ebay Search Changes

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

I've been noticing some of these things. Anyone else?

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2025/12/1765252650.html

[krazzykats]

Not a fan, not interested, and yet here I am, stuck in the universe’s never-ending waiting room with no magazines and terrible background music.

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[gurlcat]

I can't picture what is being described.  Apparently it's not affecting my account yet. 

[krazzykats]

Do a favorite search and you’ll see it. I was searching for Labubu’s again—so many fakes, sigh.

The promotional items appear randomly, showing up after a few not promoted listings, on the displayed results. 

Ie., 5 regular listings. then a promotional listing, 5 regular listings, then another promotional listing and on and on continuously. (Just an example, not sure if it's, 5.)

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[eburtonlab]

Not a fan, not interested, and yet here I am, stuck in the universe’s never-ending waiting room with no magazines and terrible background music.

If you are using a desktop browser, an ad blocker may help.

If your ad blocker allows custom rules, this one will remove the "Don't miss what's Live" ads interspersed in the search results:

ebay.com##.live-event-video-carousel__container

[valueaddedresource]

The AI generated FAQs being inserted in search aren't really new - eBay started testing that late last year and I've been seeing it relatively consistently for some searches for a while now.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Another-test-On-Phone-ebayAI-FAQs-in-search-flow/m-p/34836146/...

For @gurlcat and anyone else who isn't seeing it - here's what the section for Live looks like, it's easy enough to scroll past but a little annoying (imo) that on the ones that are currently live, the thumbnail is actually an active/moving video when you hover over it.

The one I really think is not OK is the new "Find It On Goldin" feature - eBay is inserting a row of thumbnails that redirect buyers to the Goldin website (which eBay owns) and that brings up all kinds of interesting conflicts of interest as far as self-preferencing, competing directly against third party sellers and that whole "no taking sales off eBay" policy that everyone else has to abide by.

It's particularly egregious, imo, because eBay has specifically marked those as organic placements for themselves, but for regular sellers to show up in similar scrolling carousels on the search page, they often have to pay Promoted Listings fees.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

I am amazed at the amount of crap on listing pages that I can ignore. I do not even notice the increases that others point out.

Perhaps I am not easily distracted by the things which distract others. I am often distracted by other things.

[gurlcat]

Oh yeah I've been seeing these for a long time.  I thought the post was about something really new. 

[krazzykats]

I’m basically a human antenna, picking up every signal the universe blasts at me simultaneously—like cosmic static on full volume! Very distracting!

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[gurlcat]

I'm like that with sound (misophonia, and bad case at that; I have literally abandoned shopping carts in stores that were too noisy).  But visual stuff, just the opposite.  If anything I may over-filter and miss something important.  

[bdmh-enterprises]

Is this because it's a broad search term or best match search? When I search a specific card using 'time ending soonest' I don't get any of that, just a generic ad strip for Live above the first listing.

[valueaddedresource]

@bdmh-enterprises  yes, all of the screenshots in my post were from a search with default Best Match sort.

I haven't tested with other sort optoons but it wouldn't surprise me if they aren't shown there. I know eBay recently made a change to remove promoted listings ads from the other sort options too.