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Tips for Cracking the Cassini Search Engine. This post is by Carlo Silva, founder of ecommerce outsourcing company 2nd Office.

The solution for synchronous selling to e-commerce sites like eBay, Amazon, Craigslist & Gunbroker. Manage Inventory, Orders, Fulfillment. Amazon to eBay arbitrage is dominated by get-rich-quick schemes, but that's only part of the story. There's innovative technology and genuine businesses. Basic fees; Insertion fee. When you list an item on eBay, you may be charged a listing (or insertion) fee. If applicable, you're charged one insertion fee per listing.

Carlo has 1. 6 years of experience selling on e. Bay and is a former e. Bay Titanium Power Seller.

UPDATE January 2. Do you remember the days when you as a seller could leave negative feedback for bad customers? Do you remember the days when you could list multiple listings and flood e. Bay’s search engine with auctions, Buy It Now listings and get tons of sales? This is when e. Bay was still using their search engine called “Voyager,” which was built around 2. Voyager was clearly more about the seller and not so much about the buyer because, if you knew how Voyager worked, you would be banking in on all the sales.

If you’re an old school e. Bay seller like me, then you experienced the glory days of e. Bay from the early 2. I still remember those days.

I also remember when everything started to change. How it all started.

It was in 2. 00. 8 when e. Bay’s marketplace started to change and the company implemented detailed seller ratings (DSRs). Prior to this, it was just about getting feedback from buyers and also leaving feedback for buyers. If you had more positive feedback compared to others in your category, you would have better rankings in search and better conversion rates. Ultimately, customers looked at feedback to make their buying decisions.

Back then, sellers had the power to leave negative feedback for buyers and feedback was the only metric sellers were rated on. Those good old days are long gone.

With the new DSRs in place, buyers are asked to rate sellers in four different categories with a score of one to five stars, five stars being the highest. These ratings were anonymous, so as a seller you had no idea who would give you bad ratings. If you had a rating of 4. Powersellers were required to have a rating of 4. Sellers who were not ready for this were heavily affected by this change. Back then, software choices to help you manage your e.

Bay business were limited – they were either really expensive or they weren’t any good. Long story short, most businesses had to change the way they operated to be successful on e.

Bay. There were numerous other changes from 2. Top- rated” seller status. Being a Top- rated seller meant you would have gotten 3. Some businesses lost half of their revenue over the next few days after Top- rated seller status was put into place. Fast forward to 2.

Bay began testing a new search engine called “Cassini”. In 2. 01. 3, e. Bay began to roll out Cassini as the default search engine.

This was another major change that affected e. Bay sellers worldwide. What exactly is Cassini? Cassini is e. Bay’s new search engine that was rolled out in 2. If you have been an old school e. Bay seller and your sales have never been the same since then, you have probably not changed your listing style to accommodate the needs of Cassini. Prior to Cassini was “Voyager,” and with Voyager the typical seller strategy was to make multiple listings with different keywords in the title and item specifics.

Sellers would make multiple listings of the same product and dominate the search results. With Cassini and e. Bay’s duplicate listing policies in place, however, those days are long gone and I’m sure you’ve noticed that already. Bay likely put these policies into place for several reasons, including: They wanted to limit the number of duplicate listings in their marketplace, making it easier for a customer to find products.

Google made changes to their search engine penalizing websites with duplicate content. Just like Google’s search engine, Cassini is all about relevance and the customer. Cassini reflects how much value you can offer the customer as a seller. What does Cassini want? Relevant content (product title, description, images, categories, item specifics)Value for buyers.

Top- rated to above standard seller ratings. In a nutshell, Cassini wants to deliver products to buyers at the best price, from the seller who can provide the best service. How do e. Bay buyers search?

Bay buyers search for the keyword and then they will use the refine feature (on mobile) or start choosing item specifics on the left side (on desktop) to help narrow down the listing even further. They will also choose a category to drill down the results even more. Descriptions are more relevant for conversion in Cassini and not necessarily keyword matching directly. By default, “search in description” is not turned on, and is hidden under the more tab on mobile, and unchecked when browsing via desktop. Now that you have the background, I’m going to give you 2. Bay’s Cassini search engine. Optimize your titles with relevant keywords.

