Starting today (Sept 22, 2009) eBay is rolling out a series of changes to their Best Match search and sort algorithm. Understanding the principles of Best Match will help sellers gain exposure in the search results, resulting in an advantage over their competition. This article looks at specific changes that impact listings in the collectible categories.
These categories include:
- Art
- Antiques
- Coins & Paper Money
- Collectibles
- Dolls & Bears
- Pottery & Glass
- Toys & Hobbies
- Stamps
- Sports Mem, Cards & Fan Shop
- Entertainment Memorabilia
Considering that these categories have always been the most difficult to optimize for Best Match, the following insights provided by eBay are certainly helpful.
Specifically, eBay states that auction style listings in the collectable categories receive a boost when the listing is about to expire, while fixed-price style listings receive a boost when the item is newly listed.
The way fixed-priced listings are treated under the most recent Best Match algorithym updates is different in collectibles categories than for fixed price listings elsewhere in Best Match (a topic for another article).
In summary, your collectibles listing gains visibility with age if it is an auction style listing and loses visibility with age if it is a fixed-price style listing.
Reader Mailbag: Best Match and Original Art
Filed Under Best Match | 2 Comments
I ask readers who download my eBook for their feedback. A reader who sells original art on eBay provided this thought provoking note:
Hello Doug.
You asked for it, so here it goes!!!Thanks for the free e-book. I found it to be very informative.
A few years back, I think it was in 2006, someone mentioned that I should add things like “WOW!” and “Spectacular,” and “dazzling”, and all sorts of adjectives like this to my listings to improve hits and so forth. Of course, some of these words were fairly silly, but I began to look for insights in to the whole keyword thing. I actually, got some online keyword and hit tracker help, and applied it to my eBay listings. Interestingly, as soon as I applied what I had learned, the number of hits literally dropped to zero!
The one thing I did learn was that tinkering with keywords does make a difference. I did eventually work out some better keywords and improved hits and sales.
That was pre-Best Match.
I picked up on your book quite by accident. I was looking for the definition of the acronym ACEO, as it’s used on eBay, in the art listings. That’s when I found the eBay forums. I started reading through the postings. What I was reading was how everyone who listed art work on eBay was complaining about “Best Match” and how their hits, and sales have all dropped off significantly.
Some blamed the economy, but many were blaming Best Match, as the source of their problems.
So, I started Googling “Best Match” on eBay and that’s how I found your site.
I didn’t realized that eBay implemented the change (I’m sure I was told, but I hadn’t a clue what it really meant).I’m sure that everyone tell experts such as yourself things like, “yeah, but the category I list in is different,” or things of that nature. But, as an artist, I really do think it’s an odd product to sell on eBay.
Here’s why I think it is, and the issues I’ve run into:
There are 10’s of 1000’s of artists listing tons of stuff at any given time, and everyone of the is unique. Talk about being up to your elbows and eyeballs, of stuff to wade through..
With IPods and MP3 players, as you mentioned in your examples, it’s a matter of tweeking the keywords, shipping, and such.If there were a 1000 IPods to look at, it seems that Best Match really would be a help to find the best price, and shipping to go with. All things equal, who’s got the best feedback?
Again, with the IPod or MP3 players, people pretty much know what they’re going to get.
Imagine if each IPod was designed, made, signed and looked different then every other one!
Once you get past the shear number of items, you come to the next major issue, subjectivity. Even if you have the best prices, the best shipping, and the best writeup, the best feedback, it all comes down to this, is it something someone is going to like.You can take a quick look, but I got to tell you, there are folks making some pretty good cash sell some pretty trashy items. And I’m sure that there are some pretty high quality items, nobody’s looking at, because Best Match sends their listings into the netherworld!
For myself, I’m probably closer to the bottom, then the top. A small handful of folks found and bought some of my work in the past few months. It’s small potatoes, but it’s something.The problem with that, is if that small group decides to not buy, nothing is sold, and it’s potato soup without the potatoes!.I know, why do art then?
