Search manipulation on eBay
Summary: jimmysheff raised concerns about eBay sellers using unrelated low-priced items to manipulate search rankings. They reported the issue, but eBay's automated responses did not identify any violations, causing frustration. caldreamer noted the listings might be specific to the UK, while eburtonlab suggested sorting by higher prices to avoid such listings. tobaccocardyahoo and luckythewinner mentioned this has been a long-standing issue, with some choosing to avoid these listings entirely. dhbookds recommended seeking advice on a UK-focused board for more relevant insights.
A huge number of sellers are advertising a specific product, but then including completely unrelated items as variations at an artificially low price. This appears to be done deliberately so that their listing appears near the top when buyers sort results from lowest to highest price, even though the actual product being advertised is much more expensive.
Every time I report a listing for this the automated response is that no violation occurred, no human is reviewing these reports and the AI clearly doesn’t know what it’s meant to be checking.
I am really put off using eBay because of this and they don’t seem interested.
chapeau-noir
·1 week agoThis is an old problem and not only on eBay. There's nothing to be done about it because these sellers do offer these other cheaper items also.
Doing a reverse-order search (as suggested upthread) is a way to get around it.
Since I live in the UK part of the year I also use eBay UK and AFAIK, it's no different than here, but you could check on the UK board.
luckythewinner
·1 week agoThis has been an issue ever since eBay they introduced variation listing years and years and years ago.
I solve it by just ignoring the listings with variations.
dhbookds
·1 week agoYou are in the UK, this is mainly a board of US sellers.......probably be a good idea to post on the UK board as that is where the problem is happening.......not to say it doesn't happen in the US, but for you, individually, you may get more pertinent information.
tobaccocardyahoo
·1 week agoAny site which has variations supported in their listings has sellers who use the function to add an item which is an unrelated lowball to defeat buyers who sort their search results by price.
I never buy from those sellers. NEVER. But many buyers keep them going by buying from them, as shown by their number of sales and FB.
eburtonlab
·1 week ago · EditedYou can avoid such listings for the most part by using a price range when searching, and then by sorting "Price plus shipping: highest first" instead of lowest. Then go to the end of the search results and scroll up instead of down. This forces eBay to sort by the highest priced variation in your price range rather than the lowest.
caldreamer
·1 week agoDo you have the item# so I can see what you are talking about?
jimmysheff
OP1 week agoI was searching for an embroidery hoop for my mum, this one 137617394973 is selling stickers, this one 377318220421 has a hook and it even says “do not buy”.
I reported about 6 listings all with similar what I call fake items and the response was nothing is wrong
caldreamer
·1 week agoI tried searching EBAY using item# that you provided, and nothing comes up. I just noticed that you are in the UK and maybe that is why I cannot see those listings.
Clearly this person is in violation of "search manipulation" by listing cheap items (not for sale) just to trick the search engines. Ai is not doing a good job weeding out scammers.