eBay search broken - buyers offered off site ads

October 17, 2008

eBay’s search has been intermittently broken at times during today and totally broken for part of this evening.

A seller contacted me this morning and their items were invisible on eBay UK. Logging into their account they could see items for sale but a search of sellers other items stated they had nothing listed for sale. Even when searching for specific individual items by title they failed to appear in search results.

Some time later the items re-appeared on the site, but they had the newly listed icon next to them - including the item shown above which is a ten day listing with just over 24 hours left to run. A nine day old listing should not be designated as newly listed with the newly listed icon.

This evening things got progressively worse. First came the messages that eBay were unable to run the search entered, although eBay’s off site adverts seemed to function perfectly. Send buyers off eBay while it’s broken and they may never return.

Then the situation deteriated further with searches returning messages simply saying “Sorry, that’s not working right now”. Title and description searches are known to be broken with an estimate of about a week to fix. This evening not even title searches were working, sellers with listings finishing this evening may not have had great success. The problem appears to have affected both the eBay UK and eBay.com sites.


With the busiest time of the year fast approaching buyers, sellers and especially eBay themselves need to have a reliable site. Searches not working is simply not acceptable for an ecommerce site the size of eBay.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Glitches | 20 Comments 

Title & Description search will be broken all week

October 15, 2008

eBay have acknowledged a problem with search, where a title-and-description search is not showing up items which should be visible, though the same listings *do* show in a title-only search. The problem was first reported on seller forums both in the UK and the US earlier in the week: customer support had told several sellers that there was no known problem, but the eBay.com Announcements Board has now said:

Title and Description Search is not displaying all items correctly. Please be assured that we are working aggressively to resolve the issue, and expect it to be fixed by the end of next week. We know how frustrating this is, and sincerely apologize that the fix will take so long, but the reindexing necessary to complete the fix literally takes several days to run.

If you are a seller and your item is not displaying in a Title and Description Search, please don’t hesitate to contact Customer Support, and they will be happy to refund your fees upon validation that your item is impacted by this bug.

If you are a buyer, these items are always available by using Title-only Search (simply uncheck the Include title and description box when running a search). Additionally, if you have Favorite Searches set up, you may want to temporarily modify them to search by Title only.

I would respectfully suggest to eBay Support that they have no idea how frustrating this is; their income, after all, isn’t relying on this function working correctly. Moreover, not everyone reads the AB board - particularly buyers for whom it normally holds little of interest - so they will have no idea why their searches are suddenly not working.

There’s been no corresponding announcement for UK sellers yet, but with an official post to point to now, sellers with missing listings should probably contact customer support with details of the affected items.

Updated to add: also on eBay France.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Glitches | 35 Comments 

eBay UK defaults to old search - 30 day BINs vanish

October 6, 2008

Many users on eBay UK appear to have been defaulted to the old search experience. Instead of displaying Best Match with only auctions sorted ending soonest, fixed price listings are also displayed in the pre-Sept 25th sort order.

What’s worse is that sellers who have made use of the new 30 day listing format get zero visibility in core search results. 30 day BINs act as SIF listings in the old search and for many sellers this means they now have very few, or even zero, listings appearing on the core site.

It’s possible to opt back into the new search experience, but the big question is how many buyers will? Threads are starting to appear on discussion boards including Q&A and the PowerSeller board suggesting large numbers of users have been switched back to the old search experience.

If eBay are running tests with small numbers of users still showing the old search experience that’s one thing. If vast numbers of users have been switched back it has serious repercussions for sellers who have switched to 30 day listings as buyers simply won’t see their products.

I’m hoping that eBay move most users back to the new search experience in the very near future. In the meantime sellers who have worked to get to the top of Best Match with Recent Sales are reaping no rewards, but are actually being disadvantaged against sellers who blindly re-listed 10 day BINs.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Glitches | 54 Comments 

eBay France include popularity in Best Match

October 3, 2008

eBay.freBay France have announced that popularity is to be included as a factor when calculating Best Match scores for Buy It Now items. Popularity is the number of items sold from a multiple item listing over the preceding seven days; the score remains valid for seven days after the end of a listing. Listings which have sold more individual items will be advantaged in Best Match search sorting (the default on eBay.fr) above those which have sold fewer.

eBay give some advice for sellers to take advantage of this:

  • sellers should list single multiple-item listings instead of running many listings just for one item
  • sellers should relist sold items within seven days to take advantage of their established popularity
  • sellers should use longer listings - 10 days - to gain greater visibility for their item
  • sellers listing auctions needn’t make any change: their listings will continue to be sorted by ending soonest

It’s good to see this change announced openly, and in detail: other eBay sites could certainly learn something from eBay.fr here. But even more than on eBay UK, I think this goes against buyer psychology on eBay France: I’ve done some fairly extensive testing of multiple listings versus single item listings, and my own experience is:

  • single item listings are more likely to sell than not
  • two items listed together have about an even chance of selling one of them
  • more than two items are unlikely to sell anything.

