Sellers in eBay's art category are claiming that certain PowerSellers are forcing their own listings to the top of search results simply by repeatedly revising their items. Sellers say they are feeling pressure to do the same or face greatly reduced exposure for their listings. A user named "sallytrace" posted a petition on the Art & Artist discussion board on eBay on Friday, claiming the practice violated eBay's search and browse manipulation policy.

"We the community of eBay artists petition eBay to remove the indexing modification that moves revised auctions to the front of the "newly listed" queue thereby creating an environment where sellers feel they must repeatedly revise their listings, either by manual or automated revisions."

The petition specifically pointed to sellers' use of Vendio Reviser, a software program that allows sellers to automatically revise their listings. Late year eBay banned auction extenders that extended the duration of listings because they allowed sellers to force listings to the top of search results, which eBay said harmed the finding experience for buyers. eBay does allow revisions, but continues to ban both manual and automatic listing duration revisions.

An art seller told AuctionBytes the current problem is caused by a glitch that was introduced when eBay rolled out its anti-counterfeiting initiative that delayed indexing of certain listings, but put them on top of Newly Listed results once they passed inspection. "The glitch comes in when a seller revises that auction. Instead of holding its place in the listings it again goes to the head of the newly listed," she wrote. "Some sellers have played this system so that for the term of their auction it is ALWAYS on the newly listed page. We have been complaining about this for months and months - all is being ignored by ebay and so a handful of powerseller artists dominate the first couple of pages of newly listed auctions at all times!"

An eBay spokesperson was looking into the issue on Friday afternoon but did not have answers to AuctionBytes' questions by press time.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000495457&tstart=0&mod=1200067917427

1/14/08: The first sentence of this article was edited to replace the word "relisting" with "revising."