eBay and Online Marketplace News

ID Masking to Be Deployed on all Auction Format Listings
Matt Halprin, vice president, global trust & safety, says that over the past year masking bidder's IDs on auction-style listings of $200 or more has proven to be a successful tool in combating fake "second chance" offers. In his public announcement  Halprin also said that since the move has decreased bogus second chance bidding, eBay will now mask bidder's user IDs on all auction-style listings on both the eBay.com and Motors auctions sites. 

Furthermore, the company suggests that sellers who have user IDs that match their e-mail addresses should change their Ids because fraudsters commonly attempt to send e-mails to bidders they are targeting by using the User ID plus several of the most common domain names  (e.g. UserID@gmail.com, UserID@hotmail.com, and so on).

ID masking was somewhat controversial when it was first implemented on the auction site for higher-value auction listings. Many buyers indicated that by not showing other bidder's names it made the bidding feel less realistic and also prevented them from researching their competitors in order to devise their own bidding strategy.

Best Match Plans to Weed Out Bad Sellers
Best Match, which sorts the listings you see, is based mainly on relevance, but also on past successful buyer behavior for similar items. If buyers running a particular search often end up viewing, bidding on, or buying a certain type of item more often, this too is then factored into the Best match relevance calculations.

EBay has made some recent changes to Best Match, the company says, to help reduce bad buying experiences. To that end, Best Match will become the default search option this week and sellers who have dissatisfaction rates greater than five percent over the last 30 days will now experience decreased exposure for their listings in the search results. Sellers with the lowest Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) for Shipping & Handling Charges should also expect to see a decrease in the exposure that their listings receive in search results. 

EBay has also said that over the next couple of weeks those sellers with a DSR of 4.6 and higher for the last 30-day period will also receive a higher visibility, on average, in search results than the sellers with a lower DSR.

Those sellers concerned about how their DSR will effect their listings in search results can take part in an online workshop, "Improving Your DSR and Customer Experience with Product Sourcing Best Practices" on March 6th from 10 to 11:00 AM PST.

Repeat Feedback Now Available
Calling it "Evolving Feedback" several changes were announced in January to eBay's feedback system. One of these changes gives sellers and buyers the opportunity to earn up to one Feedback point per week (Monday through Sunday, Pacific time) from the same trading partner. For transactions ending on or after Feb. 19, eBay is enabling credit for repeat Feedback on these transactions. Basically, those sellers who do repeat business with a customer can now receive repeated positive feedback from that buyer.

eBay Pulse Data
According to eBay Pulse data, the most popular searches on the US auction site are iPhone, followed by iPod and Wii. Sellers using these keywords in their own related listing titles will have their listings returned in search results more frequently. Here is a snapshot of the top keyword searches in several eBay, eBay Canada and eBay UK categories for March 4, 2008:

• eBay.com: iPhone, iPod, Wii and car insurance.
• eBay.ca: Xbox 360, iPod, iPhone and Lululemon.
• eBay.co.uk: Wii, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PSP.
• eBay.com > Computers & Networking: laptop, Dell, Apple and desktop.
• ebay.ca > Computers & Networking: laptop, Dell, Apple and Macbook.
• eBay.co.uk > Computing: laptop, PC, Nintendo Wii and desktop PC.
• eBay.com > Dolls & Bears: American Girl, Barbie, Reborn and Madame Alexander.
• ebay.ca > Dolls & Bears: Barbie, Thumbelina, Webkinz and Ashton Drake.
• eBay.co.uk > Dolls & Bears: Reborn, Baby Born, Bratz and Sindy.