Items Not Showing Up In Searches

[hold.your.own.media]

Hey everyone,

I just tried searching a bunch of my own listings tonight and determined that only about 60% of the higher value ones I searched with exact words do not show up in searches. This appears to be a problem here and there for others as well. Anyone aware of why this would be the case? I list on .com, and have searching issues with both .com and .ca

Thanks!

[eburtonlab]

Can you give an example of one of your items that does not appear when searching, along with the search you are using?

There are several things that can affect whether a listing appears in a particular search:

Sorting by "price plus shipping: lowest first" -- when a lowest first sort is performed, you will often see a message at the top of the results: "We removed some search results to show you the most relevant listings. View all results" -- if you want to see all the results, you need to either try another sort, or click on that "View all results" link. Otherwise you are only seeing a subset of the results of that search, despite the number that is shown at the top. Try counting the results before and after following that "all results" link.

Wrong Category -- if a site-wide search using a particular keyword returns many items, eBay will often direct that search automatically into one particular category. Sellers should take this into account when deciding which categories to list their items in. If possible, try searching the way a potential customer might, and see where the search ends up.

No Shipping -- if an item does not have a shipping method to a specified location, buyers in that location will not be able to see that item. This is often a problem for export sellers that do not ship to their own location.

Combining "Best Match", sponsored listings and ad blockers -- Ad blockers may prevent sponsored listings from appearing in a search sort. Generally this is not a problem as the non-sponsored "organic" listing will appear and sort correctly; however, when using the "Best Match" sort, those organic listings may not appear; either the sponsored listing or the organic listing will appear (whichever is rated higher in the sort), but not both. Some listings that are sponsored listings may not appear in a search in that case.

In addition there are some known location-specific issues that affect users in India, Hawaii and Alaska that may prevent them from seeing local items in some cases.

[reallynicestamps]

It's been my observation that if I do a Search, then search again with the same terms, quite often I get a different batch of items on the second run.

At a guess the algorithm is set so that if "enough" possible results are available, and the first Search doesn't seem to provide acceptable answers, then the algorithm shows a different (or partly different) batch of possibilities.

So there's that, perhaps.

There are a billion or more listings on eBay at any given time.  Your Search may not be finding your items just because there are too many similar items.



FWIW- I've been using Promoted Listings, which appeal to my Scottish thriftiness because I only pay for those successfully sold.
And I don't sell many of them. About 7% last time I looked of my sales were PL. And I only use 1% as my fee.

BUT.

I get three to five times more Views when a listing is Promoted, and my sales were definitely up  over last year.

Even when I leave off the April to June sales which have been pumped up by the wave of online buying we all have been seeing.

Anecdote is not data. I will be interested to see how Nov-March 2019 compares with Nov-March 2020 and Nov -March 2021. 

[recped]

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@hold.your.own.media wrote:

Hey everyone,

I just tried searching a bunch of my own listings tonight and determined that only about 60% of the higher value ones I searched with exact words do not show up in searches. This appears to be a problem here and there for others as well. Anyone aware of why this would be the case? I list on .com, and have searching issues with both .com and .ca

Thanks!

---

That slash and 3 digit number you have at the beginning of every Title is probably not doing you any favours. Get rid of it or at least move it to the end of the Title.

You don't seem to be connecting your listings to the eBay Product Catalogue, that isn't helping either in the Categories you are using.

[hold.your.own.media]

My numbering/tracking system doesn't affect searches. I only link to the product catalogue if it is listed when creating my listing, and sometimes they're not since I'm listing Canadian items, and it only suggests American ones (there are differences).

Anyways, this particular listing doesn't show up properly for whatever reason: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224038266878

[hold.your.own.media]

Just edited that particular listing title to change "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" to "G.I. Joe Retaliation" and it works. Ugh.

[reallynicestamps]

There is some thought that in Searches the first four words are the most important, so putting your internal inventory numbers (?) first is not useful.

And there is no need for grammar in a Title.  (Oh, dear ghu, Mrs. Ruth Purdy, Grades 7 &8, I apologize for that.) So leaving out punctuation frees up a keystroke or two.

Spelling is important, but I sometimes will add common mis-spellings to titles, like JRR TOLKEIN pb Lord of the Rings tolkien lotr  because nobody's perfect.

[milezero]

I'm having exactly the same problem: selling an item with an unusual and unique brand name "Purifiner", listed on eBay.ca with shipping to USA enabled.  Listing shows up first in search results on eBay.ca, but doesn't even appear on the first page of results on eBay.com

Spoke to eBay Support rep. and they have no explanation, though they sure tried to find something!

The obvious conclusion is that some kind of covert weighting is happening.   When a potential buyer searches for an exact term and that doesn't show up in the search results something is going on.

[flipistics]

This thread will probably be locked due to age (it's best to start a new thread rather than add to an old one), but how long was the item listed before you searched for it?

[reallynicestamps]

I found only four items with that brand name on dotCOM, and yours was #3.

My standard Search is Highest Price First and 25 items per page.

And the same four items are on dotCA.

So I don't understand how your item could be anywhere but on the first page.

How many items are you seeing?

[pjcdn2005]

Once I put Purifiner in brackets, your listing showed in first place on .com with best match.   But when I first searched for your listing with Purifiner, there were thousands of results but with Purifier in the title.   I had to click on ' search instead for Purifiner.'    It's annoying when it assumes that I don't know what I'm looking for