eBay said it may roll out its new "Price & Shipping Sort" search option by September. The company had announced in June that it was testing the feature, which is a new search option that sorts search results according to the total cost of the item, including shipping and handling charges. The feature will help buyers take into account shipping costs when perusing items in search results and is an effort to counter excessive shipping charges that some sellers impose in their listings.

Sellers should include at least one valid ShippingServiceOption in listings to prepare for the feature. Items that do not specify shipping information using the ShippingServiceOption feature may sorted lower than expected in eBay search results.

eBay told developers on Monday that two new sorting options for Search results, PricePlusShippingAsc and PricePlusShippingDesc, are currently in testing on the eBay site. If the tests are successful, the sorting options will be enabled in (GetSearchResults, GetCategoryListings and FindItemsAdvanced) by September 2007.

Detailed behavior of the new sorting options includes:

PricePlusShippingAsc Sort: Items will appear in the order of lowest-total-cost (for items where shipping was properly specified), then freight-shipping items, then items for which shipping was not specified (sorted by price).

PricePlusShippingDesc Sort: Items will appear in the order of highest-total-cost (for items where shipping was properly specified), then freight-shipping items, then items for which shipping was not specified (sorted by price).

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