My concern is that I am losing sales due to the fact most customers won't know about the search tricks and will not want to sift through thousands of wrong results to find the item they actually want. What can I do about that?
That is a reasonable thing for a seller to be concerned about, but most buyers seem to have no problem finding things to actually buy, judging by eBay's sales.
Different buyers use different methods to search, and many buyers search using more than one search technique. Many sellers seem to assume that there is only one "correct" way to conduct a search, and that if the seller's own listings do not appear on the first page of that specific search then the seller's items will never be seen, or that the buyer will immediately give up and buy elsewhere.
Sellers should do what they can to make it as easy as possible for buyers to find their items by listing in the proper categories and using the correct keywords and item-specifics, so that those items appear in relevant searches using many different search techniques.
If a particular search is not working correctly -- if a keyword is substituted incorrectly, or a keyword's spelling is changed when it should not be, or if an inordinate amount of listings are removed when using a certain sort order -- users should report that to eBay using the "Feedback" link on the search results page.
Beyond that, if a seller encounters a buyer struggling to find something, the seller can offer search suggestions to the buyer. This helps the buyer find what the buyer is looking for but can also help the seller understand how individual buyers search for items, and helps the seller to learn and understand more about how search actually works and its inherent limitations and failure modes.
