At 05:41 PM 12/13/98 EST, you wrote: First off, I know of no search engine that keeps on top of eBay other than eBay's own search engine. I doubt people are using AltaVista to find stuff on eBay. keywords I think you are confusing the description and the title. The title is what shows up on the listing pages (45 chars max) while the description (no limit, can include HTML) shows up only on the actual item page. With that clarification... EBay's search engine allows for searching the description as well as the title. If you are looking for Donald Duck stuff (for example) and you only search titles, you'll miss a lot of good items. An item with a title of "disney toothbrush holders" doesn't mention Donald, but the description did. (Bought the set of 6 for $10, gave the Donald one to Rachel, sold the other five for $25.) My recomendation is to make your *title* as descriptive and readable as possible: "Donald Duck in a red car" and then, in the description, include things like "made by Sun Rubber" and "has Goofy in the rumble seat" to catch the folks searching for Sun Rubber or Goofy items. People just looking through the category listings will see the title, and may find it interesting enough to look at. If you put "sun rubber donald duck goofy red car" as your title, you'll lose the folks going through the category and won't get many more searchers. And one of the most silly things I've seen is to put "for sale" in the title -- Duh! That's only slightly worse than the people who put, simply, "laptop computer" as the title of something in the portable computers category. The only beginning bit is a new collectible: computers. Everything else is old hat (even the auction format). --------------------------------------------------------------------- O- Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know." Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/