Has anyone noticed how the search engine is acting very funky

[jttoys101]

I sell an eBay full-time. I've noticed the last few days that the search engine has been acting funky. I sell very specific vintage items and when I'm searching for active and sold listings to comp out for price it does not search correctly. For instance if I type in 1945 military tent it will show military tents of all ages. This is extremely annoying and I'm sure it has to be bothering buyers as well. 

[wastingtime101]

Search has a lot of issues. In your situation I'd suggest putting 1945 in quotes and see if that makes a difference.

You might also want to use Terapeak for research since it will show actual sold prices and only items that were paid for, as opposed to search view which won't show you offer prices.

[jttoys101]

Yep I use that as well. Thankfully the terapeak search engine is still very accurate. My issue is the search engine on eBay is taking out keywords and disregarding them making it a lot more difficult to price specific items. I'm concerned because this can make it very difficult for collectors and buys to find the specific items they are looking for to purchase. Say you're looking for a 1945 pup tent from world War II and 300 more come up from different dates that you do not want it's going to be a lot more difficult for the person buying the item. 

I just noticed eBay starting to do this yesterday. I'm assuming it's some sort of algorithm based search tool. I find it very concerning because most of my items are specific collectibles that could be overcrowded if the search tool does not take into consideration specific keywords.

[urban_picker]

It's been a huge mess for a long while now but I have noticed different things, like the other day doing price comps it did not seem to care about what color you put into the search. That and so many other problems that makes finding what you want almost impossible. It's like they killed the impulse buyers.

There was an items I checked over 3 different days and the middle day it had totally vanished from the website, then back the next (and was not a relisted item). It is a nightmare.

[eburtonlab]

If a search that has worked well previously suddenly starts behaving badly, often the problem has something to do with a faulty keyword substitution or an inappropriate automatic category navigation issue.

You can bypass many of these sorts of search issues by putting one of your keywords in quotes. This forces eBay to bypass the "smart" features and to search for the literal keywords without any substitution or category switching. You may have to manually specify your category once again.

Using a desktop browser, find the "Feedback" icon that appears in the lower right corner of the search results page to let eBay page developers know about your search issues. The more users report such issues, the more likely eBay is to take action to correct things.

[kustomz]

Yep. Search is giving me thousands of items when there are in fact only a few that contain my search words. So far the same issue with about 40 unrelated searches.

[bennotbill]

funky? I think you spelt that wrong and you left out the up.

[rossdress4less]

I came here to report the exact same thing. I set search alerts for specific items, they worked great before, a specific model number item I wanted was posted, I was alerted. But today, Nov 15, I got many alert emails but the items they contained did not have that model number, they were related but not the exact item.

My guess is in an effort to show someone searching for a specific item more stuff, they broadened the search results to included non-related items rather than say no items match that search. They need to undo this change immediately as it's ruined the search. 

[csbbct]

For the last few weeks, Search has been ridiculous!  eBay has changed something and now it returns hundreds of unrelated items.  Putting my search in quotes returns too few items if the listing does not have the exact phrase in the title.  It's frustrating, a waste of time to scroll through pages and pages to find what I'm looking for, and will do nothing but turn buyers away from eBay!  Whatever they did recently to Search, they need to UNDO IT!!!

[eburtonlab]

Putting my search in quotes returns too few items if the listing does not have the exact phrase in the title.

Try putting quotes around just one keyword rather than all of them as a workaround to bypass the faulty keyword substitution feature, and report the problematic search to eBay using the "Feedback" link in the search results.

[joels-retrocade]

Agree 100% finding a comp shouldn't be so tedious.  They should definitely fix it unfortunately they wont because it's being cause by promoted listings.  Those are exactly the unrelated items that are popping up in these searches.  This is also the only sector that is increasing profits for ebay atm so fat chance they do anything lol.  They'll continue to let buyers and sellers alike get frustrated and leave the platform in droves.

[jttoys101]

I really feel like what they're trying to do is a Amazon move. I feel like the same thing happens when I try to find something specific on Amazon I get a bunch of stuff that is slightly similar but not what I searched. I hope there's enough feedback from the eBay community to change it back to normal.  It used to work much better.

[dennden]

Yes my saved searches (some that have worked for literally years) all of a sudden have started returning a ton of irrelevant results both in my daily emails and via the website. This needs to be fixed.

[dennden]

Replying to myself - I think the problem is with numerical keywords - if you put them in quotes it starts behaving like it did before. So it seems that what they have done is started making numerical keywords work as an OR instead of an AND.

[themilford]

I noticed the same issue. The Search engine is no longer as specific as it once was. And it returns more general results. This is maddening... because I'm getting tons of hits now on my Saved Searches that are erroneous. They must have changed the boolean parameters or something. They need to fix it. Maybe if we all complain enough...