bruce,

I'd love to help you, but I won't be able to dial in or listen....I'll be tied up I'm afraid. Hopefully others will be able to listen or call in.

I'm hoping they archive the call so I we can at least listen at a later time

I am sorry but I can only stand to be treated like third grader for so long and would rather slit my eyeballs than listen to an ebay produced webcast.

Mike

there will be a replay of it "soon". I couldn't get in a similar title question, here are notes, not very good ones I'm afraid:

Webinar

Seller experience team, Todd

Search best practices

Sharing the results of new best match since launch

Item title relevance-used to say cast wide net, general words and now want to use efficient words to generate sales. Penalized for general words.

Newly listed (multi/single quality) will be given impressions. Changing title will not improve listing performance score. Now when you change title, don’t relist, list as new so get another evaluation.

Fixed price have “earned” placement. Auctions ending soonest placement.

Auctions, think should include bin, if you think you know the value.
Auctions get 70% of lst page of listings on most search results.

Recommend using best offer-“fun” for buyer, increases velocities.

Items with excessive shipping will be lowered in search results in both auction/fixed price

Actively manage fixed price listings. Using feature first can lower your listing performance because of the higher impressions/no sales; could be pushed down in rankings. Use both feature and regular listing-regular listing may end up higher than the featured first listing. If you get a drop in feature first, end it, create new listing.

Using too many brands or possible uses not a good thing. Apple logo t shirt, ipod, laptop, I phone computer nano. Test brand names in subtitles.

Price competitively.

Emphasis on new listing versus relist (if not happy with results)
Category exceptions Art antiques, etc.-fixed price-newly listed and top R sellers and title relevant.

Motors are excluded from new best match stuff.

Visibility tool (on dashboard)
If download files, more information available.
Can do a search and see where item appears (page 2 position 26 of 238) turned off right now, will be turned on very soon. Search term important: AAA batteries versus AAA rechargeable batteries will give different results.

No single thing that will advance to top of best match.

On sale will not change placement unless sale occurs-it’s the sale that changes the score, not the change of the price.

New listing sorted by predicted item factor, when enough impressions are received will moved up or down. Different thresholds,

Vintage clothing-clothing category use new best practices because that’s the sort. Vintage doesn’t “fit” in to the category. Will be looking at vintage in early 2010.
I did not find auction item in last 1 hr when going to category subs. Help couldn’t find it either.

Trs/5.0/with lowest price items, show up many pages behind higher prices non TRS behind auctions…………very high rate of auctions on first page of search……. Lowest priced item doesn’t show up near top. Intent was to advantage TRS, but we didn’t want to cut out other sellers. Have had 50% drop in sales. Shift to bigger auction mix has hurt fixed priced sales. (from 60 to 80% ratio of auctions to fixed price) Can’t make it to first page.

Not enough slots for fixed price. (external hard drives-no differences). Buyers not rational All your advice is running me out of business.

Selling similar-does NOT retain any impressions from original listing. (sell similar would be “NEW” listing)

TRS counts transactions, only 1, 2 count. 3-5 doesn’t impact.

GTC, not sold in first 30 days, better to rollover or end and relist? For collectibles, doesn’t matter. For other categories, with no sales, could be better off, try a few new listings-see which strategies work.

Why NOW? Just before holiday. To give the best buying experience to buyers. Not trying to benefit any sellers. Now have to re evaluate all listing in our busiest season.
You suggest “testing” that’s all time to expend this time of year when we don’t have these, why didn’t Ebay consider that? I’m taking that back. I respect the problem, but we do it for the buyer.

Dorothy- Did you catch that one of eBay's examples featured holiday towels? I couldn't help but think of your store.

All in all, the webinar was helpful but just highlights how truly complicated eBay has become.

I was able to get a question answered - yes, store listings are being evaluated using the Fixed Price algorithm. But I was not able to get in a question about using calculated shipping cost. I was left wondering if heavy items (that cost more to ship) are lower in placement because they are being compared to lighter items in the same catefory. A similar question was answered very vaguely.

Items with excessive shipping will be lowered in search results in both auction/fixed price

And HOW, may I ask, are they going to determine EXCESSIVE SHIPPING when you use weight?

I suggest they are REALLY saying that anything other than free shipping will be ranked lower.

Mike

I will never offer the so called free shipping even if i add to the
cost of my items. Alot of my items have some weight to them.
and how do they compare excessive weight to what? if i send
a big bearing that weights 15 lbs and dorothy ships a towel for
a really big person that weighs 15lbs. are they going to ding her
because 15lbs for a towel would seem excessive? maybe i dont
understand their logic. dont know...but excellent point mike..

Thanks for all the had work Dorothy, it's really appreciated.

Reading it after a long day at work has my head spinning a bit. I need to go home, pour a drink and read it again.

My first thought was "general" vs "specific" keywords. What is general and what is specific? If listing a car magazine that has topics or cover a photo of a Mustang, Corvette and a Porsche is using them as keywords too general? What if you have a lot containing several items like a laptop, iPod and an iPhone, for instance (insert whatever products you want). How can a program tell the difference between "general" keywords vs the actual item(s) that are for sale?

My second thoughts were, like others, quantifying excessive shipping. If it's two new iPods, it's pretty easy. If it's a Matchbox to car and a Tonka toy car it's going to be more difficult. I don't know how, through keywords, you can accurately identify WHAT an item is programmatically.