French buyers, in comparison to their British counterparts, really do lack a sense of urgency: I had an email this morning regarding an item I sold in June, asking if I had another one. So I really don’t want to start telling buyers I have plenty of stock of anything: I want them to think I only have one and if they don’t buy it now, they’re going to miss out. Hammering home the scarcity message really seems to be the way forward on eBay.fr. I’ll be using the seven day relist window as much as I can, but I’ll also be running some tests to see if eBay’s multiple item listing suggestion really does work. Can they overturn more than a decade’s worth of buyer psychology in one little site change? It’ll be interesting to find out.*

* or it would be, if half my income wasn’t riding on it

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.fr | 25 Comments 

Best Match: what’s in, what’s out

September 24, 2008

Earlier this week, eBay answered some members’ questions about Best Match and related search issues. There isn’t much we don’t already know, but it’s nice to have it all in one place (even if the eBay rep. turned up half an hour late for a one hour discussion).

For BINs, Best Match is now the default search sorting. Auctions will continue to be sorted by ending soonest by default, with sellers with a DSR of 4.3 or lower “disadvantaged” in search. eBay are coy about exactly what criteria are taken into account with BM and what importance is given to each. The exact algorithm will vary according to category: for one example, many collectables categories are concerned with one-offs, so popularity (i.e. number of items already sold) is not going to be a meaningful criterion. BM criteria are also likely to be fine-tuned over time, so don’t assume that what works for you this week will necessarily work next week.

However, we do know that at the moment, popularity is more important than price, because “a higher-priced popular item will rank better than a lower-priced unpopular one”. Additionally “importance will be placed on good DSRs, recent sales (in categories where multi quantity listing is prevalent), good value and relevant item titles.” As eBay have said that “total cost” is not a factor in BM, it’s not quite clear what “good value” might mean: item price, or distance from category average price, are two possibilities that spring to mind, but these are just my guesses. The matching of keywords between search query and item title is taken into account with Best Match, so well-written titles remain as crucial as ever.

Sellers who list single items can relist a sold listing within seven days in order to benefit from the recent sales rating and so improve their BM ranking. They will need to actually “relist” the same listing to achieve this; “sell similar” will reset their recent sales rating.

We also have a list of what BM does not take into account:

  • seller status (private or business)
  • seller’s total sold items
  • postage costs being specified
  • returns policy being specified
  • feedback percentage
  • item specifics
  • total cost
  • item description

However, both item specifics and item description are important in ensuring your item is actually picked up by search in the first place, so don’t skimp on either.

eBay UK will not be hiding duplicated items from the same seller, a process known as “deduping” on eBay.com. Now that popularity boosts search ranking, eBay believe that there will be fewer duplicated single item listings, and more multiple items listed together; deduping is therefore unnecessary.

My concern in all this, as ever, is what it’s doing to the buyers. Consider this explanation of how auction and BIN results will finally be sorted together:

Auction and BIN items will be sorted according to two different sets of criteria (time ending soonest and DSR scores for auction, and a mix of trust, value and popularity for BIN). Once the items for each format are sorted, the two separate lists are blended together based on buyer behaviour and can vary for category and query.

Buyers have spent the last decade and more learning to buy at the last minute on eBay: it’s such ingrained behaviour that they do it on BINs even though it makes no sense. And now, at the busiest, spendiest time of the year, we’re asking them to abandon those habits and deal with a new sort order that frankly looks just random. eBay talk a lot about the buyer experience, but when they pile these changes onto them, one after another, tweaking site functionality on a weekly basis, I wonder if they’re thinking of them at all.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 28 Comments 

eBay UK makes changes to Search

August 8, 2008

eBay UK has announced two new features coming to Search in the next seven days. Search suggestions will guess at what buyers are trying to type as they type it: as Whirly put it earlier, if they’re looking for baths, they’ll be told to look for bath towels. I hated this when they brought it to .com, and I still hate it now. Giving buyers help if they’re not finding what they’re looking for is one thing: trying to second-guess them from the beginning of the finding process is a step too far. Let them look for what they’re here to buy before we start trying to distract them.

There will also be some unspecified changes to Refine Your Search, “to make it easier to find and select” additional search filters. I very much hope that they fix the BIN/SIF filter, where selecting “Buy It Now” greys out the “Shops items” box. Though filtering by BIN does appear to bring up results from SIF listings, you wouldn’t know it from the form’s behaviour: this is just confusing.

