Relist still not as good as Sell Similar
Back in the day, the collective wisdom was that if you wanted to "refresh" an older listing to make it place high in search results like a brand new listing, the way to do it was to end it, then Sell Similar it. Relisting accomplished nothing because it still carried over the same item number and starting date, therefore it would go back to whatever search result position it had before.
Then some time back (a year? two?) someone here noticed that eBay must have changed something, because Relist had begun functioning the same as SS, getting a fresh new item number, and placing the listing at the top of search results, if you checked immediately.
I found that interesting for sure, but kept doing SS anyway. I could lie and say I had a gut feeling, but in truth I just didn't see any advantage to using Relist instead. I figured if it aint broke, don't fix it. But today I got a wild hair and decided to take it for my own test drive, and found an interesting (rather surprising) discrepancy.
I ended a month-old listing (originally started Dec 18). Then I Relisted it. On my listings page it rose to the top (sorted by start date), and I saw that the item's new start date was today, and yes indeed it also had a new item number. -So far, so good.
Then I got on a different browser and went to eBay, not logged in, and did a pretty vague search, brand and basic jewelry type: Panetta bracelet. Of course the default search sorting is Best Match, and sure enough, there was my bracelet at the #1 position, with a 'New Listing' badge and everything. Kewl!
But then just for the heck of it, I changed the sorting to Newly Listed. What's interesting about NL is, as far as I know, it's the only place you can see the listing date for an item; that isn't shown anywhere on an item's actual listing page, nor in the search result thumbnails of any other sorting view.
But lookie what we have here. My Relisted bracelet was not at the top, in fact it was the 12th one down. And check this out -showing the original December start date, of the OLD listing! Oddly enough, it also had the New Listing badge ..... even though it "knew better." Weird stuff, aye?
So, I said to heck with that, ended the listing, and Sell Similar'ed it. Now it has a NEW-new item number:
And it's #1 in search results, whether sorted by Best Match or Newly Listed. With Sell Similar there is full dissociation amnesia of the original item identity, whereas with Relist there is only part-time pretend forgetting.
devon@ebay
Hi all!
Just wanted to add one of the workshops from eBay Open 2025 that goes over this topic for those wanted more information:
eBay OPEN Workshop | Search Best Practices from eBay & Google:
fivekatzantiques
·8 months agoThat's weird for sure. When I did my end and relist, it moved it to the top of my listings as if I had listed a new item. It had a 30 day dated for refresh. I did the SS and got the same result for placement within my-ebay...
So I don't know what's better.
Ebay stripped me of my TSR rating even though my sales have exploded compared to the last several months. I am debating dumping my store since I really don't see the need if I am going to get charged. I don't list enough anyways as I am not a drop shipper from china, and just trying to move old inventory and downsize.
Penalizing sellers for things they can't control like how many sales they have isn't the way to foster respect and eagerness to use your platform.
I don't get this site anymore. 20 years ago it was great. Everyone was making money. Now when I go to list something I see dozens if not hundreds of the same item I have and people simply giving them away at prices I can't even understand because they are so low?
There is an old joke in the antiques business - buy high, sell low and make it up in volume. I think that is what people try to do here.
gurlcat
OP8 months ago@fivekatzantiques Of course either way they will appear at the top in your list of listings in 'my eBay.' That doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme. This post is about where they appear to BUYERS in search results, depending on which sorting view they set.
fivekatzantiques
·8 months agoWell they are getting new items #'s. I am doing more right now.
It's at least getting me to update my policies to my newer ones and I am watermarking all my photos from NASA as I think everyone just copied them. I tried to be nice about it but I think it worked against me.
Some people go as far as watermarking them and saying "No free copies".
I was going to downgrade my store subscription but then eBay wants to charge me nearly $60 to do so.
They get you coming and going.
fern*wood
·8 months agoInteresting for sure. I don't do either very often, but things are slow right now & I am thinking I need to end old stuff and do this. For me, I've almost always hit relist instead of sell similar mostly because I am lazy and paranoid.
