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eBay Search
eBay’s search has gotten terrible — sponsored garbage everywhere, irrelevant results, and sorting is broken half the time.
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eBay’s search has gotten terrible — sponsored garbage everywhere, irrelevant results, and sorting is broken half the time.
eburtonlab
Mentor4 months ago@crs619
Can you provide an example? What are you searching for? How are you searching and sorting?
Chances are there are some things you can do differently to get better, more targeted results, and to avoid things you are not looking for.
crs619
OP4 months agoI don’t think so. I’ve bee using eBay for 23 years. You used to be able to search quite well. Now, you cannot. Try searching for anything and list results from lowest price to highest. Most search results will disappear.
Search: Jacques Marie Mage / Yves
That’s the manufacturer and model of sunglasses. You’ll get 4300+ results. In reality, there are 14 authentic Yves frames. The rest (25 total) are counterfeit, which eBay does nothing about and emailed me to warn me that I was reporting too many counterfeit items. The search feature no longer functions as it once did.
eburtonlab
Mentor4 months agoTry searching for anything and list results from lowest price to highest. Most search results will disappear.
The "Price plus shipping: lowest first" sort order provides filtered results -- often drastically filtered. And the option to "see more results" may not always be shown as it should. The filtering may vary depending on the keywords used.
If you encounter a drastically filtered result for a keyword search using a desktop browser, you should be able to use the "Feedback" link in the lower right corner of the search results to provide feedback on your search to eBay developers. The more users provide info, the more likely something is to be done about the over-filtration problem.
You can avoid that problem entirely by using a different sort order.
If you have few results, try sorting by "highest first", then starting at the end of the results, scroll up instead of down. This also avoids the problem of variation listings with low-cost variations appearing at the top of the lowest-first sort.
If you have a bookmarked or saved lowest-first search that you use a lot, you can avoid the filtration by adding the following to the end of the search URL, then saving the resulting search:
Try this search instead:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Jacques-Marie-Mage++Yves&_sacat=0&_sop=16
Or this one:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Jacques-Marie-Mage++Yves&_sacat=0&_sop=15&_blrs=recall_filtering
In reality, there are 14 authentic Yves frames. The rest (25 total) are counterfeit, which eBay does nothing about and emailed me to warn me that I was reporting too many counterfeit items. The search feature no longer functions as it once did.
The counterfeits are not a problem with the search, the search is finding what you are searching for; the problem is that some sellers are selling counterfeit items as genuine items using the same keywords you are searching for.
Counterfeit items are not allowed to be listed on eBay at all. No one is authorized to sell counterfeit items. That fact alone does not stop some people from trying to sell them, however.
The problem is that unscrupulous or uninformed sellers can list genuine items and then deliver counterfeit items.
It is not always possible to look at a listing and know in advance exactly what, if anything, the seller intends to deliver. For one thing, a scammer can simply copy a listing from a genuine seller, using a genuine photo of a genuine item.
Except for a few specific categories of items that go through authentication, eBay never sees what the seller ships or the what the buyer receives, so there is nothing for eBay to check unless someone complains about what was received by invoking eBay's money back guarantee.
Sellers are responsible for the descriptions they provide, and buyers should not assume that eBay screens the listings in advance.
As long as counterfeits exist and there are folks trying to sell them, buyers will still have to be on the lookout for them, and avoid deals that are obviously too-good-to-be-true, whether they are being sold by accounts registered overseas or by domestic sellers wittingly or unwittingly buying counterfeits from overseas to sell here.
Buyers that doubt their ability to distinguish a genuine article from a counterfeit one should only consider purchasing from trustworthy sellers that have an established reputation for delivering exactly what was described, and should avoid deals that are too-good-to-be-true, or deals that are offered by inexperienced sellers that might disappear soon after the transaction is made, or else be prepared to get items authenticated by trusted sources within thirty days to be able to take advantage of eBay's money back guarantee.