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We’re continuing to refine the Best Match sort order to ensure that sellers providing the best quality buyer experience and the most relevant listings are revealed at the top of search results.

View our online tutorial on how to maximise your listings for Best Match.



Here’s a quick reminder of some of the strategies that help you get your listings to the top of Best Match search results

Fixed Price Listings

  1. Seller Ratings performance: DSR scores are used to figure how high a listing will appear in search results. This also figures in low counts or rates of 1s and 2s. Listings from sellers not reaching the minimum standards will be demoted down in search results.
  2. Number of recent sales: The more sales that are made from a multi-quantity listing, the higher that listing appears in search results.
  3. Title relevance: This is based on the items that buyers have clicked and bought when the same search has been done previously.
  4. Price/ value: The better the value of a listing, the more likely is it to attract buyers and therefore the higher the recent sales score. Sellers whoprice items low and increase the P&P cost to make up for this will score poorly in the postage-related DSRs and will feature lower in search results.
  5. Free P&P: Listings offering free postage & packaging are popular with buyers and are promoted in search results.
  6. Listing duration: Listing items with longer durations helps to increase the recent sales score and reduces insertion fees and listing maintenance overhead.

Auction-style listings
Auction-style listings will continue to be sorted by time ending soonest. We’ll also continue to demote auctions from sellers that do not meet the new minimum seller performance standards to the end of the search results.

Changes to Best Match for Fixed Price listings

Recent sales score for Fixed Price - including impressions count
We have introduced search impressions into how we are looking at recent sales. A “search impression” is any time a buyer sees a search result page that includes the Fixed Price listing. The more recent sales a listing compared to its number of search impressions has, the better it will be positioned in Best Match sort.

For example, in the new version of Best Match, a listing with 100 recent impressions and 10 recent sales will score higher than a similar listing with 1000 recent impressions and only 10 recent sales.

This score will be a more accurate measure of how buyers perceive a listing than recent sales alone.

Changes to Best Match for Fixed Price listings

What is Best Match?

Best Match is a way of ordering items that shows buyers the most relevant listings first. Auctions are sorted by Time Ending Soonest and Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) . Listings from sellers not reaching the new minimum standards will get demoted.

Fixed Price listings are mainly sorted by Sellers DSRs and popularity which is the recent sales over search impression ratio. Additionally factors such as the item title, price and free shipping all have an impact on where Fixed Price listings will feature in the search results.

Why are eBay making improvements to Best Match?

We’re constantly refining and improving Best Match to ensure that the most relevant, best-quality listings from sellers providing the best buyer experience are promoted within search results.

When are the changes effective?

Improvements to Best Match will begin to roll-out from September. We’re going to introduce the improvements to Best Match to a small percentage of traffic soon. We’ll increase the amount of traffic that can use new Best Match features in September as tests show a positive impact.

What do I have to do to prepare?

The best practices that make sellers' listings successful in Best Match remain unchanged:

  • Seller Ratings performance: eBay Top-rated sellers are promoted in Best Match
  • Number of recent sales
  • Relevant Title, no keyword spamming
  • Price/value
  • Free P&P
  • Listing duration

With the introduction of Search Impressions, titles will be more important than ever in getting the best position for Fixed Price listings. Sometimes a title that brings you a short-term gain in visibility - could without gaining sales - result in getting a lower ranking for your listing.

We highly recommend sellers check their listing titles now to take full advantage of the improvements to Best Match

What is the listing performance score?

The listing performance score is based on the listing’s recent sales in relation to the number of recent search impressions it received. An “impression” is any time a buyer sees a search results page that includes the listing.

For example, in the new Best Match, a listing with 100 recent impressions and 10 recent sales will score higher than a similar listing with 1,000 recent impressions and only 10 recent sales.

What counts as an impression?

Every time a buyer sees a search results page, an impression is counted for each of the listings on that page.

I also list on other European eBay sites. Will my listing appear in a similar position in search results when I list on other European sites?

Across the European sites, the strategies for success are the same:

  • Seller Ratings performance: eBay Top-rated sellers are promoted in Best Match
  • Number of recent sales
  • Relevant Title, no keyword spamming
  • Price/value
  • Free P&P
  • Listing duration

However, the exact position in a search is relative to all the other items returned in the search query. As all individual sites have different items available to them, the exact position in search will differ by country.

How do multi-variation listings work with Best Match?

As with all Fixed Price listings, Best Match looks at a number of factors: seller track record including detailed seller ratings (DSRs), recent sales and buyer satisfaction rating, title and item value, free P&P.

In a multi-variation Fixed Price listing, Best Match also looks at the variation information to determine relevance. Each variation has its own Best Match score. Which score is used depends on how the buyer searches. The position of the listing in search is based on the highest Best Match score of the variations that match the buyer's search.

Does including variation information in my listing title help my position in Best Match?

No. For multi-variation listings, Best Match looks at the variation information as well as title to determine relevance. That’s why we recommend saving all 80 characters of your title for other differentiating information.