How to sort and filter listings in eBay search results?

Cassini - eBay's internal search engine. When it comes to Cassini, the most important criteria are as follows.

1. Product title

Your product title must be relevant to the product you are selling and accurately describe it. Remember, your title is for buyers to see, not for search engines to crawl!

Good title: Men's Nike Running shoes

Bad title: Mint condition Nike shoes

The better your product title, the greater the chance that a potential customer will click on your listing and buy your product. When this happens repeatedly, your customer conversion rate increases, and as a bonus, eBay will rank your listing higher in search results.

2. Product details

The specific information you fill in when listing a product also becomes a filter. If you don’t fill in the detailed information of the product, the listing will not appear when shoppers search for the product using “specific details”.

3. Category

After multiple stages of research, eBay has better matched the "right buyers" and "right sellers" from the main categories and subcategories. The key is not to classify products into irrelevant categories.

For example, if the product you are selling is an ancient Chinese sculpture, choose "Antiques" as the main category and "Asian Antiques" as the subcategory. There is no need to select other categories, such as "Art" and "Collectibles", or "Decorative Arts" as a subcategory. Keep it simple and precise.

There are more benefits to selecting the correct "category": in many cases, the product already exists for sale in the eBay category, so just enter the UPC or EAN and eBay will automatically fill in the rest of the information.

4. Product Description

It is very important to write a precise, detailed, and correctly formatted product description. The benefits are:

1. When you use relevant keywords in your description, the search results will rank higher.

2. Improve conversion rate - meaning that when sellers provide useful information to shoppers, more visitors will convert into customers; 3. The longer shoppers stay on the page, the more it helps improve the search result ranking.

5. Customer reviews

eBay search engine ranks listings based on positive and negative reviews. Positive reviews directly affect seller ratings and sales, and also indirectly affect the listing's position in search results.

There are many things sellers can do to improve their eBay ratings, such as: accurately describing products in terms of condition, quality, and brand; communicating with customers quickly and effectively; delivering products within the promised time frame (such as same-day delivery); offering free shipping when possible, or using eBay's delivery service, which automatically earns a 5-star rating.

6. Free delivery

When offering free shipping, Cassini will boost the corresponding listing ranking because this is what customers care about. Most sellers will add the shipping cost into the product price, which is better than charging extra for shipping. "Free shipping" is more acceptable to consumers.

7. High-quality product images

High-quality and clear photos not only attract buyers, but also the eBay search engine is looking for high-pixel images to identify high-quality products. The algorithm tends to display listings with higher-quality images, and of course, the image Alt text is also taken into account. Alt text helps shoppers understand the content of the image and also helps search engines find listings. Alt text can be added to images through html code.

8. Update old listings

Cassini prefers new listings, and consumers are also interested in new things - new fashion, new phones and new listings. Similarly, auctions (although used less and less, accounting for less than 20% of all new listings) are also a desirable way to create gimmicks, attract traffic, and become eBay's focus.

9. RSS Feeds

Cassini likes fresh activity, so if you turn off your RSS feed at the end of your workday or use vacation settings and then turn it back on in the morning, that can also help temporarily boost your search results ranking.

10. Copy content

Do not copy the content or product description directly into the listing. If you need to copy the content, paste it in 'Notepad' to remove the unnecessary HTML formatting code. Because this embedded code will usually prevent Cassini from reading the text correctly, which is not conducive to the ranking of the listing.

11. Stay active

eBay search engines hate static listings. For some small sellers, it is better to post one listing every day rather than a batch of listings. In addition, regularly modifying and improving listings can also help increase sales. When a seller is active, the algorithm will think that customer satisfaction will be higher.

12. Third-party traffic

In the market, eBay also needs to get more traffic and customers. eBay search engine will reward stores that drive traffic to the platform through social media or other third-party channels. While sellers are promoting their products, they are also increasing their exposure on eBay.