Share eBay Best Match ranking rules

1) What is Best Match?

First, Best Match source:

In order to improve the buyer user experience, sellers need to cater to buyer needs and habits.

Second, the matching of buyers and sellers:

Through search ranking rules, sellers are guided to continuously improve buyers' shopping experience. Best Match is the default search method of eBay. Best Match uses different conditions to determine the search ranking position of fixed price and auction.

When choosing how to rank, Best Match considers the following factors:

1. Recent sales conversion rate (fixed price, the higher the sales conversion rate, the higher the ranking).

2. The time when the product will be taken off the shelves (the shorter the time of taking the product off the shelves, the higher the ranking).

3. The relevance of the item (the greater the relevance between the title and the buyer’s search terms, the higher the ranking).

4. The price and shipping cost of the item (the lower the price, the higher the ranking).

5. The seller’s performance in service rating (assessment of product quality, seller service, logistics service, logistics arrival time, freight and handling fees).

6. The seller’s performance in terms of safety and integrity (the proportion of seller service ratings, the proportion of buyer complaints, buyer satisfaction and evaluation).

7. Whether return and exchange services are provided (providing high-quality return and exchange services will be ranked higher).

The key factors that influence the ranking of sellers' items in Best Match are: accurate titles, precise classification and positioning, beautiful pictures, competitive prices and professional seller services to attract buyers to purchase.

Third, the item search presentation process - search keywords:

Buyers search and filter products - eBay presents search results - Buyers choose trustworthy products to purchase.

Fourth, what kind of products get high exposure in Best Match:

1. Detailed title description and complete item specifications and attributes: The top 8 products all have accurate title descriptions.

2. Correct sales model: Among the top 8 products, half are sold in the auction format.

3. Recent sales records of “fixed price” items: The top-ranked “fixed price” items all have recent sales records.

4. “Free Shipping”: All top-ranked items are free shipping.

5. DSR score: The sellers of the top 8 items all have DSR scores of 4.8 or above.

Note: Providing reasonable prices and high-quality services is the key to determining the ranking of sellers' items in Best Match.

2) Why use Best Match?

Sorting search results by when an item ends (ending soonest) is not necessarily the most efficient way. Buyers prefer valuable items and trustworthy sellers - especially for "buy now" items, because buyers can buy such items at any time.

Best Match Rules

First, what are the publishing methods?

1. Auction: Use the "auction method" to publish, set the starting price, and at the end of the specified time, the highest bidder wins.

2. Fixed Price: Use the "fixed price" method to list products, making it convenient for buyers to purchase products immediately.

When analyzing the role of the Best Match search ranking rules, the fixed price is divided into a new fixed price and a known fixed price. A new fixed price refers to a newly listed product, and a known fixed price refers to a product that has been listed for more than 48 hours or has a certain sales record.

Second, factors affecting auction ranking

1. Relevance: Title and attributes. The more relevant the buyer's search keywords are to the product title, the higher the ranking.

2. Posting time and ending time. The closer the post is to the end, the higher it will rank.

3. Seller performance: Sellers with excellent ratings will rank higher. If the seller is below standard, the search ranking will get worse and worse.

Third, factors affecting New FixedPrice

Among them, the quality of the predicted items is considered by two factors, namely the comparison between the price and the average price, and the comparison between the freight and the average freight. The price and freight will have a certain impact. If the seller provides a variety of logistics options, such as free shipping and different logistics options, then the ranking will be relatively higher.

Fourth, influence Konow FixedPrice

It is known that the quality of items in a fixed price is measured by four major factors: conversion rate considerations, item views, item collection considerations, and whether the item offers free shipping.

Fifth, factors affecting the ranking of fixed price: conversion rate analysis

Conversion rate = sales, exposure; click rate = customer clicks divided by the number of times the item is exposed; sales rate = the number of items sold divided by the number of clicks; conversion rate click rate * sales rate

What sellers should do to deal with the above influences is to strengthen the relevance of products, increase the number of product searches, and at the same time increase the number of clicks on products. They can use exquisite pictures and competitive prices to attract buyers. The last one is to increase product sales, use more detailed item descriptions and provide better buyer services to attract buyers to buy.

