eBay Rolls out Changes to 'Best Match' Search Algorithm

My business hit a brick wall the last week. All my listings are buy it now GTC. I'm a top rated seller, have large sales on all my listings compared to others in the similar category, offer free shipping, one day handling, 14 day returns everything...however now I am at the absolute bottom of the best match search??? How is this possible? Sellers that are not Top rated sellers have only 115 positive feedback are ranking higher than I am now. I have items with 200+ sold that are ranking below newly listed newb sellers items. The new algorithm is killing my business and many others come to find out. I've been on message boards for the last week trying to find a solution. eBay customer service is ZERO help. "You are doing everything you should be." I know! WTH is going on EBAY????

I've noticed a lot more local sales recently and a slight increase in turnover. Had more local sales in the last month than in the past year without me changing anything. Top rated power seller with 100% feedback for over a year, 16,000 feedback over 6 years, I believe this is a big benefit with the recent changes.

This new search policy is not only bad for sellers, but if I want to search items that are ending soon to get a good deal, it's impossible. It's horrible for buying, and research is null, and void now. How could ebay make such a terrible change? It's quacking like a duck. Many recent changes lead me to believe, they don't want the small to average volume seller. I will have to phase eBay out of my portfolio. My sales tanked this past week by 60 percent. I had no idea why until I was frustrated trying to do a search tonight, and decided to see if anyone else noticed. There has got to be a way for the common seller to revolt against this tragedy. We need an alternative!

The search function is crap. Also if viewed by Price & P&P you stand no chance against multi-listings as the search function goes by title and not comparing multi-listing sizes/weights etc. It's all harder work now.

Agreed, whenever I search, I immediately dump the "Best Match" result and switch to "Price + Shipping: lowest first" for fixed price listings, or "Time: ending soonest" for auctions. "Best Match" is one of those features eBay should throw in the trash.

The new search engine has killed my business and I'm a top rated bronze power seller. As others have reported when I call eBay they say every thing looks fine. I truly hope that soon eBay will realize how much they are hurting their proven sellers with this load of crap search.

I have also been experiencing a huge meltdown in ROI in terms of marketing dollars spent on eBay to acquire a sale. Our sales are down close to 50%. I am a high volume seller with over 100k feedback. I wish the best of luck to all us and may we succeed and figure this new best match algorithm out.

They must have implemented a new strategy on Saturday, because my rankings tanked and have not gone back up! If you do a refined search on my item - wreaths; you will find 5 of my listings at the very bottom of the last page. Now how is that statistically possible? They are screwing me, but won't admit it. I used to have great rank up until Sat. All day I was at the top or very close, then - bang, dust in the wind. They must not want my sales any more.

On saturday, the latest round of seller preformance ratings took place. Hence if you have been re-ranked as anything less than top rated your standing will plumet

Top rated seller as well. Sales have plumitted. I get the same old song and dance from EBAY, I think some of the people are truly trying to help however they have no explanation. I did call several times and complain about the new return policy. It seems afeter that is when my sales dropped .If any of you have complained to them about anything before your sales dropped please chime in

Hi Alice Moore,

When was this article written?

I have been a TRS for 2 years plus and have over 600 listings on offer. On 02/09 i noticed that all of my listings had dropped to the bottom of all search results where previously they were all at or near the very top. Several of my items cannot be matched in terms of price and qty of sales (one of my items has sold 1800pcs)

For a simple case study, i had a friend list the exact same item as one of mine with the same title and everything and they don’t offer anything a top seller does (ie. 30 day money back, free postage, cheaper price, TRS badge etc). Yet, their listing appears above mine.

Something is dragging and keeping all of my listings to the bottom and I or ebay cannot workout what it is. Please help!

