anyone know or figure out how Ebay is doing Best Match??

For some reason, I don't have to. My default search order is Time: Ending Soonest.

I think we already had this conversation and you weren't able to duplicate my findings.

Jeffs...let me rephrase the ??

when a buyer searches at Ebay under BM (wow what does that mean) and the default is BM ..nothing else... how is Ebay making the determination on the order of the listings....
i.e. if I have 100 feedbacks and you have 2000 feedbacks ...... what determines who goes first on the page ?? if we both have the same % on all categories

I just searched to see how my own items were coming up in Best Match...I can honestly say I see NO rhyme or reason for the results
At first it appeared that stuff with the most bids and/or higher prices were shown, but that really wasn't the case. I have a couple things listed for .99 that showed up on page 4 (out of 62 pages). I just spent an hour reading the 'Search' area on the Ebay DBs...no one there seems to know either, and the pinks are no help. Ebay keeps 'tweaking' it
Sometimes my default is set on Best Match and sometimes it's on 'Time ending Soonest' (the one I want). Remember this is Ebay we're talking about here...who knows why they do anything????

quote:

Originally posted by chelsea-s-treasures:
Jeffs...let me rephrase the ??

when a buyer searches at Ebay under BM (wow what does that mean)

I think what you're saying is BM is shit, no?

I think inless you're selling the exact same item as someone else, and there are a million of them (say, a search on "socks") it doesn't matter much. If I have an item listed and there are only two, three, or five on the entire eBay system (and many times that's the case), would it really matter where my item appeared? It's still going to be visible on the first page. BM is really only going to cause grief to the drop shippers who all sell the same item. In this case, their rating will determine how they are advantaged. This is why I could care less about BM. It doesn't affect me, and never will.

BM is there to disadvantage the shitty sellers with poor customer ratings. I think hoping to either 1) drive them away, or 2) make them clean up their act.

quote:

1) drive them away, or 2) make them clean up their act.

Yeah, but look how many of the WORST sellers and/or powersellers with hundreds of negs and no yellow stars to speak of, are still around. Because they are the ones bringing in big bucks for ebay. They will just keep up with their bad practices and the smaller sellers will be the ones to suffer. We all know that ebay does what's most profitable for them, they don't really care about buyers or sellers. only dollar signs.

EDIT....Do you remember bargainland???

This message has been edited. Last edited by: member_8880,

quote:

Originally posted by member_8880:
We all know that ebay does what's most profitable for them, they don't really care about buyers or sellers. only dollar signs.

You mean... You mean... You mean everything eBay has been saying for the past two months is a LIE? You mean it isn't all about the "Buyer Experience"? They've been lying? Oh please, tell me it ain't so. I couldn't go on if that were the truth.

I received this email from OSI Rock Stars - Ebay
eBay Stores - 30 days free AND Best In Stores Contest announced.

Free what ?? when stores are not even in the search or BM.

to be a part of OSI you have to join at $49.95 a month nothing on Ebay is free

Have to tell you guys this...
I just did one of my usual searches (of course BM came up) so I thought I would check out the sellers on the first 3 listings. The first seller had a total FB of 5, and a 79% rating. (Oh yeah, can't wait to buy from THAT one). The next one wasn't much better...like I said, there seems to be no accounting for who shows up first in Best Match.

BTW my 'customize' is still set on TES, yet I keep getting BM and have to manually change it each time........

Best Match is wreaking havoc on the Art listings on eBay. On the Art & Artists Discussion Board on eBay, we have been discussing how to deal with it. Here's the article we've be talking about, which explains how Best Match is programmed:

http://www.auctioninsights.info/decoding-ebays-best-match.html

Among all the things that eBay uses to determine their so-called Best Buyer Experience is a list of determining factors among them:
The bulk of the patent application describes the relationship between search terms, the text in the auction title and how relevance and desirability are determined. The Best Match patent does describe other factors that can influence search result rankings including (but not limited to):

pictures available
seller ratings
price range
geographic proximity of searcher to seller
shipping prices
time left in an auction
number of bids
Buy it Now

This should ring an alarm bell for Auctiva users. Since most of us get all the images we want hosted through Auctiva, in order to move up in the queue, we would have to host at least one picture, (or more!) through eBay's Image Hosting service. Otherwise, the eBay programming would list us in Best Match as having no pictures available.

I have NEVER used eBay's Sell Your Item form.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to get eBay to recognize our pictures. I am thinking that we will be required to use at least one eBay hosted image, and paste the url into our auction html, in place of one of our Auctiva hosted images.

Or is eBay just trying to kill Auctiva?!

Thanks for the info nanartchik

The link was really informative and the picture criteria is what jumped out at me too. It may well be that externally hosted pictures are not recognised as pictures by ebay as except for the gallery they are included as part of the item description as a link.

Ebay charge for each additional picture so it could be expensive switching to their hosting service.

I have never quite understood Auctiva's relationship with ebay. It seems very close and cooperative but why would ebay cuddle up with a site that offers for free what ebay want us to pay for?

Anybody know?

I use ePoster, and even though my photos are hosted with Auctiva, eBay is aware of at least ONE of the photos. You people using the free service, does a Gallery picture show? If so, eBay is aware you're using a picture, so that should calm your fear about "Worst Match".