Published: 08 June 2026 by Dan Williams
Series: Notes on eBay & Discovery
If you’ve arrived here looking for secret eBay SEO tricks, I’ll probably disappoint you as I don’t have any.
If you’re interested in understanding how a seller might think about visibility, discovery and buyer journeys on modern marketplaces, I hope you find something useful.
Over the last month I’ve written a series of notes exploring visibility, recommendations, buyer behaviour and discovery on eBay.
What started as a few observations gradually became a larger investigation into how modern marketplaces are appearing to connect buyers and inventory.
Some of the ideas came from selling stamps on eBay and some came from reading publicly available eBay engineering articles discussing search, recommendations and machine learning.
Some came from simply observing how buyers appear to behave.
This is the final article in the series. Not a summary, but an attempt to explain how my observations have changed the way I think about visibility, discovery and selling on eBay.
The original goal was never to reverse-engineer Cassini, uncover secret ranking factors or discover a hidden algorithm.
In fact, the more I read, the less interested I became in chasing algorithms.
Instead, I found myself becoming interested in something broader.
How buyers discover items.
How marketplaces guide decisions.
Why some listings appear to reinforce others.
Why recommendations seem to matter alongside search.
And how all of this can influence my approach to selling.
What follows is simply the way I currently think about visibility, discovery and selling on eBay.
Is There a Formula for Better eBay Visibility?
The short answer is both yes and no, but there is no secret formula.
No hidden title structure.
No magic keyword list.
No guaranteed trick that suddenly unlocks visibility.
However, there are certain practices that consistently make listings easier to discover, easier to understand and easier to buy.
Most of the commonly repeated advice exists for a reason.
Use clear titles.
Use good images.
Complete relevant item specifics.
Write accurate descriptions.
Price competitively.
Respond to buyers promptly.
Offer sensible delivery and return policies.
Because clear titles help buyers.
Good images build trust.
Accurate descriptions reduce uncertainty.
Reasonable pricing improves competitiveness.
The common mistake is a double-edged sword. One edge is ignoring these practices and the other is believing they are a guaranteed formula.
The reality is most of these points are simply good selling practices. They help buyers understand what they are looking at, make decisions more confidently and complete purchases with less uncertainty.
That may not be a formula, but it is probably closer to one than some of the claimed “secret ranking tricks” available online.
After selling on eBay, analysing my own sales and reading far too many eBay engineering articles, I don’t believe there is a single formula.
If there is one, it probably belongs to eBay.
What I do think exists is a collection of practices that, when implemented holistically, help improve visibility, increase opportunities for discovery and reduce friction for buyers.
Why I Started Thinking Differently About eBay
One of the unexpected outcomes of writing this series was spending time reading eBay’s publicly available engineering articles.
I wasn’t looking for secret ranking factors, but I was curious.
What I found was a surprisingly consistent theme running through articles published over more than a decade.
Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, eBay was already talking about behavioural signals. Not just what buyers searched for, but what they clicked, what they ignored and what they eventually purchased.
A few years later, the focus appeared to broaden. Personalization began appearing more frequently. Different buyers seemed more likely to see different experiences based on their preferences and behaviour.
Recommendations became more sophisticated as well. Rather than simply returning matching listings, eBay began discussing co-purchases, related items, complementary products and buyer journeys.
More recently, terms such as embeddings, vector similarity and large language models have entered the arena. The technology has become vastly more sophisticated, but the underlying direction feels surprisingly familiar.
The names changed.
The technology changed.
The scale has become extraordinary.
Yet the overall objective appears very consistent – to help buyers make better decisions.
That observation changed the way I think about visibility.
Rather than asking:
How do I rank higher?
I found myself asking:
How do I make it easier for the right buyer to discover the right item?
That subtle shift influences almost everything I do today.
What This Series Changed For Me
The biggest shift was moving away from thinking about individual listings.
And, more often than not, I think about:
- findability
- discovery
- buyer journeys
- relationships between listings
- reducing friction
Of course search still matters. But the more I observe eBay, the more it appears that visibility is not just about appearing in search results. It is also about what happens afterwards.
Findability
One concept I found particularly useful is findability.
Findability – Wikipedia article
The idea is simple – If buyers cannot find something, they cannot buy it.
However, findability or finding something does not necessarily mean typing words into a search box.
A buyer may discover an item through:
- search
- recommendations
- related items
- seller stores
- external websites
- social media
- saved searches
Increasingly I find myself thinking about making inventory easier to discover rather than simply trying to optimise listings for search.
Inventory
When I buy stock, I rarely think solely about individual items.
I increasingly think about collecting areas; or themes, relationships and specialisms.
A purchase might contain:
- a valuable variety
- several mid-range items
- lower-value feeder items
And a few years ago I would often have focused almost entirely on the headline item.
Now I look at the whole lot.
What can become inventory?
What can support existing inventory?
What creates new opportunities for discovery?
What strengthens collecting areas already present in the store?
Titles
In my case I believe titles that help collectors quickly recognise what they are looking at are the way forward.
Catalogue numbers matter.
Key features matter.
Varieties matter.
And clarity matters.