If I sell similar, my ended listing remains among my other ended items. If I relist, it is immediately removed. I'm always afraid of messing up and not getting all the sell similar items deleted so they don't get relisted at a later date by mistake. I've always felt this might be what happens to some sellers that double sell items and then end up with out of stock issues.
dhbookds
·8 months agoWhen I see my sales of items which have been listed for years increase, that is either because the items have finally ripened, new collectors have come to Ebay or something has changed in the Ebay search,
@tobaccocardyahoo Just an observation......Both Better half and I have experienced an unusual # of old listings sold.......all were relisted in 2020, and "guessing because I didn't keep count"........I'd say I've sold around 20 or so in last 3 months. One was an item I know was originally listed in 2011. More than a few have been to 0 or only a few fdback buyers. None were 1 or a kind. Some were on offers. We've wondered if there wasn't some change.....lol, but make no conclusions.
12345jamesstamps
·8 months agoI believe those with the new promotion from the 13th get to the top of the list or something like that.
And also there was the eBay.ca with the words in it...meaning 'California'?
The promotion thing is still somewhat complicated to me.
And then there's those who promote higher than other sellers.
On January 14th I did get to the top because I promoted about 30+ items at 20% which is high.
I sold one so far...trying to see what happens.
But auctions vs. buy it now might be different also in your re-lising items.
My older listings are selling very well the last few weeks...2 year old listings...LOL
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·8 months ago@12345jamesstamps
ebay.ca is ebay canada.
Since Jan 13, at least in the US, the top slot is reserved for Priority Ad campaign listings ONLY. General Ad Campaign listings are NOT eligible. IF there are no Priority Ad listings available for the search term, a non ad listing will take the slot, but NOT a General Ad listing.
12345jamesstamps
·8 months agoThanks...I did say it is complicated to me...😆
dhbookds
·8 months agothe relist tab will relist the original listing. It does not take into account any sales you have made since the original listing was created.
Yep, and that has always been hard for sellers to understand. It's an exact copy and therefore shows the original amount,
cityslickercreations2004
·8 months agoJust a word of caution:
I use generally use variations for my listings. It has been many months since this happened so my memory may be fuzzy.
One day, instead of SS, I chose to relist. Easy peasy and then I went about my day.
Several days later I got a sale from the newly relisted item. To my horror, the item had previously sold!
WTH??? Apparently, the relist tab will relist the original listing. It does not take into account any sales you have made since the original listing was created.
Since I only had 1 of that particular item, I sent an apology to the buyer and ebay smacked me with an OOS.
There is now a sticky note on my monitor to watch when relisting.
gurlcat
OP8 months agoOkay I had to shake off my blondness and think real hard about what you described there. So when you say original you don't just mean how the listing was before you ended/relisted it, but how it was when you FIRST CREATED it? THAT original?
So, say it was t-shirts and you had 1 red, 1 blue and 1 yellow ....created the listing with those 3 variations ..... somebody bought the yellow one ...... then sometime later you did end/relist, and without you noticing, the yellow one was "available" again?
If that's what you mean, YIKES! But what do you mean about the sticky note, to "watch when relisting"? Are you saying Relist doesn't usually have that defect when you do it with multi/variable listings (and the note is to remind you to check the variations after it goes live), or do you usually use Sell Similar and that was the only time you tried Relist instead (and the note is to remind you to always do SS)?
bdmh-enterprises
·8 months agoYes, that's how relisting both variation and multi quantity single listings work. The quantities reset to the ORIGINAL amounts. I recall this being made pretty clear in the help section when I was looking at how to use variations.
gurlcat
OP8 months agoYOWSA! So @bdmh-enterprises @dhbookds does that also apply to multi-quantity (non-variation) listings? Like 10 blue shirts .... 3 of them sold ..... Relist ...... does it go back to 10?
And what happens with Sell Similar?
dhbookds
·8 months agoYes, relist is an exact copy of the original listing.....it doesn't change the original quantity......
I don't use sell similar......so have no experience; but by it's "name", I would think it would not carry over quantities of either the orig or ended listing.......because it's not going to be the "same" listing.
bdmh-enterprises
·8 months agoI just checked and 'sell similar' reverts the quantities to the original numbers as well. Additionally, I checked with one I had added items to after it's original listing and those additions stayed but with the quantity they had when added.
gurlcat
OP8 months agoThanks for checking!
cityslickercreations2004
·8 months ago"So, say it was t-shirts and you had 1 red, 1 blue and 1 yellow ....created the listing with those 3 variations ..... somebody bought the yellow one ...... then sometime later you did end/relist, and without you noticing, the yellow one was "available" again?
