I'm finding the same issue, particularly with the dishes / dinnerware category. I found that my listings were not showing up in my store; both for certain new listings... and for older listings that have since been blocked somehow. In addition, they weren't showing up anywhere within the eBay platform. I could only find it by searching with the item number... something a potential buyer would have no way of knowing.
Even after reporting the issue to eBay Customer Support... this week I was told it's just a glitch and will be reported to their technical team. The next day, I was told by support that it's a simple fact of life on eBay... that there are no guarantees of timely search placement... but that sometimes items are placed on "hold" while they are evaluated for indexing... sometimes days after the listing is started. In my case, the indexing was scheduled for exactly 24 hours after I listed the item. As such, I cancelled the listing... and went back to the drawing board.
As I was listing in the "dinnerware" category... I discovered that my Syracuse dinnerware was listed with descriptive keywords that may have confused eBay's servers. Syracuse China originally used the term "Old Ivory" to describe the color of the porcelain base for many of their dinnerware patterns. As such... I simply removed the word "China" and substituted with "dinnerware"... and removed the phrase "Old Ivory" and substituted with "cream colored base." Bottom line: the word "ivory" is very likely to have been causing the problem. It's a forbidden word on the eBay platform. The change worked. The item appeared within the search index in a matter of minutes. No delay.
Customer Support personnel said they had reviewed my delayed listings and found that I had "no issues" with them; that I had done everything perfectly. They simply blamed it on the indexing process. All this for an item that was listed at 6am (not at all a peak time of server demand). They found no reason for the indexing delays... but clearly there is a back room process happening that delays listings... so they can scrub them for the offending issue... then then allow them to be listed in search engines (if/when they get to them). All of this without any communication with the seller.
I find it irritating that they can't simply tell sellers what we need to fix the listing in order to eliminate such untimely search delays. It's only money...