Well, I’m an artist, it’s what I do.
If you could find a way to get eBay to really work for the art segment of eBay, well you’d get my vote for man of the year!
I have a website, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get that to work, as well.
Anyway…I hope this doesn’t sound whiny…I truly appreciate the book, I do realize that it’s a overview guide and I really don’t expect you or anyone else to become a coach for starving artists!
Thank you for the insights.(By the way, the BayEstimator page is a pretty good little tool).
Ed McCarthy
Ed, I wish I had some answers for you. In my opinion, the problem stems from eBay losing its roots as a marketplace where lots of sellers could be successful selling a tremendous variety of goods in their efforts to remake themselves into a marketplace where a few sellers are successful selling consumer commodities with mass market appeal.
Now that I’m off of my soapbox, is there anybody out there that has some ideas on how to sell original art successfully in a Best Match world?
Leave your ideas in the comments below
Here’s a little link love for Ed: www.EdwardMcCarthy.com
Search Versus Sort
Filed Under Best Match | 1 Comment
Over at Seeking Alpha there’s a blog post discussing eBay’s decision to retire their old search algorithm by the end of April 2009.
According to Jeff King, eBay’s “Senior Director of Finding,”
In a nutshell, it looks at a multitude of details in listings to deliver more of the results you want. It makes it easy to browse and narrow your selection, and lets you choose how you want to see the results. With the new auto-complete feature it even ‘anticipates’ what you’re typing in the search box.
Does this mean changes to Best Match?
Not really.
This change (the search algorithm) pertains to what results are returned when a user types a query in eBay’s search box. Best Match (the sort algorithm) pertains to the order in which the results found by the search algorithm is presented to the user. The user can choose from other sort algorithms such time and price, but Best Match is still the default sort method presented to the searcher.
It’s easy to lump the two together (I do it all the time here) because, to the user, search is search. I type something into the search box and look at the results listed on the results page. It seems like a single process, however there are two things going on here – search and sort.
According to the announcement, eBay said it would expand its practice of using product details (formerly known as “pre-filled item information”) in listings and said using them is one of the best ways to boost exposure in the new search. (If anybody is keeping track, I predicted this not too long ago.)
When the Best Match sort algorithm does it’s thing, how do your listings rank? Learn more about ranking well in Best Match with my free 128 page eBook: Best Match Made Simple.
Best Match Case Study: Search Ranking Algorithm Factors Ranked By Weight
Filed Under Best Match | 11 Comments
This started out as an exercise to evaluate the influence of the various factors in the Best Match search and sort algorithm for an eBay listing of the book How to Do Everything With Your eBay Business by Greg Holden. It yielded some very interesting results.
I listed a copy for sale a few weeks back using the suggested listing title and the pre-filled Item Specifics information based on the book’s ISBN.
I checked on the listings placement using the book title as the search query and saw that of the five books for sale on eBay.com, I was dead last in the sort order.
I thought that this would provide an interesting opportunity to experiment with the various Best Match factors to see if I could determine which ones have more influence over the others. Specifically, I wanted to see how DSR scores, shipping charges, listing type, and keywords stacked up against each other.
I learned that (at least for this search query) DSRs are weighted higher than shipping charges (specicially free shipping) which are weighted higher than keywords. It was also clear that in this category (non-fiction books), Fixed Price listings are weighted higher than auction style listings – even if the listing has a bid.
What totally surprised me was that it appears that time is a factor influencing fixed price listings (newest appearing at the top) and a significant factor at that!
Here’s my listing in all of its glory at the bottom of the search results…
The listing in the number one position is a Power Seller with a feedback rating of 23,484 (99.6% positive) with DSRs of 4.8 (Item asDescribed), 4.8 (Communication), 4.8 (Shipping Time), & 4.8 (Shipping & Handling Charges). The listing closes in 25 days. BIN price is $1.00 with a $3.99 S&H fee.
