Featured Plus listing enhancement changes

October 23, 2008

A few days ago sellers started noticing that listings with Featured Plus were only appearing in the featured section of search results and were no longer duplicated lower down the page in their natural search results position.

It’s now been confirmed that the Featured Plus listings will be only displayed at the top of the page they naturally fall on in the search results. The eBay Featured Plus help page has been updated to reflect this change.

The change was considered an improvement to the buyer experience as it means that a featured listing is not seen twice in the same search results pages, but still benefits from a higher position.

Featured Plus is still a worthwhile enhancement, even with what’s now slightly less benefit than previously. It has a huge advantage as soon as your listing hits page 1 of search results as it gives a guaranteed position in the featured section - Featured First listings have to compete for a spot in rotation as well as costing significantly more.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | Comments Off 

What is Featured First and Featured Plus

October 18, 2008

The difference between Featured First and Featured Plus has many sellers confused as to which they should use and which has the best benefits.

Featured Plus


Featured Plus is the older listing enhancement, it adds extra visibility to a listing by duplicating it at the top of the search results page.

Your listing will only be in featured section of the page it naturally falls on in search, so if your listing is on page 39 of search results Featured Plus will duplicate your listing at the top of page 39.

Featured Plus is great if your fixed price listing in Best Match is on the first page of search results, auctions will naturally appear on the first page as they get close to the finish time. It’s not so great if you’re still appearing on page 39 and that’s where Featured First comes in.

Featured First

Featured First will lift your listing to the top of page 1 of search results, but in a rotation with any other listings that have the enhancement. There are two slots reserved at the top of the first page of search results and any matching listings with the Featured Plus listing enhancement will appear in rotation in this slot. Your listing will still appear on the search results page it naturally falls on.

There has been confusion as in the past Featured Plus often boosted listings to the first page of search results. This was actually a programming error which has been corrected and Featured Plus items now will only appear at the top of the page they naturally fall on.

Gallery Featured

Gallery Featured was an old listing enhancement which has been retired. Gallery Featured worked in a similar way to Featured Plus, but would boost a listing to the top of search results when viewed as a gallery rather than the default list view. Gallery Featured is no longer available and has been replaced with Featured First.

In summary Featured Plus boosts your listing to the top of the page of search results that it naturally appears on. Featured First may display your listing in the featured section at the top of page 1 of search results, but only in rotation with other listings which have Featured Plus applied.

The best situation is for your listing to naturally appear on page 1 of search results and then to apply the Featured Plus listing enhancement - that guarantees your product will be one of the first a buyer sees when they search for your item.

Glitch or design?

While writing this post it’s been discovered that Featured Plus listings will only appear once in search results if they naturally fall on page 1 of search results.

This behavior isn’t what’s expected - the listing should still appear in the search results slot it naturally falls on as well as in the featured section of the page. Featured Plus listings on page 2 or higher of search results are displayed as expected in both the featured section as well as their normal position, lower down the search results page.

This may be because eBay want the first page of search results to show as many different listings as possible and are suppressing duplicates, or it may be yet another search glitch. We’ll update you as soon as we have more information.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Selling Tips | 3 Comments 

50% off Featured Plus! on eBay.com

July 29, 2008

eBay are running a three day 50% off promotion for the Featured Plus! listing enhancement for auctions and BIN listings. The promotion runs on 29th - 31st July and appears to be open to all sellers regardless of your location.

It’s worth remembering that with Featured Plus your listing is featured on the page of search results it would naturally fall on, and in the US with Best Match enabled this may mean it never makes the first page of search results.

One final point to bear in mind - if you’re listing on eBay.com from outside the US the promotion runs on PT not BST (an eight hour time difference) so make sure you’re listings start during the promotion period.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under CLD | 3 Comments 

Does Best Match spell the end for Featured Plus?

June 6, 2008

This post was written in June 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

I’ve been trying to work out the value of paying for the Featured Plus listing enhancement with Best Match and it’s not straightforward.

In the past it’s been a pretty obvious choice, Featured Plus would get your listing to the top of the page it naturally falls on. With the default listing order as “Ending Soonest” that would always mean at the end of the auction your item would be at the top of the first page of search results.

Now in Best Match items will no longer be sorted “Ending Soonest”, but as most relevant to the buyer’s search. This means that your Featured Plus upgrade costing £9.95 (up to £29.95 in some catagories) may never make it to the top of the first page of search results.

Actually it could be even worse than that, because if you aren’t being advantaged in search, or currently if you’re being disadvantaged compared to those with standard search standing, then your items are highly unlikely ever to appear on the first page of search results.

It may be that when Best Match is implemented it will still show the Best Matching Featured Plus items first, but to be honest if you can pay to be Better Matched than your competitors it’s not really Best Match is it? If, as a buyer, I’m expecting to see the Best Matched products that’s what I should be presented with.

There may still be users that manually change their sort preferences to “Ending Soonest” in which case Featured Plus would still work well, but do you want to pay for a listing upgrade reliant on users preferences?

Should you carry on paying for Featured Plus listing enhancements once Best Match is fully rolled out in the UK? Personally I’ll probably save my money, and invest it in cheaper listing enhancements such as Bold, Highlight and Subtitle.

Making my listing stand out when it does appear strikes me as a lot more cost effective than paying for a Featured Plus enhancement which may never be seen.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Glitches, Selling Tips | 4 Comments