Saved Searches are now broken, useless and a waste of time.

[daemontech]

Someone else (at least one person I hope more) has posted about this. But this is B.A.D. BAD.

Suddenly my searches that found nothing (because there was no listing for the item) are returning results that barely match the search. Causing me to have to waste time looking at tons of useless emails.

Is someone asleep at Ebay or do they thing that by spamming people with unrelated search results will somehow improve sales?

Now for instance my saved search for  Kenwood KA-2002 now sends me any Kenwood that has KA- in it.
Saved search for a Harmon Kardon HK670 (which shows in the search as Harmon+Kardon+HK+670 sends me 8 new matches where None match that search.

Ebay Please Fix This!

[eburtonlab]

You may want to consider temporarily stopping email alerts for the searches affected, and possibly creating a new search with one of your search keywords enclosed in quotes in order to bypass the faulty keyword substitution feature which seems to be producing the irrelevant results.

Use the "Feedback" link on the search results page to alert eBay to the problem with a particular search. The more users report issues directly to eBay that way, the more likely eBay is to do something about the problem.

[daemontech]

Stopping the emails.  Maybe, most are practically just spam at this point.

Using quotes limits the results to only match if the seller describes exactly as you are searching. So you would need to create many more searches in hopes of getting a match.

Good suggestion on the feedback link. But Ebay has to have noticed by now. Their email sending rate has to have increased quite a bit as a result. So I wonder if this is some hair brained scheme to increase sales.

[lioneltom]

There have indeed been other posts about this in the Community so it is not a unique issue.  I used to get 5-10 emails per day from eBay related to my saved searches.  Starting Wednesday, I now receive 70-80 emails and as daemontech noted, most have nothing to do with my specific search terms!  This is just spam in my Inbox every morning that is far more annoyance than help.  Someone at eBay must have changed the search function with this result.  Please change it back so Saved Searches again have value!

[decurtley]

The searches are picking up words in the "Items specifics" section and many sellers are filling that section with every word under the sun that have nothing to do with the listing. My search for 'Corvette (wreak,wreaked,salvage,project)' as a week ago suddenly is listing many trash results like a 1946 truck heater! In all cases from many sellers, the cause is the same, hundreds of unrelated keywords in the "Items specifics" section. So two problems: 1) the search is now looking in the "Items specifics" section and 2) many sellers are violating eBay policy about abuse of keywords.  EBAY DO YOUR JOB & FIX BOTH! I don't have time to look through 2 hundred listings to find the few items that fit my search. Ebay searches are now getting as bad as Facebook Market!

[eburtonlab]

The searches are picking up words in the "Items specifics" section

Searches have done that ever since eBay introduced item-specifics; that is nothing new. Any listing with your keywords in the title or item-specifics is considered by eBay to be a potential match.

There are ways to avoid listings that have spam keywords, typically by adding additional keywords to your search, using exclusion terms, narrowing your category and using filter options. You can also exclude up to ten sellers' listing by seller username from any search.

You can report the worst offenders, too.

Potential Corvette project Vehicle search:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Corvette+%28wreck%2Cwrecked%2Csalvage%2Cproject%29&_s...

Potential Corvette Parts search:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/6030/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=Corvette+&Brand=Corvette&_dcat=6028&LH_ItemCondi...

[lioneltom]

My Saved Search emails both yesterday and this morning were back to the usual 5-10 rather than 70-80, so somebody at eBay has reversed the Nov 14-15 change in their algorithm that generated the useless emails.  Thank you eBay!