I don’t want this to turn into a rant on my own pet hates on the current search, but my other pet hate is the splitting up of things that should be together: for example, searching for a pair of jeans, I can refine my search by size/brand/category/price etc., and by selling format/location/distance from me etc. - but these two sets of options are in two different pop-up boxes. Why? If I want to refine my search, let me refine it as much as I like, all at one go.

eBay UK search results

eBay UK search results : click to embiggen

And if I’m searching for something that might show up in a bunch of different categories, the situation is even worse. Try a search for “dalek“: I have some categories from Toys, and some from Collectables, and I can choose to expand either of those lists - seperately - but if I’ve decided that actually what I want is a DVD, I’ve got to spot the “show all categories” list, and click that to bring up DVDs. On this particular search, there’s a rather helpful list of things other people searched for (which in fact includes my “dalek DVD”): what a shame they’ve buried it at the bottom of the page underneath an advert for Sky TV, and another advert for wheels on eBay Motors (relevence??).

I’ve been searching eBay for more than a decade now, and all this feels horribly clunky to me. What on earth can it be like for newbies? I really don’t want to join the ranks of sellers who start screaming and crying every time eBay change a font, but honestly, if this is the best they can do, I suggest that all their designers and developers are forced to actually use the site they’re messing with. Maybe then we’ll get something our buyers can use.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 25 Comments 

eBay.com tell buyers what to search for

July 11, 2008

eBay.com have made some changes to their New Search Experience following member feedback on recent trials. Preferences have been made ’sticky’, i.e. what you pick stays picked, and more options have been added to the advanced search. As of next week, more members are going to start seeing the new version of search, and those who aren’t included in the trial can still test things out in the Playground.

From what I’m hearing, the new search system has not so far won many friends. Even some pretty experienced users have had trouble figuring out just how it works. But if there was suspicion of Best Match and Finding 2.0, this is going to be ten times worse:

search suggestions

We have also added an Auto Complete feature, which provides search suggestions in real time right from the search box!

Of course, if yours is one of the keywords that pops up on the first letter, this will be superb for you - but if your words never show at all, then you’d better hope that eBay haven’t distracted your buyers before they’ve finished typing. Buyers really should be trusted at the very beginning of the search process to know what they’re looking for, and left to get on with finding it: this horrible new feature should go.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Site Changes, eBay.com | 14 Comments 

eBay UK’s new search loses SIF results?

July 3, 2008

Last week, eBay UK made rather a cryptic announcement about how shops’ listings will appear in search. Some of us were hopeful that Best Match might even mean that SIF listings could return to search results, but it seems our optimism was misplaced.

can't search on BIN and SIF together
click picture to embiggen

The first problem I discovered is that it’s not actually possible to search BIN and SIF listings at the same time. If I want to buy something now, I don’t actually care what sort of listing it comes from, I just want to get it and pay for it, but eBay’s search filter is now forcing me to choose between BIN or SIF: if you choose one, the other is greyed out. The old system which gave those in the know the option to add SIFs into their BIN searches was bad enough: if a buyer specifies ‘buy it now’, SIF listings should be included by default. But telling buyers they need to choose between the two formats is just nonsensical; the average buyer has no idea what the difference is, and neither should they have to figure it out. This is exceedingly user-unfriendly.

Then I had an email from TameBay reader Miss Tequila, who’s been seeing some even odder search results. She told me she’d been looking for “raw 7 cashmere”, one of her favourite searches. On the left is the old search; on the right, the new:

The old search shows 25 items including SIF; the new, just one. As Miss T. says, “looks like they want shops gone”.

eBay’s original announcement suggests there is more than one new layout being tested, so Miss T’s version may not be what everyone’s seeing. If you’re one of those seeing the new search results, please let us know what you think: the more specific detail you can give us, the better ;-)

Updated to add

I heard from eBay regarding Miss T’s search results; they point out that the old version searches worldwide, and the new one doesn’t, and that this is the reason for the discrepancy. It’s nice to have it explained, though I do wonder, if Miss T and me both missed it, how difficult this is going to be for buyers to get right too.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Featured, Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 22 Comments 

Domestic UK listings are shown as International

June 9, 2008

John, a specialist stamp dealer, has revealed to TameBay that he has discovered that some eBay Shop Inventory Format listings are hidden on eBay.co.uk and only visible as International items.

He lists on eBay.co.uk, has a UK registered eBay account, states his item location as “East Anglia, United Kingdom” and yet his listings are appearing as International. A search for “ICELAND STAMP BOOKLET” returns no core matches, but currently shows just one of his listings as available as a Shop item, however he has a further 11 shop items which should be displayed.

Using advanced search to specifically add in SIF items (not something the casual buyer is likely to do) reveals the missing items are available, but are shown from “International Sellers” in the “United Kingdom.

The items have just a few days left to run, but John has paid for 90 day SIF listings and his products have been hidden from buyers in search. Only by visiting John’s own shop have the products been on show unless buyers used advanced searches. Even searching eBay.com for International listings only shows the one listing that appears on eBay.co.uk.

Something strange is going on - For a UK registered seller the United Kingdom shouldn’t appear as International on eBay.co.uk. Are any of your items also showing as International instead of domestic?

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

Does Best Match spell the end for Featured Plus?

June 6, 2008

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