Promoted and non-promoted listings sometimes don't appear within a search even with exact titling

[bvkoski]

Over the last month, I've been doing promoted listings on about 400 items. In some cases, one or two of my items that include the same words in their title will appear in the first page of items, but 95% will not appear until later pages or not at all. Also, in some cases, searching some of my items' titles exactly with quotations will still not show my items until maybe the bottom of the page, even though mine are the only ones that have that exact phrase in their name. I've always been annoyed at "sponsored" listings reappearing constantly when searching items. Only a few of mine even in the same category and titling ever seem to appear and I have about 50 items that do include similar titling. Any ideas as to how this algorithm works?

[mcdougle4248]

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@bvkoski wrote:

Any ideas as to how this algorithm works?

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Short answer, no.  eBay keeps their algorithms a tight secret.  

[bill.purvis2012]

What seems to me is this: The more we ALL use promoted listings the more diluted the effect. I mean, if none of us used them instead of all of us = same result. But, I use them, too. Hopefully, we don't have to keep going higher & higher in the % to make them effective.