Hi
My company has had an eBay account for about 5 years, always had no trouble coming up in best match for a fairly niche market. Top rated, offered the correct returns policy, fast/economy free delivery options etc etc. To clarify I noticed the same horrible change almost overnight in January 2015. Searching almost the full title of some of my items word for word it would still appear at the bottom of the last pages with a load of rubbish brand new listings on the first page. We set up a new account in desperation and found we had all the glory on the first page despite having no feedback, no seller status. So we did an experiment, like described above, exact same listing, same image, price, item specifics, listing duration, and set them running at the exact same moment. Sure enough, new account shows in position 10 - old ('good') account shows at the bottom of page 4. I sent a full blown technical report to eBay saying this is proof right here and about a week later received a one sentence email back saying new accounts get a temporary boost and perhaps some of my old listings may have errors/recommendations which could be fixed. We even paid an eBay consultant and got nowhere. It's ridiculous. Please someone help because our company has come to rely heavily on eBay and now they're shafting all of us - the long standing-rule abiding-fee paying top sellers!!!

We have also experienced a large drop in sales over the last couple weeks.

I have been searching to see what is going on! I have been selling since 2000 and recently came back when I found out etsy was no better and wasn't worth the profit cut....but I was noticing something odd when I was searching....I work on my mercedes 300D and so I am always searching to see what is posted....I have been noticing that even though I select all categories and newly listed....ehell is changing my category and search results....even after I get the results...I will go back and it will have me listed in the cars for sale 300 series when I was just in all categories....I went searching for settings to change and there isn't anything to change anymore....it is extremely annoying...

I hear your pain my fellow ebayers.

Like many of the comments below, we too experienced some very unfair placement in the Best Match search.
We have one of the highest turnover in our category and have done for 8 years now.

The problem is we sell unique items, so there is no sales history on our purchases and ebay does not like that.
They want to see a high quantity of products per listing and a good sales history, leaving people selling unique items such as diamond jewelry, antiques,... in the Best Match gutter.

Despite the fact we are TR on all markets and are offering, free shipping, return policy,... ebay still treats our listings as if we were blow standard with policy violations.

According to one of the ebay technicians, this will change at the start of 2016.
We can live in hope but not holding my breath.

Thank you for providing this information about eBay's new search algorithm. I knew something was wrong because the items I sell (antique jade pieces) are pretty specific, category-wise. But suddenly, a ring that I knew was a prime piece of Art Deco was suddenly lucky to get more than 10 watchers. And, of course, my auctions were just DOA.

I went to Buy It Now, which isn't a good way to discover what the market will really pay.

And, lo and behold, that method also sucked.

So I opened a shop on Etsy.

I got discouraged watching Sotheby's, Christie's, Freeman's et al, have their listings dominate the top of pertinent categories. It's pretty obvious now that those of us who've done eBay for a long time are now either losing money or listing elsewhere. Luckily, there are some great new sites out there.

I've been an eBay member since 2003. I have a 100% feedback rating and have NEVER had a negative feedback. It's because a) I keep the number of listings to a manageable amount, b) I don't argue with customers. They are my bread and butter, and c) I go that extra mile for people.

Ebay seems like an ill managed city governments. They're always looking for that magic development bullet that's going to bring in lots of revenue - like building a Nordstrom's in a poor neighborhood. (Check out Long Beach, CA).

Ebay, the megalith, has abandoned its core base - the smaller entrepreneurial business maintaining high feedback ratings. So megalith becomes dinosaur.

And, like I said, I've moved over to Etsy. It takes some getting used to, but the pieces I sell on Etsy are going for the prices they should get. and it's fees are cheaper.

I'm not completely giving up my eBay account. By assiduously searching, I find some real bargains - way back in steerage where eBay has relegated them.

WTF, eBay. RIP

eBay's e-mail notifications relating to 'followed searches' just ballooned from small and accurate to huge and useless. They must have been tampering with the algorithm. This post is dated 2016, as this site stupidly does not give the full date.

Thank you for this information. My sales have taken a serious nose dive in the last 7 days and I couldn't figure out what changed, but I just knew ebay was up to something. It's unfortunate that their focus is always on the high profit sellers only. I don't make $100 000 a month on eBay but does that mean that I just don't matter. So disappointing that the small seller are always jumping through hoops. And just as soon as we've figured things out another change holds us back.

