If this is the case, I would suspect your item would simply not be included in the search and the buyer will never find it.
We've been having issues at worth where items listed at work on one of the 6 accounts there which cannot be found at home on my own or anyone else's computer if not logged into the selling account. The items show up on the list, but show zero watchers, zero hits, and searching the key words in the title don't produce that item in the search. In fact, most items that pop up lately in most searches are full of items totally not related to what is being searched for.
For instance searching for a motorcycle part should not bring up kitchen items, pot holders, or parts for high voltage power line equipment. Nowhere in the 218 items that showed up was there anything related to motorcycle bar end plugs Is searched for.
Worse yet, if I jump on a different computer I got a completely different list of items, on the same account. Not a single thing was even remotely related to the item being searched.
Something is very wrong with the search here.
July and Aug have always been a few of our best months at work and so far there hasn't been a single sale in 8 weeks now. Not only are the items not selling, they're not getting hits, not getting any watchers.
What I'm finding over the past four years is that rather than steady sales, the sales now come in waves. The longer an account is active, the farther apart those waves get. New accounts get a ton of sales, older accounts get nothing. If I move the very same items to a new account, they suddenly start selling, and it lasts for a several months, then once it hits a decide stride the promotional offers start, the sales die out and the hits go away, and then the items don't show up on a normal search.
As buyer, it **bleep** me off to be looking for something, search it out by brand name. description, and part number only to have to sort through pages of unrelated junk from China usually never finding an item I know is listed.
The search is either broken, or simply geared strictly to force sellers to pay for promotions or get left out of the search.
A good example is if I search 'Baseball' I get no baseballs, just baseball cards, magazines, jerseys, etc not a single baseball. To find baseballs, I need to search 'Rawlings' then I get a mix of baseballs and gloves. If the average person doesn't know the brand they're looking for, or wants to just buy a baseball, they don't see any.
If I search for a baseball, I want to see all the baseballs listed, if I wanted Baseball Cards I'd have searched for Baseball cards.
While this is just an example it shows what most are likely seeing here as buyers.
I suspect its the same issue with a lot of categories lately. If I list an altimeter for an airplane, and put the brand, p/n and name in the title along with the aircraft model it fits, the only way it seems to show up on a computer that didn't list it is if they search that model plane. Which is bad because it limits the exposure to just owners of that plane which in many cases may be very few. Since it may fit hundreds of models, the search turns up nothing unless the potential buyer searches that one model I used in my title.
With auto parts, the listings are worse, because it flags most vintage items as 'This item will not fit your car'. because often the part is not common, no listed elsewhere, or the brand is no longer around.
Also, a guy searching for say Studebaker parts does not want to sort through pages of unrelated Chinese items that pop up first.
I'm starting to think that maybe if eBay wants to cater to Chinese sellers they should separate the site into two halves, new and used maybe? Its become nearly impossible to not be plagued with Chinese ads in every search, so much so even I give up most of the time and look elsewhere and promoted listings mean nothing if they're still buried beneath two pages of unrelated junk.
We also found that 'promoted' items seem to only show when a potential buyer is looking at a similar item, one that fits the search parameters somehow from a different seller. That only works if any of that same item is being found. The promoted item doesn't show if when you searched for a Radio Shack speaker and got two pages of slippers, coupons, and cell phones vs the item you searched for, which if you persist and page through a thousand item find there' s four of five others listed, but the one you listed doesn't show, often left off the list.
As a buyer I want the search engine to show me what I searched for, most buyers don't know about keywords, or algorithms, they're searching for what they want in plain English. If that don't get them results, they look elsewhere.
I also expect to get the same results on whichever computer I happen to be using.
Using my phone is generally more aggravating then its worth most of the time because it only shows me the promoted or new items and not the items I want to see.
If they can't find it, they can't open it or watch it, and certainly won't buy it.
I cannot fathom the number of sales or fees that eBay is missing out on because of sellers who don't find what they're looking for who go elsewhere. I've done it myself, and quite often found a better and often cheaper source which totally eliminated eBay as a place I look for those items ever again.
If I wanted Chinese crap I'd go to Temu or Aliexpress, or Amazon.
I don't shop at Amazon because they don't take PayPal and I've been bit with counterfeit items there too many times. I would never order off the other two sites and now as a buyer, eBay is starting to become more of the same.
eBay's claim to fame was always the place to find those obscure items that folks had hidden away in their attic for years or maybe items sitting in an antique store thousands of miles away that you would never find otherwise but lately its become a giant dollar store.
