Miriam, ASSISTANCE or an EXPLANATION required.

[whoscloset]

Yesterday a VERY disturbing phenomenon began on the ebay.com site with respect to Best Match. I have worked hard on my DSRs and optimized my listing titles for keyword searches. At the present time my 30 day DSRs are 4.9 in all categories.

Yesterday morning my listings appeared on page one during search and browse in certain categories. As of yesterday afternoon, I'm lucky if they are showing up on page 9. Sellers with much, much lower ratings are appearing before me with listings ending in 7 to 10 days.

I ship from Michigan and list on .com so the only reason I can come up with for this is that I am REGISTERED in Canada. Has ebay.com implemented a new Best Match policy that is detrimental to sellers registered outside of the United States? Did ebay.ca know this change was taking place? What have the ebay.ca staff done to rectify this problem?

98% of my sales are to US customers. There is simply no sense in continuing to list product on ebay if, despite having fantastic DSRs, excellent product and great service we are to be punished in Best Match on .com.

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hi whoscloset,

The US has a large number of factors in their Best Match algorithm in addition to performance factors (DSRs). These other elements could include factors such as keyword relevancy, for instance. Any of these could be affecting the search order of the results you are viewing.

Different users of the site also see their search results organized differently, as the US is testing a large number of combinations of Best Match factors. (You could try dumping your cookies and cache, then re-running the same search to compare results. You may find yourself in a different test segment altogether.)

The US has not indicated to us in any way that they are planning to demote cross-border listings - it just doesn't make sense for their business model. If for some bizarre reason they did pursue such a search strategy, you can be sure that we'd be all over it in the biggest of ways.

I hope this helps...

Miriam

[pierrelebel]

"The US has not indicated to us in any way that they are planning to demote cross-border listings"

I understood eBay.com (US) will or already does include buyer's proximity to seller's location.

Could that be a factor? .

[whoscloset]

I just noticed that I get ENTIRELY different results when searching on different browsers. Is there a reasonable explanation for this Miriam?

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hi whoscloset and pierrelebel,

I don't have the answer to either of these questions. I will follow up with our resident Best Match experts to see if they have any insights, especially into whoscloset's question.

Will let you know what I discover ...

Cheers,

Miriam

[faerywishes]

I have noticed the same with my listings. 3 weeks ago I was on the last 2 pages of my search. The last couple of weeks I am on the first few pages. I was even monopolizing page 1 & 2 the one time I checked. In all cases it didn't seem right to me. In the 1st case my stats were better than most. In the last couple of weeks there are people with better stats. I haven't checked at all this weeks. I am trying my hardest to stay away from looking. I'm trying to focus on my traffic stats and my sales stats. My sales are approximately the same even though I fewer listings. My traffic was up 25% which really surprised me, and the majority of them were from the US.

I can only imagine how frustrating this must be for you especially given your stats. On one of the boards someone gave me a link about Best Match. i believe it was someone who attended at work shop at LIVE.

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?messageID=2011005091肣

I'm sure you have read and are probably already doing this but I thought I would enclose for others if they read this.

I found both of these pages very informative and helpful.

Have a Wonderful Day
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000534260&tstart=0&mod=1214794150311

[miriam@ebay.com]

So I put these two questions to Pete, our Best Match expert in our office.

pierrelebel, Pete thinks you're referring to the "distance" factor. Our understanding is that this factor was of interest to some of the Motors teams when it was introduced, but we are not sure if it is live on the core US platform. We can follow up with the US Best Match team to see if this has been introduced to any of the test profiles on that site.

whoscloset, Pete confirmed that if a person uses different browsers, there is a possibility of different results. As mentioned previously, dumping your cookies may move you from one test segment to another.

The other reminder that Pete gave me was that if you have customized your search on your computer, you will see significantly different results. Not many users do this (generally happens among the more experienced user base, which many of you are likely to be), but it obviously can result in a totally different order to your search results.

I hope this information was useful.

Thanks,

Miriam

[cartoonsinabox]

I noticed the same thing. Was on top pages, then since yesterday my listings have droped by alot. One .Ca and .Com

Frederic