Search Discrepancies on eBay

Those of you who still sell on eBay should not take offense when I mention your sales. I do not mention names, and I am not implying that you have done anything wrong. On the contrary, I am indignant that eBay is hiding your items in search. The "best-match" search truly is hiding items—at least some of them.

I ran a search last night for "Nancy Drew" under "best match" and "ending soonest." I did not have the luxury of checking the results for any seller whose sales are down, since I needed for those sellers to have listings about to close, but I did find a result for someone who is well-known in the series book collecting community.

This person's book was #4 on the "ending soonest" search. It closed approximately one hour after I ran my search. This seller is not top-rated. I checked the results for "best match" and was unable to locate the book in the first 1,400 results (!). I figured that I had proved my point by that time, so I did not check further. I used the browser "find" feature on a word from the title of the listing as I searched each page of results to make certain that I did not miss it. There is no way that a buyer would have found that particular book in "best match." By the way, it was a blue tweed Nancy Drew book with dust jacket, so it was definitely a book that was of interest to collectors.

I also noticed that the missing item was one that had "Buy It Now or Best Offer" enabled. At the time that I ran this particular search, I noticed that the auction listings were receiving prominent placement in "best match" while the ones with Buy It Now were either missing or way down the page.

I checked the search results again this afternoon, and I noticed that the Buy It Now listings were receiving about the same placement as the auction listings. The "best match" results seem to change from day to day. It is very odd. If I were selling all of my books on eBay, I would be very concerned about this. The reason why I am checking into it is because people have mentioned the discrepancies on various message boards, and I wanted to see for myself if their statements are true. Apparently they are.

Tonight, I ran another search and compared the results for "ending soonest" and "best match." Once again, I was able to quickly isolate a book that is to close in around 12 hours and is not showing in "best match." This time, I went through every page of results. I was unable to find the book in any of the 18 pages of results, or 3,514 items. That book is not showing in "best match" at all. Why?

I noticed that the book is from the same seller as the first book I mentioned from last night. I also noticed that the book is a "Buy It Now or Best Offer" item. Odd... Out of curiosity, I checked to see if that seller had any other copies of that Nancy Drew volume available. The seller had two others. The other two books were showing on page 18 of 18 under "best match" and were ranked at around 3,400 out of the 3,514 items. This is not good.

These books are all vintage, collectible Nancy Drew books that are of interest to collectors. They are buried in "best match" while dozens, maybe hundreds, of near worthless flashlight editions are ranked higher. "Best match" indeed...

I am amazed that this particular seller who has a long track record and good sales has books that eBay is hiding in "best match." I thought eBay liked sellers who sell a lot, so why is eBay hiding some of this seller's items?

I do actually have four bulk lots of Nancy Drew books on eBay right now. They are books that I do not care to sell on Bonanzle. The books are all in auctions with no Buy It Now. As they reach the final day, I'm going to be checking to see what the placement is in "best match" and "ending soonest." I suggest other sellers do the same with their listings as the listings near the closing time.
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In addition to the "best match" problems, eBay is messing around with the search results again. The store results have been placed back into the core search results for some lucky users like me. This was done in 2006 and resulted in auctions losing in popularity. When eBay realized the mistake, the store results were removed from core, but the damage had been done. Since 2006, auctions have been on a steady decline. For some reason, eBay has decided to place store results back in core in a test run. This means that our search results are cluttered with store items, and it is very hard to find anything for the larger searches. While the test search may positively affect eBay stores, it will negatively affect people who have paid higher fees for auctions and 30-day fixed price listings.

If you remove all of your eBay cookies, you may be able to get out of the test search. I tried it and was able to see the normal search results again. I do not know how long this test is set to run, but it is making large searches like "Nancy Drew" very hard to navigate.