5 min article

Recommender systems at eBay

eBay customises the experience for users of our marketplace, including personalised recommendations of items. These recommendations benefit both buyers and sellers – buyers may discover more relevant items, and sellers are able to offer items reflecting buyer demand. These recommendations are provided to users across all eBay platforms (e.g., desktop, mobile web browsing, mobile app) and across eBay's markets.

We make recommendations to eBay users based on various criteria described below.

Search results

When you search for an item on eBay, we consider a variety of data to offer the most relevant search results for you. Your search results may be determined by your initial search query, your location (e.g., to determine whether the item can be sold or posted to you), the item and seller's location (e.g., to determine whether the seller can sell or post the item to you), the eBay page you are on when you start your search, your search history, eBay's expected monetization, the item's return policy, postage options (e.g., if the item has free postage and/or expedited postage the item may be recommended to you with higher priority), the seller's sales history, the seller's compliance with eBay's terms, the seller's ratings, the seller's defect rate and purchase trends.

In addition, eBay provides you the ability to sort your search results, including by price, distance to your indicated shipping location, and listing recency. You may adjust these parameters via a drop-down sort selector that appears adjacent to the search results. If you do not sort the returned search results, eBay presents the returned search results in "Best Match" order. Best Match depends primarily on eBay's estimation of which items we think may interest you. Learn more about Best Match.

eBay also offers search result filtering options on various criteria including item category, condition, features and other attributes.

Merchandising

eBay also recommends items in the eBay experience based on what we think may interest you, combined with eBay's expected monetization from displaying or promoting a certain item. These recommendations may be based on eBay pages you visited, the items presented to you on those pages, attributes of the seller promoting those items, your location relative to those items, eBay marketplace shopping activity, which may include your shopping experiences with eBay, as well as the activity of other eBay shoppers similar to you, postage information, item impressions, item aspects, item category and eBay's expected monetization.

You can adjust the settings for the usage of your eBay activity for customised sponsored recommendations by visiting https://www.ebay.ie/adchoice - opens in new window or tab.

Homepage recommendations

eBay may present you with a personalised homepage from which you can launch your marketplace experience. Recommendations on your homepage may be determined using a variety of attributes that indicate your potential interests including, but not limited to, your past searches, past purchases, watched items, categories you have searched and visited, item aspects, past items viewed, past item attributes (e.g., price, condition, location, shipping), seller ratings, seller defect rate, categories in which you have sold items, events, deals, trends, eBay's expected monetization and the interest of other users.

Postage options

In some markets, eBay may offer postage options to sellers based on seller-provided weight and dimensions of the item, item location, destination address and carrier availability.

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