Some comments on newly listed and ending soonest search “boosts”.
I often wondered about the boosts for search when I read about them years ago. I tried to figure out if it was true or not. I used eBay Listing Analytics when they first came out years ago. It had an option to show a 30 day graph of Impressions (the number of times your listing appears to potential buyers in a search) or Clicks (the number of times buyers clicked on your listing in search to view your listing).
I was selling mostly used one of a kind items with sometimes an item with quantity more than one. I was using fixed price 30 days (sometimes 10 and 7 day) and manually relisted using Sell Similar to give each listing a fresh start with no previous history.
What I noticed over 30 days was that the Impressions graph had more impressions at the start and the end of the 30 days period. This seemed to support the boost theory. But I often wondered if it was just the way a buyer searched.
A buyer will run a search and most likely would run it with the default Best Match. Some buyers would then run the same search and change the sort to Newly Listed to see what was new. Other buyers would run the same search and change the sort to Ending Soonest to see what is about to end.
Assuming Best Match would show my listing randomly roughly the same amount per day, then the other Search sort methods of Newly Listed and Ending Soonest would find my listing in the first 2-3 days or last 2-3 days and add impressions to the already existing Best Match impressions.
What I believe is that by offering the three sort methods, the impressions would always show higher impressions at the beginning and end because of the available sort methods and the way they are used by buyers. Just human behaviour and not an eBay designed boost.
I followed most of my listing (30-40) for 5-6 months and saved the monthly impression graphs to see if there were any patterns for an item. The majority followed this pattern if it resulted in no sale.
When an item sold, you sometimes say a bit of activity increase in the days before, Sometimes not. I assume this was buyer doing search and doing it again with different keywords until they decided what to buy. Some would buy on there first search so no much activity,
What I found fascinating was an item with quantity more than one and an item sold. Right after a sale, the impressions went up dramatically for the rest of the 30 days. Typically I had daily impressions of 0 to 5 on a day on my items. After a sale the impressions would jump to 5 times that for the 30 day period. I never got 2 sales in a 30 day period but often wondered what that would look like. So having a sale on a listing with quantity definitely pushed the item up in search.
Maybe at one time years ago listings got eBay search boosts for Newly Listed and ending soonest. Or maybe it was just the way Buyers searched using the three sort methods to may it appear like there was a boost.
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