Searching for our items, ours doesn't show up.

[bluestskiestradingpost]

I'm confused about what Ebay is doing with searches.   I've searched for one of our items for sale using a part of the title.  Make and model of the item.  I see a lot of others show up, but ours doesn't show up.  I've tried searching high to low, low to high, nearest....still nothing.  I did find it when I searched for the ENTIRE title, but if someone is just search make and model it's not there at all. 

It has been renewed since it's been up more than 30 days, we just lowered the price, but still nothing showing up.

I even logged out and did a search and nothing shows up.

...and I wonder why sellers with horrible photos, bad feedback, and higher prices sell better than ours?!

Any clues what is going on?

Tom

[dhbookds]

give the title and item # if possible..........

[bluestskiestradingpost]

Item:  223448029210

Search "hobart d300" nothing comes up.

Search "hobart d-300 d300" nothing.

Search "HOBART D300 D-300 30 Qt Quart"  --- There it is!

If someone is looking for a D300 or D-300, either should show up, but it's not.   I did just try an "end / relist"  so it shows up with "new" tag, but still the same problem.  I did that about 2 hours ago, so it does show up  - only if using more title keywords.   Other things in our store do show up with a short keyword search, this one isn't. 

I've seen this happen in the past before, so it's not new, but we want to make sure that customers can find our stuff.

T.

[bluestskiestradingpost]

I'll add another thing.  Even if it's just been relisted a while ago, there are no hits on the page.  Usually "hobart" is a popular search keyword and if nothing else, a bunch of "auto searches" should have hit it by now. 

[nodr-45]

Search for hobart d300 or hobart d-300 and it defaults to the category:

Commercial kitchen equipment - food preparation equipment

Your item is listed in the category:

Business and industrial - restaurant and catering dough mixers

You can change categories if the other one is relevant, or you can accept that buyers won't find your item unless they back out of the default category and change the search results to all categories.

[bluestskiestradingpost]

I changed it to - Business & Industrial>Restaurant & Food Service>Commercial Kitchen Equipment>Baking & Dough Equipment>Dough Mixers

Hmm.....as soon as I did that the hit counter jumped a few. 

So is it more than just a global keyword search?  Does it lock into a category and if it's not there it's not visible?

[nodr-45]

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@bluestskiestradingpost wrote:

So is it more than just a global keyword search?  Does it lock into a category and if it's not there it's not visible?

---

Some searches stay at the "all categories" default and some drop you into what eBay considers the most relevant category.

It's not that your listing wasn't visible - it was - but it wouldn't come up the way most buyers would search for it unless the buyer knew to change the defaulted category.

It's different for every item so the only real way to know if it's defaulting to a specific category is to test search on your own.

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@bluestskiestradingpost wrote:

I changed it to - Business & Industrial>Restaurant & Food Service>Commercial Kitchen Equipment>Baking & Dough Equipment>Dough Mixers

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That still isn't the default category if that matters to you.

[selecttech]

I checked and your listing is ranked in search. 

[bluestskiestradingpost]

Is the default category the first one that shows up when listing and hit the "change categories" hyperlink?

I guess after all these years of selling, I didn't know that the search would lock into a certain category and only search that.   I figured that a keyword would search  the whole global database (at least for the US). 

I'll play around with some of my settings and see what happens.  For now, the hit counter has jumped by several views since I tried that.

Thanks for clarifying this,

Tom

[bluestskiestradingpost]

I do see it showing up now with a simple keyword search.  Thanks for verifying from a remote view other than my own!

-Tom

[nodr-45]

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@bluestskiestradingpost wrote:

Is the default category the first one that shows up when listing and hit the "change categories" hyperlink?

I guess after all these years of selling, I didn't know that the search would lock into a certain category and only search that.   I figured that a keyword would search  the whole global database (at least for the US). 

---

They changed search a couple of years ago to default to what eBay considers the most relevant category. Look on the left side of the page of search results and you can see what category it dumped you in, if any.

When I searched your generic terms it put me in the category I posted above.

Commercial kitchen equipment - food preparation equipment

[bluestskiestradingpost]

Ok thanks. I learned something new. I'll check my categories when I see something not showing up in the future.