Promoted vs non-promoted being seen / search results

[b86fiero]

So, non-promoted listings may not be seen, as buried in the update.  Is this fair?

Store operators pay a monthly fee which includes a predetermined number of listings.  If a store operator cannot afford to give up more of his profit to pay extra fees for promoting listings that sell,  chooses to charge buyers actual shipping cost instead of possibly overcharging some by offering  free shipping and sells items that can easily be used, abused and returned like jewelry and clothing, their listings will not surface near the top of search and will quite probably not be visible to potential buyers?

I am top rated, offer free shipping, 30 day returns, all the hoops and loops eBay tells me I need to get my items seen.  I have seen my sales dwindle over the past couple of years.  Mondays I would ship over 100 items.  These Mondays I am lucky to ship 12 items.

Not all sellers can offer and absorb extra expenses to get their items better placement.   Perhaps eBay should see that all UNITED STATES resident sellers on the USA eBay.com site have an equal opportunity of having their listings occasionally surface near the top in search results.  If not, what are they paying for?

[nc-daydreamer]

I like that! FEATURED is a much better approach! Good idea!

[nc-daydreamer]

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@gwent22 wrote:

Thanks for your question!

Ad rate is one factor that is considered for Promoted Listings placement, but is not the only factor. Other factors include listing quality, relevancy, and more. Optimizing your listings for Best Match remains an important best practice. High quality listings have a higher potential to get more clicks and ultimately more sales.

With this change, if your organic listing naturally ranks higher, your Promoted Listing won’t appear in search, but can still be shown across other promoted placements onsite. Conversely, if your promoted listing ranks higher, your organic listing will no longer appear in the same set of search results.

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Gwen, thank you, but who makes this decision - what is considered a "high quality" listing? Or is it a robot using an algorithm of some sort? And as others have pointed out and I will "second the motion" - what is the difference? As the promoted ad is identical to the non-promoted ad, is it not? Maybe I am being dense here, but I still don't see a well defined explanation in this thread. Thanks for a reply. 🙂