Member_8880, your "experiments" are especially helpful. I laughed at what you said about not reading description.
My following comments are off topic from Scrolling Gallery.
My complaint to this eBay guy was why my items weren't higher in search. I'm a top seller, offer free shipping & for several items in Nov & Dec I was donating a % to giving works.
All these things are suppose to give higher placement in searches. Yet my postings were showing up lower than they should.
I checked on just a couple of listings last night with just Auctiva photos. Then deleted the auctiva hosted pics & the 12 pics that eBay gives free I uploaded from my computer. Pain in the you know what & I can't do that all the time.
However, I did see a change & my 2 items showed up higher.Last night I noticed something new, eBay now says how many pictures. Just briefly checking it did seem correct about what the guy said regarding the # pictures put a listing higher in search.