My sales have absolutely TANKED the past few months. I am a top rated seller with a Premium level Ebay store that I've had for years. I specialize in estate sale, vintage and unique finds. I was averaging 4-5 sales a day before the change. Then I went almost a week without a sale. Lots of my items are going a full 10-30 day listing with ZERO hits. ZERO! How does that happen? Normally even the most obscure or rare item would have at least a couple of hits by the end of the first day listed. Twice on weekends I've suddenly had a burst in sales for mostly Sunday and then again the full week with maximum a sale per day. It's crazy. Ebay seems to have strongly leaned toward retail sellers of new products for the past few years, especially in their return policies and their contant push for Free Shipping. I must get 3 emails a day promoting how everything ships for free on Ebay - like Ebay is paying the shipping. I wish. For a store with a huge variety of products in value, size and weight, free shipping is just not viable and frankly I feel totally unfair to those who order from me that live within a postal zone or two as I would have to raise my prices to accomodate that shipping rate on all items. Don't I pay the same store rates and commissions to Ebay as all other sellers? Why are my items not equal to others in the listing algorithms? Why have they changed them to so negatively impact the hits that my items are receiving. I search Ebay constantly to set the prices for my items fairly and accurately. Lately I will search for an item that used to get lots of hits and it comes up with ZERO - I actually have to narrow the search by adding more details to my search and voila, suddenly the nonexistent items using the SAME search terms but adding more terms appear. It makes it so hard to find items. So as a customer, I am supposed to happily choose from the 15 items that Ebay returns in their search when I know there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of items on Ebay that I am NOT being shown? It is so frustrating. Suppose I am trying to find a brown elephant figurine - it will tell me zero results or give me very limited results. I put in the brand name and suddenly there are 5 of the exact item I am looking for, although none of those were in the original search results! If I knew the brand to start with - why would I have searched more generically? Generic results have been destroyed. It is just so disheartening. Surely Ebay is seeing a downturn in their sales because of it? I know as a customer when I get a wonky search result that doesn't return what I was looking for, I am going elsewhere to do my shopping. I can do my search in Google - find what I want - ooops - it's on Etsy or one of the many other sales sites on the web, and I go buy there. I believe if they don't change this, they will retrain their once loyal customers to look further afield than just searching on Ebay and open a whole new world for them, and lose a lot of sales for us.

eBay are now promoting major retailers over smaller ones. Smaller stores are being squeezed out of the online marketplace.

I am selling from overseas to US. Ebay seems to change the algorithms to favour local sellers. In fact, in the search result, I only saw local sellers with much higher price than mine. I tried to lower the price but no matter how low the price was, the item did not emerge and show up.

Don't like it,, it killed my selling...I thought Ebay went out of business...Ebay was just dead!!!!

Too bad the article is not dated, and comments do not show the year. Makes it hard to see how relevant this article is now. (this comment posted 9 October 2017)

12 years of selling. I am down 80% since the change. This is truly horrifying as this is my income. I don't understand why they changed that when it was going very well for all sellers before it. Do they want to get rid of those sellers who don't sell new items?

ebay wants higher priced items to show not the lower priced that make less money for the top guys in the organization. zero for us- $$$$$$$$$ for the highly paid top people.

2018 June 12, The sort box goes away at random times during a couple weeks of activity. Bad programming is to blame or it could be intentional? It's annoying this even happens.. I tried sorting it out on my end with cleaning up my system. No it's not me...

I am a very small seller and I've noticed big change. I research sold items and see where what I'm selling is selling, but not mine. My prices are fair and I don't overcharge on shipping. I recently was very curious on why I'm not selling so I did a few spot checks as a buyer looking for my listings - no where to be found - even when I asked for US only, newly listed, within a certain price range. I've been buying and selling on Ebay for almost 20 years and have never had this much trouble selling things. Maybe Ebay is losing it's luster for the small seller. I wonder if, as a buyer, I could make my own permanent sort request, if it would change things. What the hell is "best match". I usually resort when I'm buying to US only, ending soonest. I might be giving SaleHoo a try.