The domain "auction.com" has been put up for auction itself on SitePoint.com. The seller explains in his auction post that he already has a bid of $2.5 million and is under a 2 day time limit to accept the offer, or it will be rescinded. The seller states:

eBay recently announced a change to product pages for books, music, movies, and video games last week – a change that will likely give sellers yet another reason to complain.

For the first time in three years, overall customer satisfaction with e-commerce has fallen, ending steady growth over the same period, according ForeSee Results’ annual American Customer Satisfaction Index. At the bottom of the customer satisfaction barrel: eTrade, eBay, and Priceline.

Early last year, eBay inflicted some damaging policy changes that sent many sellers running for the hills. Now, they apparently are changing the rules to remove negative comments left by customers towards the sellers.

January was a month of casual browsing, with limited purchases at online retailers, according to a report from marketing firm Coremetrics.

The number of online sessions in which consumers browsed a Web site, viewing at least one product page, stayed largely flat compared to December 2008. The number of sessions in which consumers actually completed an order was down 21 percent.

Online retailers such as Amazon are doing well with their search presence compared to traditional retailers, according to a study from Internet marketing firm Internet Engine.

"The Retail Search Presence Study" found that online retailers have a very strong presence, representing over 30 percent of the listings shown, while bricks and mortar retailers consistently have had the weakest presence of any group showing up only 12 percent of the time.

Nearly every time we post a story about eBay, we get flooded with comments going for the site’s throat. We’ve often pondered what kind of competition eBay has, many anti-eBayers will be quick to point to a site called Bonanzle.

You can hardly talk about eBay without bringing out the disgust in all of the people who feel they have been wronged by the eCommerce giant. This group is comprised mostly of sellers who feel eBay has treated them with anything but respect, particularly since changing feedback policies in early 2008 (of course that’s not the only thing they don’t like. See my top ten list of seller frustrations).

At the beginning of the year, eBay announced some changes it was bringing in with its new CEO John Donahoe.

eBay is moving to increase its advertising revenue. It is an area that has become increasingly profitable for the company, and increasing profitability has probably never been more important for eBay.

Best Buy is changing the way it does business online and surprise, surprise – it involves social media and APIs. The company has introduced what it is calling the "Best Buy Remix Developer Network."

"We’re working to give you the tools you need to make Best Buy into what you need it to be," the company says.

There is an interesting article at Seeking Alpha called "Why ‘GooBay’ Makes Sense." Obviously this is a "what if Google bought eBay?" piece, and feedback to the article thus far isn’t real keen on the idea, but there are some valid points throughout the article nevertheless.

Monroe Labouisse, the director of PayPal’s business on eBay in the US and Canada sat down with eBay’s chief Blogger Richard Brewer-Hay and sketched out this post explaining the policies behind eBay Item Holds.

An eBay Item Hold is when eBay asks PayPal to hold a payment in a seller’s PayPal account for up to 21 days. This occurs as a "buyer protection" when eBay believes the transaction is more likely than the average transaction to be fraudulent.

Google has announced it is expanding YouTube’s click-to-buy ecommerce platform it launched last October to now include Germany, Spain and the Netherlands in an effort to further monetize the property.

AuctionBytes is reporting that eBay has expanded its Guest Buying feature. People can buy items through eBay without being fully registered as a member. They have just increased the number of purchases a guest can make before having to become a full-fledged member.

Ted Kaczynski, more widely known as the Unabomber, got some bad news from a federal appeals court today: his writings are to be sold online.

Close to 4 million British shoppers went online to purchase goods on Christmas Day, spending a total of  $154 million (102 million pounds) according to a new report from the ecommerce retailing body IMRG.

Making a purchase online, especially a substantial one, can be a nerve-wracking process for a consumer. The primary problem, aside from price, is trust. Shoppers negotiate their relationship with the vendor in much the same way they negotiate relationships with any stranger: by seeking information.

What an online vendor lacks (and what becomes a disadvantage) is one-on-one interaction with the customer. As such, the customer must put forth additional effort to find out about a product for sale. Making this task easier can make all the difference in closing a sale.

Back in October, when Google offered some tips for the then-upcoming holiday season, they suggested using Google Checkout badges in your AdWords ads. They said that ads that do this have a 10% higher clickthrough rate than those that don’t.

While the majority (64%) of online holiday shoppers had no problems making purchases, 36 percent did, according to a new survey from ecommerce development firm Guidance.

Among those that ran into difficulty, 13 percent said they had to abandon a very slow Web site while trying to shop, 8 percent said a Web site froze or crashed, 7 percent could not complete a purchase on their first try and 4 percent said a purchase they thought they had completed actually did not go through.

Nielsen Online has shared some interesting data regarding advertising on the web during the holiday season. This look comes after finding that there was 10% growth in retail site traffic.

Nachi Lolla at the Nielsen Blog wondered if the advertising strategies of these retailers had anything to do with that traffic. Lolla writes: