As of yesterday the much used and abused on the UK site… well almost, you can still buy it for the next week but the functionality has gone and you will eventually receive a full refund against your fees.
Featured First used to give your item a chance to appear at the top of eBay search results, but eBay reckon that Best Match is so good now that there’s no need for the feature. Also in many cases sellers were purchasing the Featured First listing for products which weren’t the best deals for buyers and using it (as a very successful) way to game Best Match.
It’s original intention was to give visibility for new listings to get them in front of buyers so that recent sales would then maintain the listings position in search. In reality it was so successful that sellers could cost justify it’s use on an ongoing basis as one of the most cost effective listing enhancements on eBay.
Sellers will now have to use other methods to kick start their listings such as price, email marketing, markdown manager and merchandising from their eBay shop and other eBay listings.
