Last August in my post, "LQQK Goes from eBay Title to Streets of New York City," I discussed how some sellers are using embedded commands it the titles of their auctions in order to stand out and compel bidders to look at their listings.



eBay looked into this practice and in response filed a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). "Marketplace Listing Analysis Systems and Methods," patent number 20130204730 describes how sellers use character patterns for attracting attention to marketplace listings and as a result eBay will create a "marketplace listing analyzer" that will request the non-compliant seller to create a new listing title.



eBay's Best Practices rolled out in fall of 2011 specifically recommends against special characters: "Don't include special characters or gimmicks like "L@@k" in your title. Buyers don't use these terms in searches and they make your title less readable and relevant." The practice appears (too bad I didn't capture this data back in 2011) to have remained constant according to a search comparing a typical August day, year over year:







However, I'm not entirely convinced that just because buyers aren't searching for these terms doesn't mean that buyers aren't attracted to the listings. This is eBay's opinion and not necessarily a statement of fact.



The patent further details the "Listing Analyzer" that will be implemented to delete these type of characters from an auction title:



The system will "...identify character sequences intended to attract attention.....extract features, such as character sequences or character patterns, from a marketplace listing title..."



The seller will "...receive a request to revise the marketplace listing in a manner that removes the character pattern used to attract attention to the marketplace listing..."



"... For example, a user creating a listing may include the following character pattern in the title: "U*N*I*Q*U*E". In this example, the user may intend to attract attention to the listing with the particular character pattern. By using these character patterns, the user is attempting to make their listing stand out visually from other listings that utilize conventional listing techniques (e.g., using "Unique" instead of "U*N*I*Q*U*E")."... and... " "***", "!!!" or "###"."



"...some users may try different techniques to circumvent the known character patterns... {so} new patterns for attracting attention {will be} identified..."



Like eBay's Best Practices, the patent application states that "... in practice, this type of character pattern may not attract potential buyers because the character pattern is not typically searched by a user or entity."



eBay does not address the possibility that non-standard titles have a psychological impact that might compel a class of potential buyers to actually view a listing because of this. However, I suppose if there was a scientific study that proved this statement to be true that this in turn would have the opposite effect as the number of "non-standard" listings would begin to pollute the eBay ecosystem.



This comical effect is similar to why 8068 was the safest secret four digit pin number until it was revealed that it was the safest four digit pin.



However, the patent further explains that:



"...a search for "unique" in a marketplace listing will not identify a listing with the character pattern "U*N*I*Q*U*E". Thus, an attempt to attract attention to a marketplace listing using "U*N*I*Q*U*E" may produce the opposite result (i.e., the marketplace listing receives less attention due to the unconventional character pattern). Other types of character patterns used to attract attention include "r_a_r_e", "N_E_W", "U n I Q u E", "**New**", and the like. Regular or irregular patterns are possible..."



Sellers can promote their items with listing upgrades. Bold Listings are the most expensive of these upgrades at $2 for most listings with exception of 30 day listings which costs sellers $4. eBay has not increased the price of Bold Listings since 2008 when it cost $1.



Since then eBay has increased the number of characters permitted in listing title from 55 to 80 characters. However, in what might be a harbinger of things to come, eBay India discontinued several listing upgrades including Bold title upgrades earlier this year to provide buyers with a "cleaner visual experience and relevance-based search experience."



It is unknown if and when eBay intends to implement this technology as a patent application is not necessarily indicative of an imminent rollout. While non-standard character listings are annoying to a large number of people in the eBay community and may actually have the opposite effect than intended...censorship is a slippery slope.



It is also unknown if eBay intends this to act as more progressive recommendation system to encourage best practices or outright block non-standard character listings. Moreover it opens up the possibility that buyers may have the option to filter out these type of listings from search results sometime in the future.



eBay's quest to become more uniform and provide a consistent catalogue shopping experience is increasingly at odds with sellers who are struggling to stand out from a crowd of more than two hundred million items for sale.



Do you want eBay L@@king out for non-standard character auction listings? Should they be banned? Let us know below!



Note: Since last year, eBay rolled out the new Cassini search engine. This year I had to perform an advance search "L@@K -LK" because eBay was capturing both "L@@K' and "LK" in the title search which would more than double my 124,378 figure above. This filter removes stock numbers such as "LK25723" from the search results. I don't recall having to create this filter last year but it's possible that I did.



About the Author

Brian Cohen has been an active member of the eBay community since May 1998, and he currently trades under the member name Bidofthis.com. His first AuctionBytes article was published in May 2002. Brian's reporting on Bitcoin in 2013 has been referenced in numerous publications including The Register, Tech Week Europe, TechCrunch and PC World. Brian can be contacted through his website at BidofThis.com where he always has a "little Bid of This and little Bid of That."

