eBay announced on Monday that it was changing the way auctions would be displayed on Category listing pages and Search results pages. As a result of the changes, eBay modified the way "Featured" items are displayed, causing anger among sellers who pay $99.95 for Featured Auctions or $19.95 for Featured Plus! Auctions.
Monday's introduction of a "Buy It Now" tab means that users can now limit viewed items to those that a user can buy immediately in a fixed-price format. With the introduction of this new feature, eBay said it also changed the way "Featured" items are displayed in Listings to match the way they are displayed in Search results.
In the past, Listings results displayed all Featured Items at the top of the first page. Now, when searching for items, Featured Items are displayed based on the sort order. The system will display the top 50 results, and any Featured Items among those 50 items will be displayed at the top of the page. The next 50 items will display on the next page, and any Featured Items among those 50 will be displayed at the top of the page, and so on.
Sellers are upset because their items will no longer appear on the first page/pages of results. Some buyers are also upset over the change. One eBay member told AuctionBytes, "The categories that I have bookmarked are categories that I like to check out on a daily basis. The "cream of the crop" so to speak, was always listed first, saving me, as a buyer a lot of time searching for individual items within that category. Great for the person in a hurry that wants to take a quick look at the best stuff."
eBay posted a notice to its members Tuesday night acknowledging "member comments" about the recent changes, and apologizing for not giving members advance notice of the changes. The announcement also read in part, "We believe that allowing buyers to sort Listings, combined with the new treatment of Featured Items, provides more relevance for the buyer and should increase the quality of the exposure of Featured Items. For example, when browsing in the Appliances category and sorting by lowest priced first, the Featured Plus items on that page are now shown twice on the page, just like in Search. When that buyer sorts by Ending First, a different set of Featured Plus items show up twice on the page, once at the top and once in the main body of the listings."
(Note: we tested this example and can't find evidence of a Featured Item shows up twice on one page.)
eBay said it will evaluate the Featured Items changes carefully, and will take immediate action if it believes that buyers' or sellers' activity is adversely impacted by these changes.