3) A simple method to place orders for new products on eBay

The goal of eBay's search engine is to display the most relevant products to visitors. eBay wants to provide an "answer" to each searcher: Which search results are most relevant to this searcher? Then eBay will try its best to display the most relevant search results at the top of the page.

eBay's default search result order is "Best Match", which is basically eBay's prediction of what the searcher wants.

eBay's explanation of Best Match:

The objective of Best Match is to show the most relevant, best value items from sellers that will create a fantastic experience for the buyer.

When we upload new products, we may not appear at the top of the search results page. The reason is: our new products lack the key indicator of eBay's consideration of product relevance - recent sales orders

How to match this ranking rule and make your products appear at the top of eBay product rankings

We can learn from eBay's official explanation: As we can see, eBay mentioned 5 key parameters to determine product relevance and then rank products.

Seller account performance and store reviews

Recent Sales

Title Keywords

Product Price

Free shipping

When we upload a new product, eBay already knows 4 out of these 5 indicators. This is why some people envy the eBay masters who say they can rank at the top as soon as they upload a product. What you should envy is not his technology, but his account performance.

There is one most critical indicator here that eBay has no way of knowing for the time being, and that is the recent sales orders for this product.

I got the information about the impact of recent sales on product rankings from eBay's official FAQ: eBay's explanation of recent sales performance

We can draw several conclusions from this:

Products with multiple attributes rank better than products with single attributes

Products that have been sold are ranked better than those that have not been sold.

Products with more orders are ranked better than those with fewer orders.

4) How to quickly get orders for new products

Although most buyers will choose the most convenient method - searching keywords and selecting products from the default Best Match page, there are still a small number who prioritize price, that is, they will change Best Match to Lowest First.

Use price sorting to ensure that our eBay products have enough exposure (if you can’t set it to the first place, please at least be on the first page).

Although this usually means selling at a loss or making a small profit, the first order can be completed almost on the same day, and this behavior will also improve the product's Best Match ranking. Of course, we need to monitor the best matching product ranking at all times. When the product ranking is good, we can increase the price.

Note: Just raise the price to the industry level. If the price is too high, your conversion rate will be low and your ranking will not be maintained for long.

This method allows the eBay algorithm to quickly determine the association between our items and buyers, thereby indirectly improving the search ranking of the best match.

You may be wondering how we deal with the losses caused by obtaining rankings at such a low price.

In fact, the answer is very simple, regard it as an advertising and marketing strategy.

Why are you willing to run a through train on AliExpress for hundreds or even thousands of yuan a day, but not willing to use this low-price strategy to boost rankings?

Selling at a loss means losing a few dollars if there is no order, but in the long run, the gains will outweigh the losses.

Here is a practical example: One of my products in the clothing accessories category has a moderate to moderate competition. In the early stage, I lost about $3 per order. After about 30 orders, the product ranked in the top three on the Best Match search page. Later, I raised the price to the average price level, and the ranking remained the same for more than three months (seasonal product). If it were you, would you be willing to spend $90 to rank in the top three for the main keyword? I think most people would be willing.

5) Additional explanation on eBay’s best match algorithm

The method mentioned above must meet all four conditions except "recent sales" to achieve the best effect.

Account performance is a prerequisite, so try not to let buyers give bad reviews

The title contains precise keywords, and we need to avoid several common problems

Competitive prices (not necessarily the lowest)

Providing Free Shipping or local delivery, cross-border e-commerce should be dominated by overseas warehouses in the future.

If your product does not meet these parameters or cannot provide value to customers, then you can only get quick orders from low prices. If the product is not selected well and we cannot guarantee continued orders once we raise the selling price, the product ranking will start to decline in the search results.