The seller in the number two position has a feedback rating of 184 (100% positive) with DSRs of 4.9, 4.8, 4.8, & 4.7 respectively. The list price is $5.00 (fixed price) plus $2.58 shipping.
Number three is offered by a seller with a feedback rating of 658 (100% postive) and DSRs of 4.9, 4.9. 4.9, and 4.8. The list price is $3.45 (fixed price) plus a shipping price of $2.58.
Item number four’s seller has a feedback rating of 453 (100% positive) with less than 10 DSRs in the past year. The asking price is $18.99 (fixed price) and free shipping.
The user ID I used for my listing in 5th place has a feedback of 144 (100% positive) with less than 10 DSRs in the past year. My asking price was $3.99 (fixed price) with $4.00 shipping.
Optimize The Title’s Keywords
My first action was to head to the BayEstimator in order to optimize the keywords in the listing title. All of the five listings had the default title eBay suggests for that ISBN, except the listing in the top position which had shortened it to include just the title of the book. The BayEstimator suggested that the keywords “book,” “for” and “U” would increase my title’s score in the Best Match algorithm.
I revised the listing to modify the title and waited for my listing to jump up in the search results. After a few minutes, the new title was live and…
No change in position. That meant that some factor in the listing above mine carried more weight than the optimized keywords in my title.
Free Shipping
OK. Time to revise again. Like my User ID, the listing above mine did not have 10 DSRs in the past year, so I thought it might be their free shipping that was providing a competive advantage over my listing in the Best Match search results.
I dropped my shipping down to free and in a couple of minutes I had moved to the number four spot.
Therefore, free shipping is more significant than keywords in Best Match.
Note also that while I bested the other listing that didn’t have an active DSR history, I did not rank higher than the sellers that have an established DSR history and good scores. Therefore, I presume that as a factor in Best Match, DSRs are weighted higher than free shipping.
Cheap Shipping?
Now I wondered what benefits under Best Match cheap shipping would provide. I revised the listing so that shipping was only a dollar – a figure well under the average for the listings returned in the search results.
The result… Back on bottom.
Therefore, cheap shipping appears to provide no benefits under Best Match - only free shipping. (Caveat – expensive shipping relative to the average in that category begets penalties in Best Match.)
Auction Style vs Fixed Price
Having another copy of this particular book handy, I decided to post another listing. This one would be in the auction format and would have the same title as my fixed price listing and boast free shipping. I placed the opening bid at 99 cents and choose a three day listing so that it would close at approximately the same time as my fixed price listing.
I was rather surprised to find this listing at the bottom of the pack. I thought the free shipping would carry more weight than the listing format, but it did not. My 99 cent auction listing was firmly lodged below the $18.99 fixed price listing. Therefore, in the non-fiction book sub-category, listing type matters and fixed price listings carry more weight than auction style listings.
Even after the auction received a bid, it was still relegated to the bottom of the heap.
Let’s try one more thing…
Still interested in the relative weight of the title keyword factor, I wanted to post another fixed price listing for the identical item with my old (unoptimized) title keywords. My hypothesis was that the two listings would be next to each other with the optimized title ranked above the original title in the search results.
I was a little shocked to see my most recent listing ranked number one – beating out the listings offered by sellers with high DSR’s!
What to make of this? My best guess is time is a factor in fixed price listings – only reverse of what we are used to with auction style listings. Specifically, fixed priced listings posted more recently (or just ending later) are weighted heavily in the Best Match search results.
I’m interested in your thoughts and observations regarding this theory.
Why did this listing make it to the top?
(One final note – There were no multiple quantity listings in this case study, so the recent sales factor of the algorithm was not evaluated.)
In summary, although keyword optimization might be the easiest factor to influence under Best Match, it carries the least weight these days. I’m not suggesting you ignore this factor. However, if you are neglecting the other factors because they are harder – you are certainly placing yourself at a competitive disadvantage to sellers who score well for these factors.