eBay's search has a lot of built-in "smart" features that can interfere with a logical search.
Rather than simply returning the results that contain your individual search terms in the title or item-specifics, eBay will sometimes make keyword substitutions, or even use your keywords to steer a search into a particular category. This can be helpful if you misspell a word, or if there is a broadly recognized alternative for one of your keywords (like substituting Chevy for Chevrolet), or if there is a single category where your results are likely to be found, but in some cases this may lead to results you may not be expecting or intending. There are ways around these features, if you notice that is happening when you search.
eBay may recognize certain combinations of keywords and group them together automatically whether you want that or not, so the order of your keywords may indeed matter.
If you want to bypass all the smart features and find only the logical results that match your exact individual terms, using certain search commands should work -- putting one of your keywords in quotes, using an exclusion term preceded by a minus sign, or including multiple keywords in parentheses separated by commas (a Boolean "OR" search) -- any of these will bypass the "smart" features. If you search for "aluminum" colander, for instance, you will miss out on any aluminium colander or aluminum collander listings. If you include a term like vintage along with your quoted keyword, you will only find listings containing that exact keyword rather than any synonyms.
You may see more results by doing searching that way (if the previous search was steered into a narrow category) or you may see fewer total results (if many of previous results were matching alternative keywords). Sometimes it can be worth trying the same search in multiple ways, as one search is likely to turn up some results another search may miss.