The maximum character count for e. Bay titles is 8. 0, so be sure to pack the title with relevant keywords for your listing and if able, maximize the character count without keyword spamming! Example of a good title: This listing uses all relevant keywords (brand name, engine size, material, vehicle year). The listing also showcases that the product comes with a lifetime warranty through the use of a subtitle.

Example of a bad title: Why? The keywords “free coolant” shouldn’t be in the title. A customer looking for coolant isn’t looking for a radiator, most likely he already has a radiator. This will bring down the listings ranking, because he’s getting irrelevant traffic to his listing. The seller should have put “free coolant” in the subtitle or created a new image with the coolant next to the radiator.

This would have been a better image to use to showcase the free coolant. By using images, you will avoid keyword spamming and still get the same message out to your customer. These listings above are perfect examples of keyword spamming. Example 1: LLBean t- shirt title says “Looks similar to Ralph Lauren”Example 2: keen Vibram sliders says “Similar to Crocs Style”Example 3: NOS Vintage Sunglasses says “Similar to Oakley”DO NOT keyword spam by using keywords that do not directly relate to the item. For example, selling an unbranded pair of jeans from China with a listing title that says “Similar to Levi’s”. Why would people do this? So they can get traffic from the keyword “Levi’s”.

Does this actually give you sales? Not really, and you will get demoted in e. Bay’s search for keyword spamming, since the actual pair of jeans are not the Levi’s brand. There are a few software solutions I can highly recommend for building e. Bay titles, including Terapeak and Title Builder. Title Builder is free and shows you the best- ranking keywords buyers are searching for a particular product.

Terapeak is paid and starts at $1. Bay marketplace including top- selling products and the number of items sold for a particular product. Title Builder: Terapeak, hot product research results: You can also use e. Bay’s search suggestions to find out what buyers are searching for. If you start typing in “playstation 4 dualshock”, for example, e.

Bay will show you the most frequently searched related terms. You can then use the same exact words, in the same exact order, to begin your title building. The goal is to find the most targeted, accurate and niche keyword the e.

Bay audience is already using to search on the marketplace, and embed those in your item title. This will increase discoverability and conversion. The goal is not to necessarily drive a high amount of traffic.

Conversions are more important to e. Bay’s search engine than views. NOTE: When using e. Bay’s search box for keywords, know that this process works well with popular branded products, but not so well with other products, because e. Bay doesn’t have enough search data. List using GTC (Good . You should list using GTC to retain sales history.

The more sales and watchers a listing has, the higher it will go up in search. This means that your listing has good buyer engagement. The Twist. The twist is, what about listings with no sales after 3. You need to END these listings and re- list them.

Because it will re- index the listing and wipe the previous history of bad buyer engagement. Once relisted, your listing will show up as a “new listing” and be on top of search while Cassini gathers data on it. Before relisting though, you need to figure out why your listing had buyer engagement and fix those issues.

You need to ask yourself did the listing have a bad product title? A bad image? Is my pricing competitive? Is my description speaking to my customer? Did I fill in all my item specifics?

Did I list in the correct category? If you can figure it out, you’re on your way to a better listing. I explain most of this in the tips to follow. Bottom line is, if the listing gets good buyer engagement, it will stay up at the top.

If it gets bad buyer engagement, it will be pushed down. So make it a habit to always end and re- list items with no sales after 3. NOTE: When re- listing, make sure you use the “Sell Similar” function rather than “Relist”. This way, you’ll get a new e. Bay item number with fresh stats.

Out of Stock Inventory Controle. Bay has a feature called “Out of Stock Inventory Control,” which allows your listing to stay live and active even when there is no inventory available. If you have a sales history, for example, of 1.

You don’t want to lose that, because e. Bay sees items with a lot of past sales as a good thing. If you lose your sales history you start at zero again, lose your search rankings and – if your competitor has an established sales history – his product will have a better chance of showing up first. Buyers also like to buy from listings with a lot more sales. It shows that the seller has a proven track record of delivering goods to their buyers. With the Out of Stock Inventory Control feature turned on, however, the listing will say “out of stock” instead of automatically ending, thus retaining your sales history.

This feature is available in most third- party listing software and available in e. Bay’s account settings under “selling preferences”.

The preferred method is to use e. All Local Disk Delete Data Restoration Full Verizon Site there. Bay’s own out- of- stock feature.