Many of my listings are disappearing when searched for by lowest price + shipping.

[webid95]

First of all, I am a Top Rated Plus seller and have sold on eBay for over 20 years. Specifically, the problem is occurring with one of what used to be my best-selling item, "Rapid Action Extreme", which I sell at the very lowest prices on eBay. I have 4 different quantity listings for this product. They all appear when conducting a general search. Only one  (the 6   4-count packets) appears when doing a search using the Lowest Price + shipping" criterion. This is costing me a lot of sales and buyers are paying higher prices to purchase from other sellers . Customer service has been repeatedly advised of this problem and in fact, can see it themselves. They forward a work ticket to Tech and Tech does nothing to address the problem. I was told this morning by a CSR that eBay has had many similar complaints from various sellers for this same issue. I suspect that the problem lies within a flawed algorithm for this type of search. This should be easily resolved with any real effort by eBay Tech. Yet, the problem persists.

[donsdetour]

fixed: rotflol:

May be the lowest is not getting through the algorithm that is used for the search may see your item as to low

( This is a wild guess....) : see what is showing as lowest.....

[eburtonlab]

The "Lowest First" sort order is subject to filtering.

eBay does not explain what criteria is used to determine whether listings appear in the results by default or whether they are shown when using the "See more results" link.

Something about your listing title keywords or your seller stats must be leading eBay's algorithm to reach the conclusion that your listings are not the kind of results users are looking for in that search.

[rfmtm]

Note that even clicking on "See more results" does not always result in seeing all the items when "lowest first" is used.  This has been reported to ebay some time ago, but I have yet to see any results or hear anymore from them about the problem.

[eburtonlab]

I have occasionally seen some anomalous search results, and at one point eBay was apparently experimenting with streamlining other sort orders in addition to "Lowest First", albeit only briefly (thankfully).

At one point there was an issue with "Lowest First" sometimes providing filtered results without offering the "streamlining" message or the "See more results" link at all, which was certainly troubling. Previously the "streamlining" was only an issue when there were more than a certain number of results (I don't recall if that number was fifty or one hundred, if there was actually a fixed cutoff).

At the moment, searches with under a hundred results do not appear to be streamlined when using "Lowest First".

Using "See more results" seems to be giving me the same number of results that I see when using the "Newly Listed" sort order.

To test this, I created a search that found just under a thousand results when sorting Newly Listed so I could see a large but exact number of results.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=test+123&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_udhi=90&_sop=10

For me that finds 981 results.

Changing to "Lowest First" finds one hundred results with streamlining:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=test+123&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_udhi=90&_sop=15

Using the "See more results" returns 981 results once more:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=test+123&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_udhi=90&_sop=15&_bl...

[rfmtm]

Yes, I remember those changes too.  The problem is, if you don't know the items are suppose to be there, as only a seller would, you have no way of knowing the items are missing. 

I have offered repeatable test searches to ebay where this happens all the time, but there has been no solution.  Other strange things happen also on certain listings, but only for a lowest first search, all others filters work fine.

I have tried creating a new listing, ending and relisting, selling similar, adding and eliminating words in the title, changing item specifics, etc., none seem to have any effect. 

I am beginning to think it is the photo or the name of the photo uploaded, so have to try changing that, although all my other listings (on another ID) that share photos have never had a problem.  At one time there was a issue with the ebay catalog causing a similar problem, but after many complaints, that appears to be fixed.