Why can't I see ALL the search results for the item I'm looking for?

[elysiafionn]

I have just received a message flag while trying to shop for something on ebay.  "We are unable to show you more than 10,000 results.  Please narrow your search perameters."  Sorry, what?

This is the issue.  I am looking for a very particular vintage bowl, for a collection that I am curating.  The bowl, the way * I * would describe it, would be "vintage soup bowl white with yellow and black wavy stripes".  The problem is, someone in Dubuque might have the exact bowl that I'm looking for, but when they list it, they describe it as "vintage soup bowl".  So my "yellow and black wavy stripes" in the search bar will basically insure that I will never find this bowl, because the seller did not use those words in their auction title.

So - I search for "vintage soup bowl" instead.  There are 64,000 search results.  But ebay will only let me see 10,000?  **bleep**, ebay?  As a long time ebay customer and seller, why do I not have the right to see ALL the results of my search?  I have been looking for this blasted bowl since 2012, mind you.  And now I know why I haven't found it yet.  Because ebay is only showing me one sixth of the vintage bowls that are for sale. 

HOW is this even good business?  Why would a website hogtie its sales by preventing people from seeing 5/6 of the stuff that's for sale?  This is ridiculous.  Seriously.

I ran out of available results at page 54.  So I thought well, okay, I will close ebay, reopen it, do the search, and then skip ahead seven pages at a time to get past page 54.  In other words, I was not "looking" at all the pages in between.  Nope, it still stopped me at page 54.  Even though ebay had not "shown" me the results on the pages I skipped.

Sellers are paying to post items that may never, ever be seen by buyers.  How is this even legal?  So I'm supposed to be psychic and know exactly how some seller I've never met is going to describe the item I'm looking for?  Preposterous.

[donsdetour]

You are looking through 10 thousand listings for an item:

Oh and yes the search is messed up...

[friskya]

Gotta admire your determination. I would never consider wading through that many listings searching for anything, much less doing it for 9 years.

I'm sure you already know that you can use eBay search to include the item description and obviously that didn't help, so I'll ask... Have you tried searching on google images? If you can figure out the makers name (I'm assuming you don't have it, since you didn't say you've used that in your searches), it would probably help in both eBay and google searches.

Hope you find what you're looking for soon.

[soh.maryl]

So you have no idea of the maker of this bowl?

[eburtonlab]

eBay will only display 10,000 results at a time per search -- fifty pages at 200 items per page. A few sponsored results mixed in may bump that number up slightly, but not much more than that. That is just a limitation of the search that you will have to deal with.

There are several possible ways you can work around this, though.

Obviously, if you can narrow your particular search to provide less than 10,000 results, you should be able to see all results.

You can also try using different sort methods to see a different set of 10,000 results. By combining Highest First and Lowest First sorts, you should be able to see up to 20,000 results. When using Lowest First, be sure to use the "view all results" link if some results are deemed not relevant.

Instead of one giant search, you may be able to do several smaller searches that return a few thousand items at a time. If you set up your searches correctly, you can minimize the number of common items that appear in each search by using exclusion terms or by limiting each search to a certain range of item prices. Or perform a different search for each possible item condition. eBay often divides search results into three price categories of roughly equal size -- try using that, or set your own price limits to further subdivide your results into manageable chunks with no overlapping results.

If this is a search that you bookmark and check periodically, for new searches you can limit results to items that have been listed in the last few hours or days to avoid having to check the same older items each time you run the search. If you search every two days, limit your results to items listed in the last two days or so. That option appears on the Advanced Search page; you can modify an existing search by using the Advanced link to the right of the search button on your search results page.

[nobody*s_perfect]

Limiting the search to either of the two colors yields only 4,000 results.

soup bowl (yellow, black)

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@friskya wrote:

Gotta admire your determination. I would never consider wading through that many listings searching for anything, much less doing it for 9 years.....

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Well you don't have to look at thousands of results. Sort by "newest first" and then just scan the newest entries, back until the last date that you checked up on this search. I regularly do a search that has over 16,000 results, but I only have to go back a page or two every few days. The rest of the listings are fixed price listings that roll over and over, some of which have been up for many years.

[redmodelt]

I just did a quick search in; Collectibles, vintage bowls, once I -Campbell s, took a lot of items off, except for the ones that spelled it Cambell s, I did not see anywhere near that number. If you add a space between the word Campbell and s, the search will/will not,  include words spelled Campbell, Campbell's and Campbells.

Putting an "-" in front of the word followed by a "comma space" if there are more than one word, will remove those words from the search. Will not get them all, but goes a long way in reducing that huge count.

I, too, would think if you are curating a collection, you would use the manufactures name, pattern and maybe even size and do multiple searches using different search words. Many of the listings I looked at; had manufacture's name or pattern in the title.

[stainlessenginecovers]

On another note: Many sellers may not put colors or 'stripes' in their listing title so that may cause you to miss the item. 

[eburtonlab]

I, too, would think if you are curating a collection, you would use the manufactures name, pattern and maybe even size and do multiple searches using different search words. Many of the listings I looked at; had manufacture's name or pattern in the title.

If you know the manufacturer's name, or have detailed information, it is definitely a good idea to search using that info.

But for many hard-to-find items, you may still have to perform a much broader search if specialized searches turn up no results -- particularly if the person who lists the item may not know the name of the manufacturer or the pattern, and may just know the most basic appearance of the item and nothing further. Many items have no identifying marks, or else such marks or patterns may be difficult to describe or search for, or may not mean much to someone without specialized knowledge.

Many sellers list items with only minimal information in the title or description, so unless you are performing a general keyword search or browsing an entire category for newly listed items, or viewing a "seller's other items" link, you may never see those listings at all.

[elysiafionn]

Again - that only works if the seller has used those exact words to list the item.  They don't always do that.

[elysiafionn]

And what if the seller lists it as "vintage soup bowl"?

[elysiafionn]

Yes, except my goal is not to have fewer listings to look through.  I want to see ALL of them.  And I am sure ALL of the sellers of vintage soup bowls want their listing seen by ALL the buyers who are looking for vintage soup bowls.  Ebay is pulling a fast one.

[elysiafionn]

Yes, this is why it is completely unacceptable to NOT be able to see ALL the listings for my search.  And unfair to the sellers whose items are not included in the first 10,000 that come up.

[elysiafionn]

Yes, but life gets in the way and sometimes I just want to go back and do a complete front-to-back viewing of ALL the vintage soup bowls for sale, in case I missed it on a day when something else happened and I couldn't search. 

I know there are ways to play the system, and I am now doing that... I just think it's patently unfair to limit the number of results a buyer can see, and it's even more unfair to the sellers whose items (for whatever reason) end up on the back end of that result list.  If I am willing to sit for two hours and pore over every single result, that should be my right as a buyer.  I'm betting the sellers, who are paying money to ebay to list their stuff, are even madder about it than I am.  Actually, I know they are... I've seen their postings on the community board!