eBay rolled out its new home page this week that includes a "Recent Activities" section, including thumbnail photos of recently viewed listings. The company also made changes to search, describing them as a New Look & Feel and a Snapshot View on Search Results ("a little like window shopping but with faster results"). eBay's "Price Plus Shipping Sort" feature that allows shoppers to sort search results by total price (including shipping costs) is expected by the end of September.

A subsequent announcement made Thursday noted that this week's changes to search were cosmetic only and would not affect the way the search and browse experience works (http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200708231419582.html). eBay is testing a new, "intelligent" search capability similar to eBay Express that can be found on a special area of eBay called "The Playground."

eBay has also set up a place where users can take a "sneak peak" at the many changes it's planning to make to the site this year, many designed to improve the buyer experience (http://www.ebay.com/sneakpeek).

eBay also said it redesigned the Bid History page and restored some transparency when bidding on items over $200, but did not get specific about what those changes were. Bid history had changed on eBay.com in January to hide bidders' identity once bidding reached $200 as part of eBay's Safeguarding Member IDs (SMI) policy. SMI was launched in an effort to protect eBay bidders from unwanted spam, and eBay said since introducing SMI, it has seen a significant reduction in fake Second Chance Offers and other types of solicitations sent to bidders on higher-priced auction-style listings. But some buyers have said the lack of transparency has hindered their efforts to detect shill bidding by sellers (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m01/i16/s01).

SMI is just one of a number of Trust & Safety initiatives eBay has rolled out in the past year. Its latest initiative has been to impose tighter restrictions on sellers who accumulate negative and neutral feedback ratings from buyers, significantly changing the role of neutral feedback ratings - a controversial move.

Meanwhile PayPal is also planning to launch a new home page as well as a newly designed logo (http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200708220949452.html).

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