>>> Yes. I started with 10 lipsticks, sold 3 and when I relisted the quantity reverted to 10. Oops.
If that's what you mean, YIKES! But what do you mean about the sticky note, to "watch when relisting"? Are you saying Relist doesn't usually have that defect when you do it with multi/variable listings (and the note is to remind you to check the variations after it goes live), or do you usually use Sell Similar and that was the only time you tried Relist instead (and the note is to remind you to always do SS)? "
>>> Yes. The note is a reminder to use SS. I sell cosmetics so it is not uncommon for me to have 50 same brand lipsticks in 13 different shades. I love variations.
@bdmh-enterprises has stated, per policy, the quantities revert back to original amount(s.)
I am blonde so I guess I forgot that detail.
christworks
·8 months agoInteresting. Like you, I prefer sell similar. However, the key question is not about the item number, placement, date, etc. The key question is whether the relist action results in a sales boost. I don't have the answer to that question right now. I know people who exclusively use relist because it works for them, they swear by it just as I do for "sell similar."
I did a complete store reset when I reopened last week. I also switched to an automated process that automatically relists listings without me having to do anything. My stuff won't go through the automated process until next month, just before items are due to be auto relisted by eBay. If I find that I do not get the sales boost I normally get when I manually do it and use "sell similar," then I'll turn off the automated process and manually do things. The key for me will be whether it helps enough to justify the time trade-off.
Right now I am experimenting with that, plus running limited promotions on the weekends only.
gurlcat
OP8 months ago@christworks What kind of "automated process" are you talking about?
gurlcat
OP8 months agoBy the way, if 12th place in Newly Listed results doesn't seem that bad, remember this listing was only 1 month old when I relisted it, AND there were only 77 results for 'Panetta bracelet'. If you want to refresh a much older listing, and/or one with lots of competition, Relist could place it many whole pages from the top.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoIn the absence of other undocumented factors which affect search placement.
Some of us refer to the "collective wisdom" as the "seller folklore". It is commonly shared, may have had some basis in fact, and still might or it may just be Apophenia.
I currently am of the belief that the hotter your sales are, the better your search placement becomes.
I already know that you cannot count on your search placement, alone, to cause higher sales because of the number of my listings with top 20 placement which linger for many months.
Just when I think I know what to believe about some part of seller folklore, the behavior seems to change.
As Kurt Vonnegut suggested "Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.."
gurlcat
OP8 months agoCan you flesh this out a little, because it sounds like you are talking about seller (account) placement. If you mean "everything you list" (if you have hot sales) .... that sounds more tinfoil hat than you usually are, so I must be misunderstanding.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoYes I am saying that all of your listings are getting a boost from hotter sales. But that is attenuated by other factors, price, seller rating, delivery time, etc etc.
When I see my sales of items which have been listed for years increase, that is either because the items have finally ripened, new collectors have come to Ebay or something has changed in the Ebay search,
I will not deny it sounds far-fetched, tinfoil hat is certainly a possibility, but coincidence is also unsatisfying as an explanation. And the end and relist has never struck me as satisfying. Perhaps it is because it is so rare for anything I list to sell in a day or two.
A really hair-brained theory I have considered is that whenever the total if sold value of my fixed price listings exceeds $108k my sales improve.
gurlcat
OP8 months agoIt sounds like you are drawing conclusions from evidence that doesn't actually point to them.
You getting sales of old listings doesn't prove anything about what their search placement was at time of sale. Could just be the buyers were searching for those things exactly, and used lots of keywords to find them. Or it could mean they found your store from some other listing, took a look around, and decided to buy ones you happened to have listed a long time. If you had a lot of "hot" sales recently, of course that would bring more people into your store, but it wouldn't make old listings rise (INDIVIDUALLY) in search results.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoAll true, but no more likely to be wrong than end and relist.
The very same explanations you offer apply to that as well.
gurlcat
OP8 months agoWha.... dude .... I SHOWED the search result placements, remember?? The screenshots are still there, just scroll up^. There's no "likely" to talk about.
You are theorizing that having "hot" sales (which you haven't even defined by the way) could cause all the rest of your listings to go higher in search results. But you haven't SEEN that.