Interesting!

[vintagenorth]

I had a listing up for about 12 months with the word Rare in the title. At the time I listed it I was not able to find one like it anywhere so since I had room I added that word to the listing title. (I don't normally, it was a one time idea). Went in yesterday and did a sell similar and removed the word Rare. Sold today. Makes one think twice about using those type of words, doesn't it?

[marnotom!]

My wife and I have never used the word "rare" in our listing titles or item descriptions.  We let potential buyers make that call.  We figured that if we "played dumb" our listings might attract more interest as some buyers may think that their deal is all the more extraordinary since the sellers didn't realize how special the item was.

What gets me are the number of sellers still using "L@@K" in their listing titles.

[ricarmic]

Personally, I'd put my $$$ on the fact that the sell similar boosted views when it was relisted as opposed to taking out the word rare.

I also generally don't use rare in my titles, unless I know it is something "rarely seen".

[msau4301]

Interesting! No way to know for sure but I have agree with ricarmic that it may likely have been the "sell similar" that brought it front and center. I do sell similar on anything that hasn't sold in a month or two as that always seems to help me.

[doc_scribe]

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@vintagenorth wrote:

I had a listing up for about 12 months with the word Rare in the title. At the time I listed it I was not able to find one like it anywhere so since I had room I added that word to the listing title. (I don't normally, it was a one time idea). Went in yesterday and did a sell similar and removed the word Rare. Sold today. Makes one think twice about using those type of words, doesn't it?

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I was a buyer on eBay for almost a year before I started selling, and from that early buying experience, vowed that some words in routine use were actually counter-productive in a title or description...and yes, "rare" was at or very near the top of my list.

In those days I did a lot of research before putting something up for Auction. Given the tight 3-7-10 day bidding windows and upfront listing costs, I had to be certain that this was the right item...at the right time...in the most salient condition...and that there would be eager buyers looking for it. Putting on my buyer hat for a moment, I concluded that "rare" would probably affect any potential bidder/buyer pretty much the same way it always hit me...i.e. prompt the obvious question, "Is this thing truly "rare"?...followed by searches elsewhere, often including local retail footwork. In other words, "rare" became this weird "siphon" for buyer attention away from the auction itself.

Purely anecdotal and not the least bit scientific, but that's how I always reacted to the word "rare" as a buyer...kinda like a "dare."

Anyway, thanks for the unexpectedly nostalgic and amusing thread @vintagenorth ...

[doc_scribe]

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@marnotom! wrote:

My wife and I have never used the word "rare" in our listing titles or item descriptions.  We let potential buyers make that call.  We figured that if we "played dumb" our listings might attract more interest as some buyers may think that their deal is all the more extraordinary since the sellers didn't realize how special the item was.

What gets me are the number of sellers still using "L@@K" in their listing titles.

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Yes!!! And especially odd if the seller is listing sound equipment, musical instruments, sheet music, or CDs.

Besides, as a pictogram "L@@K" always looked...uhm...a bit rude to me.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@vintagenorth wrote:

I had a listing up for about 12 months with the word Rare in the title. At the time I listed it I was not able to find one like it anywhere so since I had room I added that word to the listing title. (I don't normally, it was a one time idea). Went in yesterday and did a sell similar and removed the word Rare. Sold today. Makes one think twice about using those type of words, doesn't it?

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@vintagenorth 

@doc_scribe 

As a test I just did a silly search...Pardon my language, using just the term "Vintage" with my listings. I currently just over 1500 listings. Vintage listings brought back 120 results. Not all titles use the word "Vintage" in them. A few of the listings that appeared either had vintage in the body and even found a few that  did not.

Apologies. Guilty as charged for overusing the word vintage. Please don't shoot the person selling older stuff maybe vintage, maybe not when left up to interpretation. 

-Lotz

[msau4301]

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

Apologies. Guilty as charged for overusing the word vintage. Please don't shoot the person selling older stuff maybe vintage, maybe not when left up to interpretation. 

-Lotz

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Lotz I always use the word vintage when selling my vintage Barbies. To me if they are from the 60's, 70's or 80's they are vintage. When I see people call the 90's vintage it seems wrong when technically 30 years ago still seems too recent! Sometimes I think you need to put vintage in to narrow down the search for people maybe not knowing exactly what they want but want it from a certain time period. If you search just "Barbie" here the results say 200,000+ (yikes), at least vintage cuts that in half.

For rare I do use it occassionally. I always search something up before I list it to compare prices and availability. If I see my item listed by several other people with "rare" I won't put it, but if I couldn't even find the item on here myself I do. As a collector of all kinds of stuff from my childhood I always put vintage into the search (vintage 1970's lunch boxes, etc.) but the word "rare" always comes with a higher price (always out of my budget) so I agree by not putting it people looking probably know anyways so they may think they found a treasure the seller didn't know about.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@msau4301 wrote:

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

Apologies. Guilty as charged for overusing the word vintage. Please don't shoot the person selling older stuff maybe vintage, maybe not when left up to interpretation. 

-Lotz

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Lotz I always use the word vintage when selling my vintage Barbies. To me if they are from the 60's, 70's or 80's they are vintage. When I see people call the 90's vintage it seems wrong when technically 30 years ago still seems too recent! Sometimes I think you need to put vintage in to narrow down the search for people maybe not knowing exactly what they want but want it from a certain time period. If you search just "Barbie" here the results say 200,000+ (yikes), at least vintage cuts that in half.

For rare I do use it occassionally. I always search something up before I list it to compare prices and availability. If I see my item listed by several other people with "rare" I won't put it, but if I couldn't even find the item on here myself I do. As a collector of all kinds of stuff from my childhood I always put vintage into the search (vintage 1970's lunch boxes, etc.) but the word "rare" always comes with a higher price (always out of my budget) so I agree by not putting it people looking probably know anyways so they may think they found a treasure the seller didn't know about.

