At eBay Live, I found a lot of confusion around Finding 2.0 and BestMatch. Most sellers+wall st. analysts assumed that BestMatch was the major enhancement to Finding that eBay has made. That’s not the case. The way I describe it is:
- BestMatch – changes the order of the search results (not the results themselves)
- Finding2 – changes the result set (usually smaller) by trying to be smarter about helping the buyer find what they want.
Of course BM has been live for a while, but Finding2 is just now making its way to the site. In the UK, they seem to be at 100% F2 and in the US I believe they are doing 10% sample tests and you can find it in the playground.
In the AU, eBay published a guide to F2 that does a great job of explaining how this new system is different and how the system looks closer at the search string to pre-select attributes and what not for the consumer. The result is definitely fewer results (that then go through BM) and hopefully a better buyer experience and more conversions. If you are interested in the topic (and I think most sellers should be), I’d recommend downloading the PDF and giving it a quick read).
