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@pennyforum14 wrote:

Items without recent sales history are pushed right down the bottom in best match search results.

Ah.... well that may be a contributing factor.  I had been using 30 day listings with the 3 free relists, but recently eBay extended the variations list to include my category (which I had been asking for for ages) so this month I have redone all my listings into variations with GTC to trim down the numbers and make it easier for buyers.  Any history I may have had from the previous 120 days was lost in the process (although it would have been lost anyway when they ended after 120 days, so maybe it doesn't explain anything, I'm confused).

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If using variations has reduced the number of your listings you'd have a lower percentage of the listings in your category so would be seen less.  Depending on what your variations are, you may miss out on sales/views because most people just scroll down and look at the pictures rather than reading the titles.  For example, if you have variations of red and blue in t-shirts, if the red pic is showing in gallery but a buyer is looking for blue, they may scroll right past your listing without knowing you also offer blue.

Re the selling history in the listings, if you use the free auto relist you'll lose your selling history each time they relist (30 days), not every 120 days.  When they auto relist they get a new listing number and are a completely separate, brand new listing.  If I have a quantity of 5 and I sell one, only the remaining 4 are relisted and nobody can see that I sold one the previous month.  GTC is the only real way to retain the selling history.

I wouldn't claim to know how best match works because when I look, some of my items with no sales history are near the top.  When a friend looked recently she saw completely different listings of mine to what I saw (but the ones near the top still hadn't sold during that month).  A lot of searches are the same as advertising, in that they're based on other items you've recently looked at, so everyone will see something different.  When I look at the TV guide online I see ads for web pages I've recently looked at, including my own items, and I think best match may work the same way to a certain extent.  I recently saw one of my own items on ebay's front page but I'm not silly enough to believe that everyone else will see it there.  Ebay have just tailored the page to what they think I want to see (partly) and they probably also put something of mine there to con me into thinking everyone else sees it too.