How Best Match Can Dramatically Affect Your Research Results
You may have heard about the Best Match system and how it affects your business in the last 6 months, it was introduced by eBay late 2009 to ’sort’ the search results for buyers when shopping on eBay.
For those of you not familiar with the Best Match search filters, in the past items ending soonest would simply be at the top of the search results, which has now been replaced with Best Match.
The Best Match search filters not only affect where your listings show in the search results and therefore affect your sales and profits, however they also play a huge role when you research using Terapeak and Completed Listings.
You see one of the ways to rank higher in the search results it to create a ‘history’ on eBay by selling the same products over and over again, re-listing the fixed priced items and re-using the same item numbers.
Whilst this is a great way to boost your sales and ranking as a seller, on the other hand as a researcher you have to look at a few more numbers to get accurate stats.
For example: Let’s say you listed a fixed price item at the start of the month and sold one a week regularly using the ‘relist’ automation preference. You would have sold 4x units, however you would get different stats when researching because….
eBay would see this as 1x item sold only (remember same item number, so only 1x item would show)
Completed Listings would show no items sold (remember completed listings shows the past 14 days only and you listed the first one 30 days ago)
So make sure you are using the right figures to base your research on, otherwise you might be missing out on some gems!
Matt & Amanda Clarkson








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