How eBay's Cassini Search Ranks Your Listings (and How to Write Titles That Win)

If your listings sit on page 8 with no views, it's almost never bad luck. It's that eBay's search engine can't tell what you're selling or who it's for. The good news: the part that decides your ranking is the part you fully control. Here's how eBay's Cassini search actually works, and exactly how to write a title and item specifics that climb.

What is Cassini?

Cassini is eBay's search engine, the system that decides which listings show up, and in what order, when a buyer types a query. It replaced eBay's old keyword-only engine back in 2013.

The important shift: Cassini doesn't just match words. It weighs three things at once: how well your listing matches what the buyer searched, how complete and trustworthy your listing looks, and how likely your item is to actually sell. So two things rank you, relevance and sell-through. Get both right and you climb. Miss either and you disappear, no matter how good the item is.

What Cassini actually weighs

• Title keywords (the biggest lever). Cassini reads your title to decide if your listing is relevant to the search. The words you use, and the ones you leave out, decide whether you even enter the auction for a given query.
• Item specifics. The structured fields like Brand, Size, Color, Model, Type. They power the left-side filters buyers use, and they feed relevance directly. Blank specifics make you invisible to half the searches you could win.
• Sell-through and sales history. Listings that sell get shown more. Price competitively and your ranking compounds over time.
• Listing quality and completeness. Clear photos, a real description, accurate condition.
• Recency and format. Fresh listings and good-velocity fixed-price items get a look.
• Seller performance. Low defect rate, fast shipping, clear returns. Top Rated Seller helps.
• Buyer engagement on your listing. Click-through, watchers, and how often views turn into sales.

You can't fake sales history overnight. But the two biggest relevance levers, your title and your item specifics, you can fix in minutes.

How to write a title Cassini rewards

• Use all 80 characters. Every wasted character is a keyword you didn't rank for.
• Front-load the most-searched terms. Lead with product type, then brand, then model, then key attributes (size, color, material). Cassini and buyers both scan left to right.
• Write the words buyers actually type. "Sneakers," "trainers," and "running shoes" are different searches. Use the ones people search.
• Drop the filler. "L@@K," "!!!," "RARE," "nice." They rank for nothing and burn characters you need.
• Don't keyword-stuff irrelevant terms. Cramming "Jordan" into a non-Jordan listing gets you bad clicks and hurts you. Relevance has to be real.

Same shoe. The second one tells Cassini exactly what it is, uses real search terms, and fills the 80 characters instead of spending them on punctuation.

Item specifics: the half of relevance most sellers skip

When a buyer filters "Brand: Nike, Size: 10, Type: Athletic," eBay can only show your listing if you filled those fields. Sellers leave them blank constantly, then wonder why their stuff never surfaces. Fill every specific eBay offers, even the optional ones. It's the fastest visibility win on the platform and it takes two minutes.

Common title mistakes that bury you

• Wasting characters on punctuation and hype words
• Leaving item specifics blank
• Vague titles ("nice jacket") that match nothing
• Keyword stuffing terms that don't describe the item
• Writing for yourself instead of the buyer's search

The quick checklist

• Title uses close to all 80 characters
• Product type + brand + model + key attributes, front-loaded
• Real search terms, including synonyms buyers use
• No "L@@K," no "!!!," no filler
• Every item specific filled
• Condition accurate, photos clear