I sell desktop PCs primarily, but I noticed a surprisingly lack of traffic in recent weeks despite it being the traditionally strongest sales time of the year. I investigated and found that my auction listings no longer rise to page one as the time runs out like they always had. In a category with over 7,500 listings, it's impossible to be seen just using buy-it-now listings. Since Best Match became the default search listing on ebay several years ago, I've had to constantly post one-day auction listings to even be seen at all. At some recent point, I would guess probably about a month ago more or less, judging from my web traffic the auction listings stopped rising to page one in Best Match, they only rise to the top in Time Ending Soonest.
This is catastrophic as far as sales go, which have dropped sharply in the last few weeks at a time when they should be at their peak. Ebay changed something, however sneakily, without giving prior notice as to the change. Now I can't find the formula to get back on page one in auction listings. I note the same phenomenom is occurring to all of my competitors, it doesn't just affect myself. Most of their auction listings no longer rise to page one either.
But what's even more confounding is that a relative handful of auction listings STILL rise to page one. It's almost as though they've been chosen at random by the system for this "privilege". I can't find the common denominator to determine why these few auction listings are allowed to rise to the top of page one while the majority of the other auctions listings don't. It's not price, free postage, length of auction, feedback, DSRs or anything. I have 100% positive feedback with 4.9 DSRs, and can't get on page one. Page one is now mostly populated with the best selling buy-it-nows, with only a sprinkling of auction items.
If anyone can shed some light as to what is going on and what the magic fix for it is, I'd like to hear from you.
