Is there a reference for which Listing Attributes are promoted in Search Results?

[chris13]

While helping a frustrated buyer with their search efforts, I stumbled across a situation where the MPN item attibute value is being 'promoted' as a keyword match. Understandable.

However, the attribute 'Brand' did NOT seem to be promoted in the same way

Example: A listing has no instances of the term 'XYZ' in title or description text

When MPN = XYZ, the listing is found searching for 'XYZ'

When Brand = XYZ, the listing is not found searching for 'XYZ'

I couldnt find any posts, topics, or eBay pages that discuss what IS and what ISNT promoted from the attributes. It could even be category specific, which makes it even harder to 'figure out' without a reference.

What I did see was @shipscript often selected as best answers for questions in this area. 

Can someone point me to something definitive?

Thanks in advance.

[shipscript]

A Keyword search is a convoluted mess these days. When using best match, eBay will "expand" the search to item categories, to item specifics (aspects) that appear in the left rail, to singulars and plurals, and to synonyms, even finding "man" for "woman" in some instances (congress woman).  Sometimes the algorithm will limit the search to the most popular category for that term, severely reducing results. 

Lately, I see that eBay is even changing the search phrase (most confusing to buyers who aren't mistyping), showing results for that new phrase, and providing the option to click back to the original phrase.

I don't know why the MPN is found, while Brand is not, but MPN is definitely a more exact match.

When using a different search order, the Best Match strangeness is often eliminated. Additionally, using some of the search manipulation coding (below) will override "expansion" of the keywords.

Another member has more experience with search and the left rail than I do. I think it may be @eburtonlab.

Below are tips for including, or excluding, search terms.

Search - Keyword tips

[chris13]

Thank you!

The 'not' syntax with the logic OR and the quoted strings using OR are particularly useful even to my own searches. 

I suppose missing from this list might be things like "hard overrides" e.g. exact match for category name, or a forced category filter for the phrase 'Mercury Cougar'.

I was aware of the 'stemming table' fun that manipulates words like "great, greater, greatest" to use the 'root'.

I guess Attributes are a work in progress, but they confuse the daylights out of search results when sellers either choose the wrong attributes or spam a bunch of irrelevant selections that then take over search results when it promotes them from tiny text no one notices.

Garbage in/Garbage out has always been the bane of search engines.

[shipscript]

Hidden text in a description should not count unless the box is checked for searching descriptions. However, bogus item specifics and variations could pose a problem.

Exact match for category name would require using the left menu, or the droplist on the search bar, to select a specific category, and then search within that category.

[chris13]

Ugh. Words are such a pain. By hidden I meant 'tiny text in item specifics' that users dont always notice, like MPN. 😉

Since I dont know what 'hard overrides' are configured I am basing that knowledge from doing white box testing of three different e-Commerce search engine implementations, mostly based on Apache Lucene. Thats kind of why I was looking for a white paper on the search mechanics since it's a bit of a snipe hunt to use black-box approaches to figure out what it IS doing compared to what it SHOULD be doing. Otherwise I would analyze XML output since the schema from XML usually exposes the methods invoked, like 'Broaden' or 'DropKeyword'

Thank you again!