I don't think there is an intention by ebay to scam its sellers. However I do know how frustrating it is to find your own listings on the last pages, because mine tend to be in the middle to the end and in my categories there are thousands and thousands of listings world wide. (I have a store and that doesn't seem to help in search ranking).

I do also think there is a general slow down in activity that is not related to ebay.

However here are a couple of things I do to help, who knows you might be able to use these techniques or it may help you to develop some new techniques to bring your items forward in searches.

1. Have a mixture of buy it now, and auction style listings.

2. Be active with listing every day (try to edit, or create at least 3 listings per day)

3. Look for outside methods of promotion - like Facebook - you can put a link to your items on ebay. Local notice boards at your shopping centre often work.

4. Ebay is not the only place to sell, have a look at the other sites around, some of them actually work better depending upon what it is you are selling. (Having said this, ebay still seems to generate the most visits).

5. Your photographs are tremendously important. Make sure they are good (I haven't looked, so if you are already doing this please feel free to ignore). The photograph is usually the first thing a buyer sees, make sure the impression is good.

There are probably others, but I can't think of them at the moment. Time for some sleep I think. LOL

Good luck!