 Re: eBay is manipulating your exposure!
This is not nothing new folks, this is the quality score algorithm that ebay employs and its not perfect but anyone who has worked with Google PPC or any other engine PPC for that matter will understand how it works....
Its all about the title and the "keywords" within them.
If you search Goggle now for "stealth", chances are you might get what your looking for but also a good chance that you'll get pictures of a stealth bomber or other unrelated stuff because of the word of stealth being used (unless you understand negative, broad, match and exact keyword match types but I digress).
Same goes for your listings. Ebay uses an algorithm to score your listing based on views/watchers and sales. Its all about relevance of your listing in terms of the title and the quality of pictures which is in affect your advert to the world, especially on mobile and to some limiting degree although I'm not sure how influential it is, the barcode and EANs to items on the database.
Fact is if you want your item to get exposure, you need to get the first fast sale in early in the game. There are lots of other factors too like if your TRS and so forth but for my top performing 3 items I used a stealth account to buy from and hey presto more exposure means more sales means higher ranking. Careful tho dont start doing this for all your listings across the board otherwise you'll start creating a link between your stealth accounts!
I do occasionally create duplicate listings but only with variances of the title as this can have impact on the exposure, I then close the under performing listings where the title just isn't working. In the search engine world this is known as A-B Testing or split testing creative.
On Goggle an advertiser can be paying less to appear higher in the rankings on a keyword than an advertiser who is paying more and its purely down to the quality score of his ad creative in terms of click though rates/ppc bid/relevancy etc...
Watchers and sales increase rankings alot....but is diluted by the views so more views to non watcher/sales and your listing might start going down. Different keyword titles work better than others, try testing a few, perhaps on different stealth accounts (obviously being careful to employ stealth tactics such as exif cleaning your pics) and then finding the one that's looking top then start buying a few from your other accounts, of even a few friends to buy them from you (I've done that on the past and it works well). what your left with hopefully is a listing that will or should work the best in terms of getting the most sales our of said listed item for sale.
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