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@msau4301 

In total agreement with your comments/observations. My previous post was a bit tongue in cheek. I was just surprised that by only using the word vintage to search my own listings that it brought up listings without the word vintage in the title and then the reasoning it brought up an assortment of listings that used/didn't use it in the description. Makes a keyword search seem entirely a game of chance or that there are no guarantees your listings will be seen...when they should be!!!

-Lotz

PS. Same test using the word RARE brought up 3 listings. 2 with it in the title. The remaining 1 had the letters but not in the right order.

[msau4301]

Yes, I often wonder how anyone sees my listings at all with the abundance of similar selling items! (But thankfully they do!)

I've sometimes seen items show up when searching something with nothing at all to do with my search and I know I've thought maybe someone used "sell similar" to get some of their verbage and didn't change all the "item specifics" so old ones were in there by mistake (I know that's the biggest challenge for me when using sell similar, is going down and changing colour, year, manufacturer, etc. But I still think it's a little faster than starting from scratch!)

[doc_scribe]

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@msau4301 wrote:

Yes, I often wonder how anyone sees my listings at all with the abundance of similar selling items! (But thankfully they do!)

I've sometimes seen items show up when searching something with nothing at all to do with my search and I know I've thought maybe someone used "sell similar" to get some of their verbage and didn't change all the "item specifics" so old ones were in there by mistake (I know that's the biggest challenge for me when using sell similar, is going down and changing colour, year, manufacturer, etc. But I still think it's a little faster than starting from scratch!)

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Item Specifics have been around long enough that it would not surprise me if the Search algorithm has back end access to an aggregation of "frequently used"  terms associated with previously successful sales under a specific UPC, MPN, ISBN, Brand, Model, etc...

After all, the 1st rule of eBay is: "It's all database."  And the 2nd rule of eBay is: "IT'S ALL DATABASE." 😘

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@doc_scribe wrote:

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@msau4301 wrote:

Yes, I often wonder how anyone sees my listings at all with the abundance of similar selling items! (But thankfully they do!)

I've sometimes seen items show up when searching something with nothing at all to do with my search and I know I've thought maybe someone used "sell similar" to get some of their verbage and didn't change all the "item specifics" so old ones were in there by mistake (I know that's the biggest challenge for me when using sell similar, is going down and changing colour, year, manufacturer, etc. But I still think it's a little faster than starting from scratch!)

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Item Specifics have been around long enough that it would not surprise me if the Search algorithm has back end access to an aggregation of "frequently used"  terms associated with previously successful sales under a specific UPC, MPN, ISBN, Brand, Model, etc...

After all, the 1st rule of eBay is: "It's all database."  And the 2nd rule of eBay is: "IT'S ALL DATABASE." 😘

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@doc_scribe 

So you could say in eBay speak basically close enough vs exact match?

-Lotz

[doc_scribe]

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

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So you could say in eBay speak basically close enough vs exact match?

-Lotz

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Well, in the categories I'm most familiar with - Movies & TV -  I have noticed an increase in surprisingly minimalist Titles...including the Format...maybe one Actor...often not even close to using up the alloted 80 characters. And yet Search still snagged them. Merely paid placement?

Beats me. Again, no scientific study. But it does seem to underscore the importance of those Item Specifics.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@doc_scribe wrote:

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

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So you could say in eBay speak basically close enough vs exact match?

-Lotz

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Well, in the categories I'm most familiar with - Movies & TV -  I have noticed an increase in surprisingly minimalist Titles...including the Format...maybe one Actor...often not even close to using up the alloted 80 characters. And yet Search still snagged them. Merely paid placement?

Beats me. Again, no scientific study. But it does seem to underscore the importance of those Item Specifics.

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@doc_scribe 

I started noticing awhile ago for books, magazines, dvd's, cd's and similar just including the title is no guarantee you will retreive books, magazines, dvd's, cd's and similar. (Especially if it something that has been out of print for years.) Almost like you need to include that you are actually looking for those types of items. Many searches are routinely bringing up Pokeman cards. Strangely with older electronics. Often first.

-Lotz

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@doc_scribe wrote:

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

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So you could say in eBay speak basically close enough vs exact match?

-Lotz

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Well, in the categories I'm most familiar with - Movies & TV -  I have noticed an increase in surprisingly minimalist Titles...including the Format...maybe one Actor...often not even close to using up the alloted 80 characters. And yet Search still snagged them. Merely paid placement?

Beats me. Again, no scientific study. But it does seem to underscore the importance of those Item Specifics.

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@doc_scribe 

Even a variance for punctuation can throw search into a tizzy. A dash vs a space. An apostrophe. Definitely shortforms can affect results.

-Lotz

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I believe this is confirmation bias.

When you list a new item, it receives a boost in visibility in the default 'Best Match' search. What likely happened was that someone who browses for the general type of item you sell saw it and decided to buy it. They probably did not search for the exact item, but a more general type of item related to it. 

Terms like Rare don't help sell an item. From a marketing POV, if you have the extra characters and a word like that doesn't otherwise obstruct someone from understanding what the item is, it maybe doesn't hurt to include it, but it probably doesn't help. I could only really see it helping in a situation where you're selling a lot of similar items, like lot of 100 comic books vs lot of 100 rare comic books - a collector or reseller might investigate further because your lot says they are rare. 

The point of the title is to include keywords that people will actually search in order to boost the odds that someone finds your item. The secondary point is to inform about what the item actually is. Putting rare in the title doesn't really do either. I don't think anybody searches for the term "rare (insert item here)".