Ebay Now Adding "Sponsor" Items Randomly To Search Results

I have notice in the past few days ebay search items that don't fit my search criteria showing up at the start, middle and randomly in my results. This includes "sponsor" items far outside my price point. These items are not in any price order as requested in the search so it adds some confusion. I find having random items outside my price points unhelpful. Has this new "user enhancement" feature been notice by anybody else and if so does it bother you or do you find it helpful?

As a buyer, I have not particularly noticed it in my searches, and I can't think of an instance where I clicked through on a sponsored item and bought it, though given the amount of time I spend on ebay and the number of transactions I do I suppose it's possible.

As a seller, I use promoted listings regularly and I find that a very high percentage of my sales of buy-it-now items come through those promotions.

I have noticed it. Just one more annoyance.

Advertising,
a modern blight on humanity, yet no one seems to talk about it.
Australian "free to air TV" has become almost unwatchable.
Interruptions every 5 minutes or so.

One has to tape, then be a wizard with the fast forward.

Morning all,

ebay has caused two or more "store" operators to quit relisting overpriced covers that never sold the first, or second, or … time with their new policies. However, the void has not been filed with virgin material not seen on ebay in the past.

Yep, sponsored items seem to be mostly repeat over priced material. However, I now find "new listing" notes on some items. What generates this notation on some new(er) material?

This has been going on for some time.

Yes, I have noticed it also. I'm not interested in the items that don't meet my search criteria, so I just skip past those items.

I am not seeing this behavior for any searches on ebay at all.

Then again, I never use the default "Best Match" sorting option, as that is sorted by whatever or whomever's listing(s) ebay wants to push on you. I only ever use sorted by newest, ending soonest, highest, or lowest.

That's one of the very first things I recommend to ebay users: get away from the default Best Match option, as it's geared toward what ebay wants you to see rather than what YOU want to see.

I am surprised that ebay has never implemented a 'wanted' feature. Seems to me that if they gave users the ability to post 'wanted to buy' items they could then notify buyers whenever a new listing matched their want list. There are many ways to implement this (including not making the list public) and ebay already has what it needs (infrastructure) to pull this off.
Don

Don,

ebay already has this feature. I use it all the time.

See below for an example.

Jim

In my opinion they should not 'hide' this under search functionality but rather bring it into the light as a stand alone feature.
Don

For those interested in how to get emails for your saved searches:

1. Enter your search word in the category that you want.



Click on "save this search."

2. Go to your "My ebay" page and click on "saved searches."



3. Go to the saved search that you want to get an email alert for, and select "subscribe email."



Jim

Bingo!
I have wondered that for the past 10 years, when I began collecting Romania and searched for rarer material.
It remained a surprise, no one began a "wanted" app for any/all items.

On a tangent, it mystifies me why in my regional location, all house refuse / tip sites, are now fenced and locked.
For years tip scavenging was a weekly delight, now everything goes immediately to landfill, just last Tuesday, I witnessed 4 full bins of aluminium cans, get buried.
Still our governments refuse to initiate a deposit scheme on recycleables.
McDonalds still has plastic straws.

Actually, ebay had a public wantlist feature for many years, but ultimately did away with it:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Archi...d-p/25406138




To return to the main topic of the thread, I too am now seeing sponsored listings when I do searches, depending on the category and search. I don't see it in stamps, but am seeing it in coins. It's annoying AF. When I sort by newest, ending soonest, highest, lowest, that is what I want to see, not promoted/sponsored listings outside of that sort order.

ebay really is circling the bowl with its manipulations; they are pissing off buyers and sellers alike in droves.