I do not deliberately stuff titles with every possible keyword.
I try to write titles that make sense to collectors.
The goal is recognition.
Not simply word count or padding out the available 80 character limit.
Images
Images are often the first thing a buyer sees.
I use clean scans and photographs: with consistent presentation and accurate alignment.
Nothing clever or dramatic.
Just clear images, at a decent resolution, that show the item honestly.
Trust begins before a buyer reads a description.
Descriptions
Descriptions should help buyers, which might sound ridiculously obvious.
Yet many descriptions I have seen appear to exist solely because a description field was available.
I try to keep descriptions:
- clear
- accurate
- concise
with no/minimal waffle, while highlighting anything important, whether positive or negative.
Item Specifics
I complete the relevant item specifics wherever possible.
Not because I know exactly every use eBay has for them
But they help define what the item is.
They can help buyers.
They help categorisation.
They likely help findability.
And that seems sufficient reason to complete them properly.
Pricing
Pricing is rarely an exact science and I use a combination of:
- Terapeak active and sold listings
- eBay front end active and sold listings
- non-eBay websites
- specialist knowledge
and occasionally just simple judgement.
The goal is not always to be the cheapest, the goal is to be competitive and realistic.
The £1 Stamp
One of the biggest changes in my thinking is that not every listing needs to justify itself through profit alone.
Some listings create entry points.
Some build baskets.
Some attract buyers into collecting areas.
Some create opportunities for recommendations.
My view is a £1 stamp can occasionally contribute more to overall visibility than a much more expensive item.
That is why I increasingly view inventory holistically – as an ecosystem rather than a collection of isolated listings.
Why a £1 Stamp Can Be More Valuable Than a £50 Stamp
Promotions & Discovery
I use some of eBay’s promotional tools.
However, I do not primarily view them as discount tools.
I view them as discovery tools.
One example is my ongoing Buy 3 Save 10% coupon – for all my items £7 or under.
The discount itself does matter.
But so does the additional visibility eBay appears to give these promotions throughout the platform.
The promotion can encourage exploration, which I find often leads to additional purchases.
Promoted Listings
I often use Promoted Listings General (previously known as Promoted Listings Standard).
My primary reason is not really search ranking.
My observations suggest promoted listings participate in a much wider discovery ecosystem.
Additional recommendation placements.
Additional advertising surfaces such as inclusion in eBay order confirmation emails etc…
External exposure through affiliate websites.
Google Shopping placements through partners.
For me, promotion is often about increasing opportunities for discovery rather than just trying to occupy a higher position in search.
Returns
I offer free returns.
Not because I enjoy returns.
Nobody does.
I offer them because they reduce friction.
Buying becomes easier when buyers feel more protected.
Trust matters.
Messages
I try to answer messages in a timely manner and politely.
Even if the answer seems obvious.
Even if the question appears obscure or unusual.
Buyers are people, and some simply want reassurance before making a decision.
Packaging
Packaging may seem unrelated to visibility. But with my holistic head on, I don’t think it is.
Packaging forms part of the buyer’s overall experience.
I send stamps on clean stock cards, protected appropriately, with a ‘Thank You Card’ and within hard-backed envelopes.
I would rather spend a few more pennies protecting an item than risk it arriving damaged.
The sale is not complete when payment is received.
The experience ends when the buyer receives the item and is happy.
The Buyer Experience
Buyer experience is the term or section where everything comes together.
Titles.
Images.
Descriptions.
Returns.
Packaging.
Messages.
Promotions.
Recommendations.
All of these things ultimately influence the buyer experience.
And I believe modern marketplaces are trying to measure exactly that.
Not simply:
Did a listing appear?
But:
Did the buyer succeed?
Putting the Pieces Together
Looking back, I do not think the biggest lesson I can take from this series is about search.
Or recommendations.
Or vectors.
Or algorithms.
It’s about perspective.
The more I explored these topics, the more I found myself moving away from trying to understand how to influence eBay and more towards observing buyer behaviour and how they interact with it.
That change affects a whole host of things.
It changes how I buy stock.
How I structure inventory.
How I create listings.
How I think about promotions.
How I think about trust.
How I think about discovery.
The goal is no longer how do I make this listing rank?
The goal is closer to how do I help the right buyer discover, evaluate and confidently purchase this item?
The difference may sound subtle, although I don’t think it is.
Closing Thoughts
I do not know exactly how eBay works and neither does anyone outside eBay.
What I do know is how I choose to think about selling.
The observations made in creating this series moved my thoughts away from chasing algorithms and towards helping the right buyers discover the right items.
Search still matters and best practices still matter. Clear titles, good images, accurate descriptions and sensible pricing remain as important as ever.
But I no longer think of these as separate activities.
They are all part of helping buyers succeed.
And if the public information released by eBay over the last fifteen years tells us anything, it is that helping buyers succeed appears to be exactly what the platform has been trying to do all along.
— Dan Williams
Read More
Previous: Search, Recommendations and the Successful Buyer Session
This article brings together the themes explored throughout Notes on eBay & Discovery: a collection of observations about visibility, recommendations and buyer behaviour on modern marketplaces.