Reader Kathy writes:
Your articles on Best Match are wonderful and I’m sure many an ebayer is greatful that you took the time to explain it so well, but the one line that you mentioned is of particular concern to me. “geographic proximity of searcher to seller”
I see that you mentioned that it probably wouldn’t be a factor in BM, but I think it is and to a very large extent.
There are threads all over ebay’s boards with the same concern. All related to spurts of geographic/regional sales and then flat periods with virtually no sales. Many sellers thought it was coincidence until they found other members who have noticed the same thing….over and
over with their sales.Some members in the UK have been tracking this for well over a year and they’ve ran some search tests using members from all over the world and they have confirmed their findings. A very large group of sellers, if not all of them, are running thru the same cycles. Flurries of regional sales and then almost a blackout period, then it repeats the pattern.
What nobody knows for sure is whether this is a deliberate algorithm in BM or a technical issue because ebay runs low on server space (too many listings) and/or has problems with load balancing.
Some members are calling this a rolling blackout.
There are so many threads discussing this that you’d need several days just to read part of them.
I’d sure like to get your opinion on this as eBay is always in deny mode when questioned.
Kathy, I would have to agree with your hypothesis that geographical distance between buyer and searcher is now a factor that influences the Best Match search rankings. In fact, an eBay Chatter blog entry confirms this.
As for Listing Factors [affecting Best Match visibility], [Jeff King, Senior Director of eBay's Finding Team] explained that they include listing aspects such as end time, price, shipping cost, format (fixed vs. auction), geographical distance from the buyer, having a return policy on the item, etc.
Thanks for pointing this out.
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2 Responses to “Best Match & Geographic Proximity of Bidder to Seller”
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Geographic distance from the buyer has a bit of nationalism built into search. It makes USA based sellers sell on eBay having to worry about Asia and Europe less. I think that domestic to domestic shipments tend to arrive to the customer sooner than international, so I think it is a sound algorithm factor to use. For my category though, someone from Hong Kong selling for $10 with free shipping is going rank better than myself who sells the same product for $10 plus $3 shipping.
To TekGems just the Opposite is true. One week I had almost no buyers in USA. All from UK or France, australia, Hong Kong. actually I live in WA state and most of my buyers are as far as can be possible from me. I only sell about 4 things a year in the state on ebay. Only 8-10 in Oregon, maybe the same in CA … For a long time I had 3 or 4 buyers a week in NYC, now w BM maybe one a month or every two months. So it can work against sellers. All of my shipping with 2-3 lb items now becomes highest price compared to others. Your comment assumes that BM will work better to find people closer to you to allow for cheapest shipping and travel time. It just aint so.. ma