of items presented each time,over and over again to the buyer as a "are you still interested in this", because the person would then ignore it because they've already seen it. So to keep the list of items "fresh" to the user, some of the items (still related to their category/type) are "randomly" picked that wouldn't have normally shown up to them. This way they see something "new" in the list each time in the hopes that it results in a purchase.

Over the years I've seen some interesting theories about what all is done in the algorithms like showing/favouring sellers stuff to a selected group of buyers based on the first letter of their last name (seems strange, but it is interesting how many times many of my buyers on a given day have the same first letter of their last name????), to location based (from my experience one day I have mostly Canadian customers, the next general USA, the next Australian, the next a given US State??).

I think probably the mystery is a good thing, otherwise as many have pointed out everyone's stuff would be at the top!

bb_cool_stuff · ‎09-30-2013

I think probably the mystery is a good thing, otherwise as many have pointed out everyone's stuff would be at the top !

Somehow i think it is a mystery to sellers, but someone has the answers & they're not telling.

I always remember an agent mentioning one time "Is The Seller Making Sound Business Decisions"

Could be another factor in determing Best Match.

rose-dee · ‎09-30-2013

@ricarmic wrote:
My personal belief is that aside from the rules/algorithms they use, there is also a bit of a randomizing factor.

Over the years I've seen some interesting theories about what all is done in the algorithms like showing/favouring sellers stuff to a selected group of buyers based on the first letter of their last name (seems strange, but it is interesting how many times many of my buyers on a given day have the same first letter of their last name????), to location based (from my experience one day I have mostly Canadian customers, the next general USA, the next Australian, the next a given US State??).
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I think you're probably right about the randomizing. It would at least account for a lot of the "nonsense" that seems to appear near the top of searches. I think of the "Best Match" as a kind of kaleidoscope that keeps getting shaken up -- if you've got a particularly pretty (or larger) bit of paper (i.e. better qualification) it will consistently be visible near the top, but it will get mixed with a lot of undifferentiated bits.

It's never occurred to me to watch the last names of buyers! I'll start keeping an eye on that and see if any patterns show up. Not that it will help me directly, but it's always interesting to try to figure out how the game works.

ricarmic · ‎09-30-2013

I have to admit that I chuckled when I originally saw someone say that they noticed a last name pattern, the "yah right" response, but after that I noticed with my own buyers that at times I have a lot of new customers all on the same day who's name starts with "S" or even "Sm" or even the letter "Z"!!! The wonders of best match never cease to amaze! 🙂